2e2 – are there any lessons for the new skyscape of government computing?

2e2 Group Limited
Annual Report & Accounts 2011

• Established for over 10 years
• In the top 20 of UK Software and IT Services providers
• 2,000 employees with 1,200 technical consultants
• 17 offices in 5 countries
• Trusted IT advisor and partner to corporate and enterprise customers
• Agile and innovative approach
• Track record of delivering business benefits and reducing costs through transformational IT solutions
• High-level partnerships with the leading IT vendors
• Business-orientated approach and solutions design
• Named as the “Cloud expert” by the Financial Times
• Deep skills in data centre, unified communications, application consulting, cyber security, and managed services

2e2. What is it?

Let 2e2 speak for themselves:

2e2 is an ICT Lifecycle Services Provider; an agile, customer-focused provider of end-to-end next generation IT services.  The company creates innovative solutions that transform business processes, reduce infrastructure costs and enhance performance – 'creating business advantage' for its customers.  2e2 focuses on solutions and managed services for medium and large private and public sector organisations, delivered on premises, in the cloud, hosted, as a managed service or as a hybrid.  2e2 has worked with many companies within the telecommunications, media, healthcare, retail, transport, public, financial services and professional services sectors.

With glowing customer references from Linklaters, the London Borough of Newham, the London Borough of Waltham Forest, Menzies, Three, Bridgend County Borough Council, the Sussex Partmership NHS Foundation Trust, Allianz, Telefonica O2, McAfee, G4S and Orbit Housing, ...

2e2's annual accounts show a turnover of £396 million in 2011, a small loss of £11 million and net assets of £67 million, ...

all audited by Ernst & Young, who signed the accounts on 30 March 2012.

The accounts were submitted to Companies House (CH) on 24 September 2012 and the next entry on the CH website is 4 February 2013, Notice of Administrator's Appointment.

There's a big, strong board of directors – Graham Love (formerly chief executive of QinetiQ), Nick grossman (NCR), Frédéric Chauffier (énarque, Managing Partner of Duke Street), Simon Burt (KPMG), Matthew Collins (Morgan Grenfell, Merrill Lynch), Terry Burt (NCR), John Loveland (ICL, Wang, Nixdorf, Siemens), Mark McVeigh (NCR) ...

on 30 March 2012 the Directors' Report says that they have no reason not to use the going concern basis for the preparation of the accounts ...

Ernst & Young agree that the accounts give a true and fair view of the state of the undertaking ...

and next thing you know, they're in administration.

In short order, David Bicknell does a good summary of the problems faced as a result of 2e2's failure by five London NHS trusts responsible for the health of 1.27 million people ...

the G-Cloud team offers to help ...

Anthony Miller, managing partner at analyst house TechMarketView, says: "This is actually good news for 2e2’s beleaguered customers" (really?) ...

and Memset offers to help.

This is the hurly-burly of capitalism. It is a good thing.

Is there any sign, in 2e2's published accounts, of the problems to come?

That is, in case they ever publish any, what should we look out for in Skyscape's accounts?

2e2 – are there any lessons for the new skyscape of government computing?

2e2 Group Limited
Annual Report & Accounts 2011

• Established for over 10 years
• In the top 20 of UK Software and IT Services providers
• 2,000 employees with 1,200 technical consultants
• 17 offices in 5 countries
• Trusted IT advisor and partner to corporate and enterprise customers
• Agile and innovative approach
• Track record of delivering business benefits and reducing costs through transformational IT solutions
• High-level partnerships with the leading IT vendors
• Business-orientated approach and solutions design
• Named as the “Cloud expert” by the Financial Times
• Deep skills in data centre, unified communications, application consulting, cyber security, and managed services

2e2. What is it?

Let 2e2 speak for themselves:

2e2 is an ICT Lifecycle Services Provider; an agile, customer-focused provider of end-to-end next generation IT services.  The company creates innovative solutions that transform business processes, reduce infrastructure costs and enhance performance – 'creating business advantage' for its customers.  2e2 focuses on solutions and managed services for medium and large private and public sector organisations, delivered on premises, in the cloud, hosted, as a managed service or as a hybrid.  2e2 has worked with many companies within the telecommunications, media, healthcare, retail, transport, public, financial services and professional services sectors.

