Putting the user first – what does it mean?

Co-operating with Korea to put users first – that was the big news two days ago from GDS, the Government Digital Service.

According to Liam Maxwell, Her Majesty's Government's Chief Technology Officer: "As demonstrated in last month’s Conference on Cyberspace in Seoul, we have much in common with Korea, but we also have much to learn from each other. Yesterday’s signing commits both of our countries to creating digital public services that put the needs of the citizen first, and I'm excited that we’ll be working more closely together".

Francis Maude signing an agreement with Korea for no apparent reason

while Martha-now-Lady Lane Fox looks on

Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken was equally excited after his presentation to the Cabinet a few weeks ago: "Starting with the needs of users has led to a radical shift in the way we build and provision government services. That’s a huge thing. It means an end to big IT, it means smarter and cheaper services which meet users needs, and it means digital sitting at the heart of teams all around government".

Does "starting with the needs of users" mean "an end to big IT"? No. Does it mean "smarter and cheaper services"? No. Does it mean "digital sitting at the heart of teams all around government"? No. Not in English. And not in Korean.

GDS imply that "starting with the needs of users" distinguishes them from other government bodies. It's "led to a radical shift in the way we build and provision government services".

But does it?

If you ask the Department for Education "do you put the needs of students first", will they say "good lord no, we've got much more important matters to consider"? If you ask the department of Health "do you put the needs of patients first", will they say "don't be ridiculous, there's no time for any of that nonsense"? If you ask the London Borough of Merton "do you put the interests of Mertonians first", will they say "we used to but ever since Francis Maude signed that agreement we're concentrating more on Korea"?

No. Putting the needs of users first doesn't distinguish GDS from any other government body.

GDS may say that the other government bodies, with the disgracefully old-fashioned ways they "build and provision government services", don't really mean it.

But do GDS really mean it? Never mind the other government bodies, do GDS really put the needs of users first? The progress (complete lack thereof) of their assisted digital project suggests not.

What does "putting the user first" mean? Nothing? Whatever you want it to mean?

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Updated 16 December 2013:

Why is [are?] design and creativity important to your organisation? That was the question Design Week was asking last Friday and a jolly good question it is.

Can you guess GDS's answer? Are you beginning to get the hang of this user needs business?

‘Because the organising principle of GDS is the user, and the user deserves services designed for the user, not the Government. Design and creativity are central to recasting public services, and indeed the civil service, if we are to create public services fit for a digital era.’

Deflect your eyes from the screen for a moment, look around you and look back, and you may see that the "organising principle" of every government department is meant to be the user, that doesn't distinguish GDS, it's not a new idea.

Design and creativity are of course important but again, that's not a new idea. You may remember that each government department website once had its own branding, designed to suit its users. Arguably, the award-winning GOV.UK took an undesign step backwards when it standardised the lot of them.


Updated 29 January 2014:

It's that time of the year again. Reinvigorating the troops with self-congratulatory jamborees. This time last year we had The future is here. Today it was Sprint 14 (which remained coyly imprecise about where the future is now).

Rt Hon Francis Maude MP gave a speech today which returns to the theme of the post above, viz. the useful versatility of the phrase "user needs":

Sir Jonathan Ive, Apple’s British born designer, put it best when he said: ‘The word design is everything and nothing. We think of design as not just the product’s appearance: it’s what the product is and how it works. The design and the product are inseparable.’ So what does that mean for government? It means putting users at the heart of public services.

Updated 31 January 2014:

Anyone can play the what-does-user-needs-mean children's game to achieve any result they want. It's easy. Here's an example. Look:

A year ago, four professors reviewed the Government Digital Strategy and said: "We see little discussion of a concrete and practical change management process to support the “digital by default” strategy in the current [Government Digital Strategy]. We view this as a potentially fatal omission. Put another way, trying to drive cultural change via technology (IT) is highly risky and almost never succeeds".

What does that mean?

It means that users have not been put at the heart of public services. It means that the 25 digital-by-default exemplars (1 live, 24 not) haven't been designed. The creativity needed to recast public services is missing. It means no end to big IT, more expensive and dumber public services, and no digital sitting at the heart of teams all around government.

The following comment was submitted  at 9:14 yesterday morning, 30 January 2014, by someone remaining anonymous. The computer said no – the length of the comment exceeds some limit – which is why none of DMossEsq's millions of readers have seen it until now.

