Francis Maude, the UK government's major IT suppliers and the empty chair

Hat tip: Tony Collins, Poor IT suppliers to face ban from contracts?

The Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is due to meet representatives of suppliers today [28 June 2012], including Accenture[,] BT, Capgemini, Capita, HP, IBM, Interserve, Logica, Serco, and Steria. They will be warned that suppliers with poor performance may find it more difficult to secure new work with the Government ...

The suggestion is that up to now "suppliers with poor performance" haven't found it hard as a result to "secure new work with the government".

Apart from Atos, DMossEsq and Fujitsu, who's missing from that list?

CSC. Computer Sciences Corporation, share price today $23.76 compared with $37.96 a year ago, nearly 40% off, DMossEsq is not licensed to give investment advice and is not giving investment advice.

Last heard in these parts, CSC were picking up a fortune from the UK taxpayer for collecting useless biometrics on UK visa applicants, upgrading the UK passport system expensively and unnecessarily and failing to deploy the UK National Health Service National Programme for IT scheme, NPfIT. That's the good news.

We also heard that they were facing a class action brought by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, they'd been docked $250 million by the US Armed Services Board and they had failed to install their Lorenzo software at Pennine Care NHS Health Trust.

Some of that news is six months old. How are they doing now?

Another hat tip: Mark Ballard, Soldiers nail data for agile offensive on $6bn cock-up:

Supplier Computer Sciences Corporation finished the US Army's 1999 Logistics Modernization Programme [LMP] last year, six years behind schedule [good job the US wasn't fighting any wars at the time]. LMP went on the record as being done on budget after the Army accepted an offer on a $2bn compensation claim it had against the supplier. After seven years of contract arbitration in which CSC filed $861m of counter claims against the Army, CSC settled the matter with a $269m payment last year. The settlement also cleared another $1.2bn of outstanding contract complaints, said the Army spokeswoman.

Six years late and $269 million down the tubes seems a fair summary.

And that's not all, as Mr Ballard tells us in CSC finance director exits as fraud probe hits UK. Their 10-K, filed with the SEC, makes absorbing reading:

On May 2, 2011, the Audit Committee commenced its investigation into certain accounting errors and irregularities, primarily in our Nordic region and in our operations in Australia. This investigation is also reviewing certain aspects of our accounting practices within our Americas Outsourcing operation and certain of our contracts that involve the percentage of completion accounting method, including our contract with the U.K. National Health Service (NHS). As a result of this investigation, we have recorded certain out of period adjustments to our historical financial statements and taken certain remedial measures. The SEC is conducting its own investigation into the foregoing areas as well as certain related disclosure matters ... As noted above, during fiscal 2011, the Company commenced an investigation into accounting irregularities in the Nordic Region. Based upon the Company's investigation, review of the underlying documentation for certain transactions and balances, review of contract documentation and discussions with Nordic personnel, the Company attributes the majority of the $92 million pre-tax adjustments recorded in the Nordic region in fiscal 2011 to accounting irregularities arising from suspected intentional misconduct by certain former employees in our Danish subsidiaries. The Company attributes the $13 million in pre-tax adjustments recorded in the Nordic region in fiscal 2012 to miscellaneous errors and not to any accounting irregularities or intentional misconduct other than a $1 million operating lease adjustment noted in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 which was a refinement of an error previously corrected and reported in fiscal 2011 ... In the course of the Australia investigation initiated in fiscal 2012, accounting errors and irregularities have been identified. As a result, certain personnel in Australia have been reprimanded, suspended, terminated and/or resigned. Based upon the information developed to date, and the Company’s assessment of the same, the Company has identified and recorded during fiscal 2012, $23 million of adjustments reducing income from continuing operations before taxes relating to its operations in Australia. Such adjustments have been categorized as either intentional accounting irregularities (“intentional irregularities”) or other accounting errors (“Other Errors”). Other accounting errors include both unintentional errors and errors for which the categorization is unclear ... Between June 3, 2011, and July 21, 2011, four putative class action complaints were filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, entitled City of Roseville Employee's Retirement System v. Computer Sciences Corporation, et al. (No. 1:11-cv-00610-TSE-IDD), Murphy v. Computer Sciences Corporation, et al. (No. 1:11-cv-00636-TSE-IDD), Kramer v. Computer Sciences Corporation, et al. (No. 1:11-cv-00751-TSE-IDD) and Goldman v. Computer Sciences Corporation, et al. (No. 1:11-cv-777-TSE-IDD). On August 29, 2011, the four actions were consolidated as In re Computer Sciences Corporation Securities Litigation (No. 1:11-cv-610-TSE-IDD) and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board was appointed lead plaintiff ... On September 13, 2011, a shareholder derivative action entitled Che Wu Hung v. Michael W. Laphen, et al. (CL 20110013376) was filed in Circuit Court of Fairfax County, Virginia, against Michael W. Laphen, Michael J. Mancuso, the members of the Audit Committee and the Company as a nominal defendant asserting claims for breach of fiduciary duty and contribution and indemnification relating to alleged failure by the defendants to disclose accounting and financial irregularities in the MSS segment, primarily in the Nordic region, and the Company's performance under the NHS agreement and alleged failure to maintain effective internal controls ... CSC was informally advised by the Danish Justice Department on February 3, 2012 that the project known as POLSAG, a document and records management modernization program for the Danish police, will be abandoned, which affects CSC's contract with the Justice Department ... In addition to the matters noted above, the Company is currently party to a number of disputes which involve or may involve litigation ...