With glowing customer references from Linklaters, the London Borough of Newham, the London Borough of Waltham Forest, Menzies, Three, Bridgend County Borough Council, the Sussex Partmership NHS Foundation Trust, Allianz, Telefonica O2, McAfee, G4S and Orbit Housing, ...

2e2's annual accounts show a turnover of £396 million in 2011, a small loss of £11 million and net assets of £67 million, ...

all audited by Ernst & Young, who signed the accounts on 30 March 2012.

The accounts were submitted to Companies House (CH) on 24 September 2012 and the next entry on the CH website is 4 February 2013, Notice of Administrator's Appointment.

Andrew Dilnot and the cost of social control

Dilnot v., one mood only, imperative (imprecation) Don't! (esp. of hopeless Whitehall policy). Overtones of irrationality/stupidity/ignorance (q.v.), e.g. logically inconsistent arguments in support of hopeless Whitehall policy. Overtones of deceitfulness (q.v.), e.g. proponent of hopeless Whitehall policy is too intelligent not to realise that the supporting arguments are inconsistent. Normal usage – the attempt to promote/preserve honest political debate (q.v.) by a speaker who knows full well that the attempt is just as hopeless as the Whitehall policy. Example: "if you think the solution to excessive borrowing is to borrow more, Dilnot!".

Last seen around these parts Andrew Dilnot, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, told the BBC that his plan to cap social care costs at £35,000 was "not about protecting people's inheritances" but giving people "control over their lives at a time when they're vulnerable and need that control". Predictably enough, the legislation proposed to implement the cap does no such thing. It couldn't. If the state is paying the balance of your care costs over £35,000 then it's the state which is in control. Not you.

Needless to say, it is HM Treasury which will gain control. Them, and local Councils.

According to the Telegraph, Mr Dilnot has maintained his divorce from the natural use of English. Following the announcement of the new social care cost proposals ...

... he described the current system as a “complete disaster” and said the new measures would mean that “for the first time you don’t have to be terrified of the consequences of needing care”.

Readers are advised to carry on being terrified.

Andrew Dilnot and the cost of social control

Dilnot v., one mood only, imperative (imprecation) Don't! (esp. of hopeless Whitehall policy). Overtones of irrationality/stupidity/ignorance (q.v.), e.g. logically inconsistent arguments in support of hopeless Whitehall policy. Overtones of deceitfulness (q.v.), e.g. proponent of hopeless Whitehall policy is too intelligent not to realise that the supporting arguments are inconsistent. Normal usage – the attempt to promote/preserve honest political debate (q.v.) by a speaker who knows full well that the attempt is just as hopeless as the Whitehall policy. Example: "if you think the solution to excessive borrowing is to borrow more, Dilnot!".

Last seen around these parts Andrew Dilnot, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, told the BBC that his plan to cap social care costs at £35,000 was "not about protecting people's inheritances" but giving people "control over their lives at a time when they're vulnerable and need that control". Predictably enough, the legislation proposed to implement the cap does no such thing. It couldn't. If the state is paying the balance of your care costs over £35,000 then it's the state which is in control. Not you.

Needless to say, it is HM Treasury which will gain control. Them, and local Councils.

According to the Telegraph, Mr Dilnot has maintained his divorce from the natural use of English. Following the announcement of the new social care cost proposals ...

... he described the current system as a “complete disaster” and said the new measures would mean that “for the first time you don’t have to be terrified of the consequences of needing care”.

Readers are advised to carry on being terrified.

Stafford Hospital, Unite and Sir David Nicholson

Some readers may remember Sir David Nicholson KCB CBE, Chief Executive of the English National Health Service and Chief Executive of the NHS Commissioning Board:

DMossEsq must confess to a certain horrified admiration for Sir David. Never met him but he comes across as an old bruiser, a survivor, a winner, he's taken on all comers including the Prime Minister and he remains the undefeated commie, the Lonsdale Belt-holder of Whitehall.