It is posted here, where the size limit is more generous, so that people can see a more grown-up way of playing what-does-user-needs-mean:

Of course putting users first is right - a sound marketing phrase that is too easy to say but in reality in enterprise software is a lot more than "design" of a user interface. GDS have built expertise in doing that for information web sites but building "a digital” service is a whole different ball game. Historically enterprise software in all its forms was “system” centric and as a result users had to mould their action and needs to the “system”. As a result users resort to off line activity spreadsheets access database even post it notes! Over the past 15 years Business Process Management BPM emerged as the industry’s recognition of this “problem. As ever in an industry that puts hype before reality early iterations were overhyped in actually delivery capabilities but this is changing as new players now can deliver on the requirements to cover all user needs internal and external. Here are all the requirements in software that are needed to “put users first” Process engine - to ensure all works to plan Rules engine - reflecting real world of compliance Calculation engine - automating system work State engine - real time feed back from any point BPM - focus on people and their processes Workflow - everything connected in right order Audit trail, events, escalations = control Rapid prototyping - user involvement in build Time recording - supports activity based costing Real time reporting - become predictive Prebuilt configurable dashboard - operational visibility Build mash ups - one screen multiple data sources Linked intelligent Ajax grids - enter data only once Roles and performers - people and machines indentified Management hierarchy - see who does what and when reallocate work Orchestrating legacy - recognising valuable data in legacy User interface dynamically created - linking people, roles, task type and data via forms for specific instances recognising that user forms needs to be specific for that task in hand Pre-built templates for custom documents, letters, e-mails, messages etc dynamically populated with instance specific data and edit capability in browser - automating yet giving users ultimate control over external communications Process and task versioning control - recognising change is inevitable The supporting technology to do all this is now available without need to resort to custom coding. The speed and thus cost of build on any requirement is significant better than either custom coding or moulding a Custom Off The Shelf to the business. It is clear GDS just do not get this evidenced by their very poor “digital frameworks” which do not reflect such capability. Also recent the Minister in an interview on BBC radio reported by Campaign 4change http://linkis.com/wp.me/ERyPg I was amazed to learn that GDS spent 750 man days building a prototype for UC at DWP.. Using such a “BPM Platform” with such capabilities it would have been a fraction of that? Something is badly wrong with the Cabinet Office research to ensure best value for money? Time to find out “why” So I have a few FOIs out and I will report back.

Our commentator, Mr Anonymous, is saying that a lot of tools for software engineering exist and that he suspects that GDS, the Government Digital Service, to the detriment of their performance, aren't using them. Item #19 in his list, for example, would address the four professors' concern about change management.

There is some evidence that he's right.

Consider, for example, this post on the GDS blog, Scaling Agile Practices to the GDS Portfolio. It's all about how GDS manage projects. Their preferred method is to use a wall.

There are at least two problems with that – walls are predominantly two-dimensional, whereas project management has many more dimensions, and you can't put walls in your briefcase and take them to another office to discuss them.

GDS have attempted to resolve those problems by developing a project management system, starting by asking the users what they need:

We addressed the portfolio implementation project, much like we would any project at GDS, in an agile way: We spent time with the users and stakeholders to understand what their needs were; we spent time workshopping to understand drivers, what success looked like, what we hoped the project would do, and what our fears were – as well as opportunities that could arise from the project.

And what did they come up with? All they tell us about is a pie chart:

That's it.

A pie chart.

Day 1 of Graphics 101.

And yet the world is full of sophisticated project management tools. Has been ever since the first Pharaoh started running up pyramids. See #9 in Mr Anonymous's list.

There's no dishonour in using other people's software. But GDS seem to have preferred in this instance to reinvent the wheel.

And not just this instance.

As part of their doomed identity assurance project, IDA, GDS have elected to develop a brand new "hub" to link government departments, people and so-called "identity providers". There was no need to do that. We already have the Government Gateway.

When the Electoral Commission complained that GDS wouldn't tell them their costs for working on individual electoral registration, you may have assumed that GDS preferred to withhold the numbers, perhaps because they were embarrassing. But there is another possibility – maybe GDS don't record time and don't cost it, maybe they simply didn't have any figures to give the Commission.

Prima facie, Mr Anonymous seems to have rather a good point. Perhaps someone at GDS should take another look at the software engineering tools already available and consider using them instead of building new ones.

But who?

Who in GDS has experience of large-scale complex software engineering? And in particular, large-scale complex government software engineering?

This is another matter that worried the four professors:

... there are many discussions on the need for better architectural insight to resolve challenges in understanding core service properties, there are frameworks for investigating the unpredictability of ultra-large-scale systems behaviour, and there are studies highlighting the challenges that arise at the sociotechnical boundary of where systems thinking meets system usability. The [Government Digital Strategy] shows no evidence that it is aware or has taken account of the impact of such thinking ...