Bit mean of Mr Maude not to invite CSC along for tea and biscuits with the other suppliers.

Francis Maude, the UK government's major IT suppliers and the empty chair

Hat tip: Tony Collins, Poor IT suppliers to face ban from contracts?

The Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is due to meet representatives of suppliers today [28 June 2012], including Accenture[,] BT, Capgemini, Capita, HP, IBM, Interserve, Logica, Serco, and Steria. They will be warned that suppliers with poor performance may find it more difficult to secure new work with the Government ...

The suggestion is that up to now "suppliers with poor performance" haven't found it hard as a result to "secure new work with the government".

Apart from Atos, DMossEsq and Fujitsu, who's missing from that list?

The agility with which Francis Maude and Sir Bob Kerslake are being parted from our money

Leafing through Computer Weekly the other day as no doubt we all were revealed this article by Mark Ballard, Soldiers nail data for agile offensive on $6bn cock-up:

... the effort is part of an emergency reform of IT projects using agile methods, on orders issued by the Department [of] Defense last year after 11 major computer systems went $6bn over budget and 31 years behind schedule.

$6 billion over budget? 31 years behind schedule? So it doesn't just happen in the UK:

The IPPS system was started in 2010 as a clean slate on another spoiled clean slate. It replaced the DoD's previous attempt at an ERP pay system, the Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System, after 12 years work that had cost $1bn. HR system Contractor Northr[o]p Grumman, the fifth largest US defence contractor, was kept on to develop IPPS.

"IPPS" is the US Army's Integrated Personnel and Pay System – you didn't want to know that – and "ERP" is Enterprise Resource Planning, which is an earlier software engineering philosophy which was going to solve all our problems.

Earlier than "agile methods". Agile methods are the latest cure-all. You'd think after a while the gullible would stop falling for cure-alls and that they would notice that the same suppliers hang on year in year out, but no.

What went wrong with the ERP approach to paying the army? It's highly technical, of course, but readers should not be patronised by having the difficulties hidden from them:

"For this approach to work, the first increment is focused on the creation of authoritative data," a US Army spokeswoman told Computer Weekly. "Subsequent increments will field applications utilising the authoritative data," she said. Auditors had blamed data problems for wrecking the US military's ambitious plan to rip out pay and logistics systems and replace them with all-encompassing Enterprise Resource Planning systems by vendors such as Oracle and SAP. But with hundreds of different systems being merged, nobody had ensured their data would be compatible.