He obviously inspires similar awe in Charlotte Jee, stalwart of the Guardian's Government Computing supplement:

Great profile of powerful, plain-spoken & -seemingly- indestructable NHS chief Sir David Nicholson by @patrickjbutler guardian.co.uk/society/2013/f… — Charlotte Jee (@charlottejee) February 4, 2013

Now that the report into the inhuman degradation at Stafford Hospital has been published, she may think differently.

Not so the charming Mary Riddell in the Telegraph:

But not everyone has quite such a strong stomach. Campaigner Julie Bailey has called on Sir David to resign. (And Andy Burnham. And Peter Carter.) Ms Bailey is joined by Rachael Maskell, the health officer of the Unite union, who says:

Sir David Nicholson, who has thrown down the so-called Nicholson challenge of £20bn cuts, is not the person to lead the NHS into the world of patient-focused care ... The words ‘buck’, ‘stopping’ and ‘here’ have a certain resonance.

Is this the end?

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Added (22:40):

The boss must go. NHS staff must step up
by Phil Hammond
The Times, 6 February 2013

Sir David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS, was in 2005 the head of the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority, the body supposedly responsible for supervising standards at Stafford Hospital. He should step down, a view privately shared by some on the new NHS Commissioning Board and many of the NHS staff I’ve spoken to. But only brave relatives such as Julie Bailey, from Cure the NHS, will join me in public.

Added 7.2.13:

• Union calls for Nicholson's resignation
• David Cameron apologises for Mid Staffs scandal after damning report
• Raft of apologies in wake of Mid Staffs
• 1,200 deaths, a damning report on 'failings at every level' and 290 recommendations for reform. Now families of the Stafford Hospital victims and union chiefs call for the head of the NHS to resign

Added: 14.2.13:

Head of NHS ignored warnings that patients were in danger, alleges whistleblower Sir David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, was allegedly warned four years ago that patients were at risk at United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust by its former chief excecutive Gary Walker ... Mr Walker last night said he raised concerns with Sir David in 2009 but his warnings were ignored. He told the Daily Mail: "I want David Nicholson to be held to account. I warned him that this was going to happen. I warned him that Lincolnshire was going to become the next Mid Staffordshire. He didn’t investigate those concerns, and now look what’s happened." He claimed Sir David was "not interested in patient safety" and said he should resign to end the "culture of fear" he had installed in the NHS ... managers at the trust had been told their "careers rested on delivering the targets" and so were neglecting the care of patients ...

Added 15.2.13:

On last night's This Week, Michael Portillo was asked by Andrew Neil for his moment of the week and responded as follows:

Stafford Hospital, Unite and Sir David Nicholson

Some readers may remember Sir David Nicholson KCB CBE, Chief Executive of the English National Health Service and Chief Executive of the NHS Commissioning Board:

DMossEsq must confess to a certain horrified admiration for Sir David. Never met him but he comes across as an old bruiser, a survivor, a winner, he's taken on all comers including the Prime Minister and he remains the undefeated commie, the Lonsdale Belt-holder of Whitehall.

He obviously inspires similar awe in Charlotte Jee, stalwart of the Guardian's Government Computing supplement:

Great profile of powerful, plain-spoken & -seemingly- indestructable NHS chief Sir David Nicholson by @patrickjbutler guardian.co.uk/society/2013/f… — Charlotte Jee (@charlottejee) February 4, 2013

Now that the report into the inhuman degradation at Stafford Hospital has been published, she may think differently.

Not so the charming Mary Riddell in the Telegraph:

Douglas Carswell – where will power end up?

Douglas Carswell's latest book, The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy, diagnoses several problems with the way we are governed in the UK and prescribes a single remedy – the web.

Mr Carswell is talking about politics. Which means he's talking about power.

Politics will end at about the time the sun burns out.

Mr Carswell foresees not the end of politics but the transfer of power, from today's government, to the public, via the web.

There are already several powerful forces fighting for domination of the web. The public are not among them.

It is at least possible that power will be transferred to some cocktail of these rival forces and that we the public will simply find ourselves with different rulers, and not necessarily better off.

Mr Carswell does not explain how the transfer of power from today's government to the public could take place.

Everyone recognises that there is something exceptional about the web. Everyone, including Whitehall.

And unlike Mr Carswell, Whitehall do have a plan.

Martha 'digital by default' Lane Fox CBE, 14 October 2010:

Revolution not Evolution

Make Directgov [= the Transformation cluster/GOV.UK] the government front end for all departments' transactional online services to citizens and businesses, with the teeth to mandate cross government solutions, set standards and force departments to improve citizens' experience of key transactions.

Change the model of government online publishing, by putting a new central team in Cabinet Office in absolute control of the overall user experience across all digital channels ...

Appoint a new CEO for Digital in the Cabinet Office with absolute authority over the user experience across all government online services (websites and APls) and the power to direct all government online spending.

I strongly suggest that the core Directgov team concentrates on service quality and that it should be the "citizens' champion with sharp teeth" for transactional service delivery.

Directgov should own the citizen experience of digital public services and be tasked with driving a 'service culture' across government which could, for example, challenge any policy and practice that undermines good service design.

It seems to me that the time is now to use the Internet to shift the lead in the design of services from the policy and legal teams to the end users.

Directgov SWAT teams ... should be given a remit to support and challenge departments and agencies ... We must give these SWAT teams the necessary support to challenge any policy and legal barriers which stop services being designed around user needs.

A new central commissioning team should take responsibility for the overall user experience on the government web estate, and should commission content from departmental experts. This content should then be published to a single Government website with a consistently excellent user experience.

Ultimately, departments should stop publishing to their own websites, and instead produce only content commissioned by this central commissioning team.

Ultimately it makes sense to the user for all Government digital services to reside under a single brand ...

... leadership on the digital communications and services agenda in the centre is too fragmented. I recommend that all digital teams in the Cabinet Office - including Digital Delivery, Digital Engagement and Directgov - are brought together under a new CEO for Digital.

This person should have the controls and powers to gain absolute authority over the user experience across all government online services ... and the power to direct all government online spend.

The CEO for Digital should also have the controls and powers to direct set and enforce standards across government departments ...

They want to make public services digital by default. That is, they want public services to be delivered over the web and, to the greatest extent possible, only over the web.

They have set up the Government Digital Service (GDS). The chairman of the GDS advisory board is Martha Lane Fox, the Prime Minister's digital champion. She wrote the terms of reference for GDS and, in theory:

GDS is to have control of all government spending on IT. Central government departments and their agencies are meant to yield that financial control to GDS.

All public services will be delivered through one website, https://www.gov.uk (GOV.UK for short). This process has started. The Ministry of Defence, for example, no longer has its own website – the old http://www.mod.uk has been replaced by https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ ministry-of-defence, part of GOV.UK. By the end of 2013, there will be no departmental websites left, they will all have given up their distinctive identity and been subsumed by GOV.UK.

Central government departments will only be able to publish through GOV.UK. Among other things that means that GDS will be responsible for publishing all government news.

GDS is to have a veto over departmental policy. If GDS feel that a particular policy would impair the user experience of GOV.UK, then that policy will be sent back to the department, who will have to think again. (So far, "user experience" is undefined.)

GDS's Government Digital Strategy provides for a network of so-called "digital leaders", individuals installed in each of the departments to advise on and enforce GDS's will.

GDS's Digital Efficiency Report estimates savings of about £1.8 billion a year thanks to digital-by-default. These savings will be gained by making about 40,000 public servants redundant. There is no question of handing these savings back to the public – the money is to be retained by Whitehall.

In aid of the Individual Electoral Registration Bill (IER), the idea is to cross-reference the records of several departments of state to try to create a complete and accurate electoral roll. That cross-referencing (or "data-sharing") is currently illegal according to the IER impact assessment. But GDS is to have a veto over legal constraints just as much as policy of which it disapproves and Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Minister and GDS's political boss, describes these constraints as nothing more than "muddled myths". Once these muddled myths are removed, GDS estimate that "savings" and redundancies among public servants will be much higher.