This won't have occurred to you but apparently, it has been discovered, recent high-level research suggests, if the data is wrong or not "authoritative" that can have an adverse effect on the system. Also, while several billion dollars were changing hands, no-one seems to have noticed that different systems store data in different ways that are not what we software engineers call "compatible".

If only we'd known before.

Actually, we did. Chris Chant told us. Remember his unchallenged 23-point list of what's wrong with UK government IT? Point #19 was "Government should use small and medium size suppliers whose IT practices are more 'agile' but instead they stick with the big ponderous suppliers".

"Agile" is the solution to the problems of ERP, which was the solution to the problems of structured systems design, which was the solution to the problems of the rhythm method.

And what does "agile" mean? What do agile software engineering methods look like?

Ask GDS, the Government Digital Service. They're the IT frontiersmen at the Cabinet Office having praise heaped on them by Francis Maude and Sir Bob Kerslake. They're going to transform government and deliver more for less following the digital by default precepts of Martha Lane Fox.

Let Mike Beaven of GDS explain what it's like to be Riding the Paradigm – where agile meets programme:

There are challenges to running an agile approach to delivery inside a larger organisation where agile is not yet fully understood. We are frequently asked how we approach these challenges and manage them here at GDS ... ... i[n] terms of Cabinet Office and GDS ... we have a pretty established and successful agile software delivery engine. Whilst it is relatively new it has become a firmly established way of working beyond the core delivery teams, and lean/agile methods are used across GDS in a variety of teams ... The base premise here has been to make the programme processes lighter and more agile, let the project management office take the load from delivery managers but still be in control of our agile delivery streams in terms of money, risk and delivery expectations. We have made some good progress in terms of the way new work is initiated, assessed and sized up ready for progress onto delivery ... We are still learning in terms of how we manage the in-flight delivery work and get a view on risks without disrupting the flow of delivery ... Our main learning so far: You need different methods for different areas of managing delivery – one size does not fit all. Backing to implement programme techniques into agile teams – trust is key and talking with delivery managers beats a written report. Control areas like risk, people allocation and spend control centrally – let one team do the worrying. For the time being though we will be on that paradigm.

The encounter group facilitator in you will want to thank Mike for that contribution but there's still a niggling sense, isn't there, that it's not clear how the troops are going to be paid, or whatever.

What, for example, explains the enormous pride with which ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken writes, in Digital a key component for Civil Service Reform Plan:

The Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude today [19 June 2012] launched the Civil Service Reform Plan and we were glad to welcome him and Sir Bob Kerslake, Head of the Civil Service, to GDS this morning in advance of the announcement. You can see them chatting to GDS staff Alice Newton and Jordan Hatch in the video below. I am very heartened to see that Digital by Default is a core theme running through the Civil Service Reform plan [otherwise I wouldn't have a job] with the explicit acceptance by the Minister that “central government wherever possible must become a digital organisation. These days the best service organisations deliver online everything that can be delivered online. This cuts their costs dramatically and allows access to information and services at times and in ways convenient to the users rather than the providers” ... So it’s a good day for digital in government and I look forward to taking part in the debates that will follow. The Minister and Sir Bob Kerslake will be back in GDS this Thursday 21 June from 4.00 to 5.00, to take part in a Facebook discussion so Civil Servants can give feedback directly on the plan. You can take part on the Civil Service Facebook page and you can ask Sir Bob Kerslake questions directly on Twitter by tweeting him (@sirbobkerslake) using the hashtag #asksirbob ...

All well and good, Mike, but suppose we have to tweet @sirbobkerslake using the hashtag #tellsirbob? What do we tell him? How do agile methods help?

For the answer to that, we have to turn to Chris Heathcote, one of the stakhanovites toiling away in the GDS boiler room, whose blog post The speed of change at last casts light on the matter. There he treats us to the hero's tale of how he went over the top and responded to a tweet about when the clocks change.

Not only did one Caspar Aremi feel that the government website devoted to this matter should show the columns as rows and the rows as columns but he even found the time in his busy schedule to tweet about it. And Mr Heathcote rose to the occasion. Scary stuff. But that's not all – the crucial point is that, presumably because he had nothing better to do, he did it the same day as receiving the tweet. Agile, or what.

Therein lies ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken's pride – at the accomplishment of one of his staff who can respond quickly to a footling request.

And therein lies the confidence that Francis Maude's future and Sir Bob Kerslake's, and our tax money, are all in good hands. "Agile" means sleeping easy of a night, one size does not fit all, trust is key, let the GDS team do the worrying. And the spending.

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Mr Heathcote's claim to have demonstrated the true benefits of agile methods is attracting a certain amount of contumely. "One change, one day thanks to Agile? I feel sorry for whoever is in charge when real music starts to play!", says Andres Crespo. Quite. On that day, maybe the US military will give Messrs Bracken, Beaven and Heathcote a job. And Bob Kamall and Paul Downey.

The agility with which Francis Maude and Sir Bob Kerslake are being parted from our money

Leafing through Computer Weekly the other day as no doubt we all were revealed this article by Mark Ballard, Soldiers nail data for agile offensive on $6bn cock-up:

... the effort is part of an emergency reform of IT projects using agile methods, on orders issued by the Department [of] Defense last year after 11 major computer systems went $6bn over budget and 31 years behind schedule.

$6 billion over budget? 31 years behind schedule? So it doesn't just happen in the UK:

Is Blair bidding to become the patron saint of lost causes?

1 June 2012: Tony is back. But what shall we do with him?

24 June 2012: Tony Blair: ID cards needed to tackle illegal migrants
24 June 2012: Blair denies he ‘gagged’ Goldsmith over Iraq war
24 June 2012: Tony Blair: I don't regret opening UK borders to European immigrants
25 June 2012: Blair wants ‘grand plan’ for euro - and UK joining
26 June 2012: Blair defends PFI as NHS trusts face bankruptcy

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Updates:
27 June 2012: Tony Blair: I would be prime minister again
29 June 2012: Unthinkable? Tony Blair for PM again
30 June 2012: I wish I had been offered presidency of EU, Tony Blair admits
11 July 2012: Meet the new Labour adviser: Tony Blair
12 July 2012: Blair returns to help shape Olympic legacy plan
12 July 2012: Tony Blair, the David Hasselhoff of Labour politics, returns for an ill-advised curtain call
13 July 2012: Tony Blair's back - and he's dangerous for the Tories and Labour
17 July 2012: Tony Blair's unfinished business
23 July 2012: Tony Blair's return as prime minister would not get Britain's backing
26 July 2012: Tony Blair may itch to return, but he faces a cruel reality check
4 August 2012: No shadow cabinet return for Tony Blair
12 August 2012: Stewart Lee: movements afoot to return Tony Blair to Labour's seat of power?
28 August 2012: Archbishop Desmond Tutu pulls out of event with Tony Blair because of Iraq War
31 August 2012: Tony Blair to be honoured with Parliament bust

In the same demented vein:
15 June 2012: A waste of good talent – give Gordon a job
28 June 2012: Gordon Brown could have been Britain's LBJ ...

Is Blair bidding to become the patron saint of lost causes?

1 June 2012: Tony is back. But what shall we do with him?

24 June 2012: Tony Blair: ID cards needed to tackle illegal migrants
24 June 2012: Blair denies he ‘gagged’ Goldsmith over Iraq war
24 June 2012: Tony Blair: I don't regret opening UK borders to European immigrants
25 June 2012: Blair wants ‘grand plan’ for euro - and UK joining
26 June 2012: Blair defends PFI as NHS trusts face bankruptcy