In order to provide public services over the web, the public must be identified – Whitehall need to know they are paying benefits, for example, to the right people. GDS are responsible for the pan-government Identity Assurance programme (IDAP), which will see us all furnished with electronic IDs. GDS have appointed eight contractors to be the UK's so-called "identity providers". If you want to claim the department for Work and Pensions's Universal Credit, by default you will need one or more electronic IDs from these identity providers. Without that, you run the risk of being excluded by default. The same applies to any individual – or company – who needs to transact with government for any purpose.

Supposedly in order to make the economy grow, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), with the assistance of the Behavioural Insights Team, are promoting an initiative called "midata". The idea is that we should all use a personal data store (PDS) which records our identity and our transaction data (purchases, health records, employment records, educational attainment, travel history, ...). The PDS would be maintained on the web, in the cloud, with a so-called "trusted third party". Only one "trusted" third party is ever named, and that is Mydex, one of GDS's eight identity providers.

Individuals and companies have had a fairly secure way to do business with the government for the past ten years or so – the UK Government Gateway. GDS propose to dispense with the Gateway and replace it with some sort of hub system, linking the public, the identity providers and the public service providers and using protocols designed by or approved by an organisation no-one in the UK has ever heard of, the Open Identity Exchange (OIX). The Gateway is hard to use. The idea is that the OIX hub should be as easy to use as Facebook, say, or Google or Amazon or Twitter or PayPal or ... It seems likely that the difficulty of using the Gateway is precisely what lends it its relative security. And that Facebook, Google, etc ... are easy to use precisely because their security is weak.

GDS propose to host GOV.UK "in the cloud". That is, the website will be stored on a third party's servers at a third party's data centre and operated by a third party's staff. Cloud computing is a recipe for losing control of your data. (In this case, our data.)

...

Mr Carswell has no plan for how power could be transferred from the government to the public via the web. Whitehall does have a plan. But it's a plan that will ensure that control remains with the Executive at the centre. Same tool, but the opposite result from Mr Carswell's preferred reintroduction of localism and the city-state.

GDS ignore the risk of identity theft posed by storing our personal data on the web. They ignore the human need for privacy. They have no experience of public administration. All they have is a reverence for the web.

The web is a powerful and virtuous tool in the right hands. In the wrong hands, it remains powerful.

It is a mistake to revere the web. If you need any further confirmation, read Al Gore: US democracy has been hacked in the Guardian yesterday. Al Gore? The prosecution rests its case.

Douglas Carswell – where will power end up?

Douglas Carswell's latest book, The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy, diagnoses several problems with the way we are governed in the UK and prescribes a single remedy – the web.

Mr Carswell is talking about politics. Which means he's talking about power.

Politics will end at about the time the sun burns out.

Mr Carswell foresees not the end of politics but the transfer of power, from today's government, to the public, via the web.

There are already several powerful forces fighting for domination of the web. The public are not among them.

It is at least possible that power will be transferred to some cocktail of these rival forces and that we the public will simply find ourselves with different rulers, and not necessarily better off.

Mr Carswell does not explain how the transfer of power from today's government to the public could take place.

Everyone recognises that there is something exceptional about the web. Everyone, including Whitehall.

And unlike Mr Carswell, Whitehall do have a plan.

Skyscape loose ends – still loose

• Skyscape are late submitting their first statutory accounts to Companies House

• There are more reasons to believe that HMG will lose control of our data once it is hosted in the cloud on Skyscape's servers

• It looks as if GOV.UK is still not being hosted by Skyscape

----------

Skyscape's non-existent track record

Source: Companies House, 30 January 2013

Skyscape Cloud Services Ltd were due to submit their first set of accounts to Companies House by 31 December 2012 and, so far, they're a month late.

How did the Government Procurement Service (GPS) and the G-Cloud team determine that it is safe to offer Skyscape's services on the Cloudstore?

What were the Government Digital Service (GDS) going on when they chose Skyscape to host GOV.UK, the soon-to-be-single face of government on the web?

How did HMRC decide to entrust its local office data to Skyscape?