----------

Updates:
27 June 2012: Tony Blair: I would be prime minister again
29 June 2012: Unthinkable? Tony Blair for PM again
30 June 2012: I wish I had been offered presidency of EU, Tony Blair admits
11 July 2012: Meet the new Labour adviser: Tony Blair
12 July 2012: Blair returns to help shape Olympic legacy plan
12 July 2012: Tony Blair, the David Hasselhoff of Labour politics, returns for an ill-advised curtain call
13 July 2012: Tony Blair's back - and he's dangerous for the Tories and Labour
17 July 2012: Tony Blair's unfinished business
23 July 2012: Tony Blair's return as prime minister would not get Britain's backing
26 July 2012: Tony Blair may itch to return, but he faces a cruel reality check
4 August 2012: No shadow cabinet return for Tony Blair
12 August 2012: Stewart Lee: movements afoot to return Tony Blair to Labour's seat of power?
28 August 2012: Archbishop Desmond Tutu pulls out of event with Tony Blair because of Iraq War
31 August 2012: Tony Blair to be honoured with Parliament bust

In the same demented vein:
15 June 2012: A waste of good talent – give Gordon a job
28 June 2012: Gordon Brown could have been Britain's LBJ ...

Heywood's Whitehall – no longer economical with the actualité

What?

Top civil servant: Britain faces decade of cuts?

That's what it says in the Times:

The most senior civil servant in the country has warned of a decade of spending cuts. Sir Jeremy Heywood said the Government was only a quarter of the way through its austerity programme, the BBC reported. Speaking to civil servants at Westminster, Sir Jeremy warned that spending restraint could last “seven, eight, maybe ten years”. The Cabinet Secretary’s prediction echoes warnings by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) earlier this year that the Coalition’s austerity programme would be insufficient to bring the deficit down to “prudent” levels.

Prudent levels? Ten years of cuts?

Has Sir Jeremy gone native?

Has he forgotten the fine example of Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell who quite unmistakably told us that boom and bust had been abolished in the UK and that opportunities for all are available as a result? Now how is the unfortunate St Augustine supposed to lay his healing hands on the Governorship of the Bank of England?

There are entire countries currently voting against austerity – and presumably in favour of water running uphill – and Sir Jeremy chooses this moment, of all moments, to make it clear that if you get in the shower you're going to get wet?

Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are trying to build an opposition policy based on the idea that austerity is counter-productive and unnecessary. If Sir Jeremy insists that austerity is, quite simply, reality, what are the poor Eds to do?

How can they face François Hollande when he nips over to buy a flat in South Ken with his paramour Mme Rottweiler?

What do they say when Barack rings up for a spot of advice on the Presidential election campaign?

And most tragic of all, how are the Guardian supposed to fill their op-ed pages? Even 1,000 more Jimmy Carrs repenting would only raise a crummy billion pounds in extra revenue – a drop in the ocean, barely one-fiftieth of the annual interest bill on our national debt of a trillion pounds.

It wouldn't even help all that much if the Guardian themselves forswore their tax avoidance arrangements with Apax Partners and started paying their fair share.

Sir Jeremy – it's very brave of you, of course, very brave indeed, but what were you thinking of?

(Moody's poised to downgrade UK's banks – truth-telling becomes fashionable.)

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Cribsheet:
Just to remind the younger readers how successful Gus was, running the economy with his glove-puppets Brown and Balls, the Times article says:

Despite the deficit-reduction programme, the European Commission predicts Britain’s deficit will reach 6.5 per cent of GDP in 2013, higher than any other EU state bar Greece with 8.4 per cent and Ireland at 7.5 per cent.

Not the ideal CV, surely, for the supplicant would-be next Governor of the Bank of England.

Heywood's Whitehall – no longer economical with the actualité

What?

Top civil servant: Britain faces decade of cuts?

That's what it says in the Times:

The most senior civil servant in the country has warned of a decade of spending cuts. Sir Jeremy Heywood said the Government was only a quarter of the way through its austerity programme, the BBC reported. Speaking to civil servants at Westminster, Sir Jeremy warned that spending restraint could last “seven, eight, maybe ten years”. The Cabinet Secretary’s prediction echoes warnings by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) earlier this year that the Coalition’s austerity programme would be insufficient to bring the deficit down to “prudent” levels.

Prudent levels? Ten years of cuts?

Has Sir Jeremy gone native?