No answers. It remains baffling that all this responsibility for public administration should be put on a one-man company.

And now it transpires that the MOD are relying on Skyscape, too.

Losing control of our data
Does the following snippet give you confidence in Skyscape?

ScienceLogic streamlines IT management for Skyscape Cloud Services Date: 24 Jan 2013 Skyscape Cloud Services, “the easy to adopt, easy to use, and easy to leave” Assured Cloud Services Company, has selected and deployed the ScienceLogic™ Inc. IT infrastructure management platform to optimize IT operations and rapidly automate processes in their large-scale, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings. Skyscape is a supplier to the UK government through the G-Cloud Framework initiative, helping deliver a highly-scalable, secure community cloud for the provision of public services. The innovative service provider is using the robust ScienceLogic platform to simplify the complexities of providing mission-critical cloud services to multiple government organizations including GOV.UK and the Ministry of Defence. “We needed to take a more proactive, cost-effective approach to managing our government customer IT cloud resources,” said Peter Rossi, Head of Orchestration & Automation at Skyscape ...

It shouldn't.

ScienceLogic is a US company based in Reston, VA.

So what?

Once HMG put our data in the cloud, it passes beyond their jurisdiction. What happened to Megaupload.com could happen to us, too. The FBI impounded all the data on Megaupload's servers and no-one has been able to get their data back since.

According to Megaupload's lawyers, the prosecution's case amounts to saying that you lose your property rights if you store data in the cloud – if you'd wanted to retain those rights, so goes the argument, you wouldn't have used the cloud.

The FBI have the powers of the USA PATRIOT Act available to them and of the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Amendments Act (FISA).

The USA PATRIOT Act powers can be exercised wherever in the world the cloud data is stored and, as they say on the G-Cloud website, "public cloud is often non-geographically specific" – HMG often won't know where our data is. Location doesn't matter to the FBI. All that matters is that a US-registered company should be involved or any other company with a substantial business in the US.

Skyscape were already known to be involved with EMC, QinetiQ, VMware and Cisco. Then they emphasised the involvement of EMC with the release of a promotional film, Skyscape Cloud Services – Storage as a Service on EMC Atmos. EMC is a US company based in Hopkinton, MA. And now their Head of Orchestration has added ScienceLogic to the list.

FISA was recently "renewed", please see U.S. Spy Law Authorizes Mass Surveillance of European Citizens.

The reasons why the FBI might be interested to take a look at our data are manifold. It was suspected copyright infringement in the case of Megaupload. In our case, it might be that or anything else. Now that the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) has come into force, they might for example just want to see if there are any US citizens or companies or trusts in the UK evading US tax.

And that's the US, the kindred country we know and trust. HMG will have even less control over our data in other jurisdictions.

Where is GOV.UK?
Back in October 2012, GDS announced that GOV.UK would be hosted on Skyscape.

30 January 2013

This came as news to its then current host, a cloud services company called Akamai. Has GOV.UK moved to Skyscape now? It doesn't look like it. It looks as though it's still hosted with Akamai.

What's going on? Was the GDS announcement about Skyscape nonsense? Who knows. GDS don't answer questions. Four months after Skyscape came into public view, we're none the wiser.

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Added 31.1.13:
US authorities can spy on the iCloud without a warrant

Skyscape loose ends – still loose

• Skyscape are late submitting their first statutory accounts to Companies House

• There are more reasons to believe that HMG will lose control of our data once it is hosted in the cloud on Skyscape's servers

• It looks as if GOV.UK is still not being hosted by Skyscape

----------

Skyscape's non-existent track record

Source: Companies House, 30 January 2013

Skyscape Cloud Services Ltd were due to submit their first set of accounts to Companies House by 31 December 2012 and, so far, they're a month late.

How did the Government Procurement Service (GPS) and the G-Cloud team determine that it is safe to offer Skyscape's services on the Cloudstore?

What were the Government Digital Service (GDS) going on when they chose Skyscape to host GOV.UK, the soon-to-be-single face of government on the web?

How did HMRC decide to entrust its local office data to Skyscape?