Has he forgotten the fine example of Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell who quite unmistakably told us that boom and bust had been abolished in the UK and that opportunities for all are available as a result? Now how is the unfortunate St Augustine supposed to lay his healing hands on the Governorship of the Bank of England?

HMG's cloud computing strategy – there isn't one – and the Edgbaston Test

On 20 October 2011 Chris Chant listed 23 symptoms of the illness which Government IT suffers from. He carried on energetically repeating his diagnosis, unchallenged, and promoting cloud computing as the effective prescription. There he was, at it again, six months later on 11 April 2012, in a blog post on the G-Cloud website, #Unacceptable IT is pervasive. Two days later his resignation was announced.

The man in charge of G-Cloud is Andy Nelson, the Government's Chief Information Officer (CIO). That's only a part-time job. He is more fully occupied as CIO at the Ministry of Justice, where he's got his work cut out with Libra among other things. Libra is the £467 million Fujitsu system which is meant to produce the accounts for HM Courts and Tribunals Service. When the National Audit Office saw the 2010-11 accounts they were in such a mess that the NAO couldn't even qualify their opinion, they had to disclaim an opinion.

Under Mr Nelson, Denise McDonagh is also responsible for G-Cloud. Again, it's only a part-time job. Her day job is CIO at the Home Office. And again, there are quite a few distractions there:

• There's the £385 million CSC contract with Sarah Rapson's Identity & Passport Service which is one of the reasons UK passport-holders are currently being over-charged by £300 million a year.
• There's the £265 million IBM contract with the UK Border Agency to provide IABS, Jackie Keane's Immigration and Asylum Biometric System. IABS is meant to keep the UK border secure and make the 2012 Olympics safe but there's a problem – the biometrics don't work.
• The same problem applies to the National Policing Improvement Agency's promotion of MobileID, a system to allow policemen on patrol to check suspects' fingerprints on the spot using mobile equipment. The idea is for MobileID to save police time. Which it will because, with a 20% failure rate, this flaky technology will cause 20% fewer criminals to be arrested.

Those distractions and others will no doubt explain her lacklustre post on 26 April 2012, Cloud Cynicism (or Dispelling the Dark Clouds) and why she hasn't been heard from since.

Not so, Eleanor Stewart. She's a trouper. She's the Assistant Director of G-Cloud and she's always good for a lively post. On 27 April 2012 she produced Crowdsourcing and a response., in which she took up some of the many questions posed in the 20 responses to Chris Chant's last post.

What the heck can we do to resolve some of the scary and largely unknown legal and policy issues that people are nervous about in a globalised world?, she asked. Good question. No answer.

And What ‘worked examples’ might we be able to provide to ... sceptics? That's in response to the simple question how cloud computing is supposed to obviate the need for long contracts to produce systems like Libra, for example, or IABS or DWP's Universal Credit. Chris Chant says it will. How? No answer.

Ms Stewart threw the post open to the crowd. And published one comment. One. The limiting case of a crowd. (I wandered lonely as a cloud?)

"Scary and largely unknown"? Hmm. Quite clearly, no-one in HMG knows the answers to some very basic questions about its cloud computing strategy. Which is odd. They keep talking about it. Andy Nelson, for example, was holding forth at the Cloud Computing World Forum only the other day. And they've been advocating it for years – the G-Cloud Overview was being touted in August 2010. But still no-one can answer the questions.

Is it all hot air? A cloud of hot air? A cloud which, when it hits some of the colder patches of reality, results in heavy precipitation and the wettest drought ever seen, which washed out the Edgbaston Test? That's certainly what it looks like at this end of the wicket.

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A version of this post has been kindly published by the estimable PublicTechnology.net

HMG's cloud computing strategy – there isn't one – and the Edgbaston Test

On 20 October 2011 Chris Chant listed 23 symptoms of the illness which Government IT suffers from. He carried on energetically repeating his diagnosis, unchallenged, and promoting cloud computing as the effective prescription. There he was, at it again, six months later on 11 April 2012, in a blog post on the G-Cloud website, #Unacceptable IT is pervasive. Two days later his resignation was announced.