The lights may be on when Mr Anonymous knocks on GDS's door to talk about user needs. But is there anyone in?

Putting the user first – what does it mean?

Co-operating with Korea to put users first – that was the big news two days ago from GDS, the Government Digital Service.

According to Liam Maxwell, Her Majesty's Government's Chief Technology Officer: "As demonstrated in last month’s Conference on Cyberspace in Seoul, we have much in common with Korea, but we also have much to learn from each other. Yesterday’s signing commits both of our countries to creating digital public services that put the needs of the citizen first, and I'm excited that we’ll be working more closely together".

Francis Maude signing an agreement with Korea for no apparent reason

while Martha-now-Lady Lane Fox looks on

Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken was equally excited after his presentation to the Cabinet a few weeks ago: "Starting with the needs of users has led to a radical shift in the way we build and provision government services. That’s a huge thing. It means an end to big IT, it means smarter and cheaper services which meet users needs, and it means digital sitting at the heart of teams all around government".

Does "starting with the needs of users" mean "an end to big IT"? No. Does it mean "smarter and cheaper services"? No. Does it mean "digital sitting at the heart of teams all around government"? No. Not in English. And not in Korean.

Universal Credit 40 years on

University of London Computer Centre Newsletter No. 53 March 1973

An alternative, more legible version:

what marketing suggested
what management approved
as designed by engineering
what was manufactured
as maintenance installed it
what the customer wanted

Universal Credit 40 years on

University of London Computer Centre Newsletter No. 53 March 1973

An alternative, more legible version:

DWP v. the Cabinet Office – seconds away

The Department for Work and Pensions  (DWP) want option A – please see Universal Credit and GDS – think twice – and the Cabinet Office want option B. Neither option will benefit Universal Credit but that won't stop them fighting.

Normally there would be no contest between the country's biggest-spending department and the Cabinet Office – DWP spend even more than the Department of Health. You may think it's different this time and that DWP haven't got a leg to stand on, having wasted over £100 million of public money so far on Universal Credit.

You're wrong. It isn't different this time. DWP are still huge and anyway, it's not obvious that the Cabinet Office have got a leg to stand on either, with their "agile"-is-a-magic-bullet and big-companies-are-all-useless-unless-they're-Apple arguments. Just in case these points aren't clear to the protagonists, DMossEsq issued a press release the other day, please see below. That should help.

It promises to be a bitter fight otherwise.

Long-term readers will remember Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, saying: "... soon Identity Assurance Services will be used to support the Department for Work and Pension’s Universal Credit scheme and the Personal Independence payment which, from 2013, will replace the complex and outdated benefit system".

That was on 6 March 2012, at the Information Commissioner's Conference, and of course it never happened, please see Universal Credit – GDS's part in its downfall.

Relations between DWP and the Cabinet Office can't have improved the other day when ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, blogging about his presentation to the Cabinet, wrote: "GDS [the Government Digital Service] is here to support everyone building Digital by Default services, wherever they are. We’ve already had public betas from teams at MOJ and DWP, and I’m excited to see what other teams build. It’s hard work, but it’s work people outside of government are already starting to appreciate".

In support of his claim that "people outside of government are already starting to appreciate" GDS's hard work he refers to a post on the FT blog, What HealthCare.gov could learn from Britain, which includes this:

GDS has avoided becoming fully involved in projects such as Universal Credit, where big data and big government collide. The UK government’s flagship welfare reform is having problems which would be familiar across the Atlantic, such as integrating multiple databases, managing a project with dozens of separate teams and dealing with what Mr Bracken calls “oligopolistic supply chain[s]”.

"Thank you, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken", Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, may say, "for your support and hard work. It has been noticed inside of government as well as outside".

Needless to say but let's say it anyway, that is the flimsiest of surmise.

To get back to terror firmer, there was Mr Maude 18 months ago telling the Information Commissioner that DWP would soon have the benefit of identity assurance services.

Actually it goes back further than that. Computer Weekly magazine told us in September 2011, two years ago, that: "The first service to be delivered using identity assurance will be the Department for Work and Pensions' Universal Credits scheme", please see Identity assurance - how it will affect public services and your personal data. The deadlines came. Identity assurance didn't. The deadlines went.

So a second candidate had to be nominated as the first recipient of identity assurance – HMRC: "There were two announcements about Identity Assurance this week: HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) are going to be the first department to use the identity platform, and updated privacy principles were published for consultation so we can make sure privacy is at the heart of the services we provide", please see This week at GDS, 21 June 2013, and GDS, agile PAYE on-line.

There is still no news about the privacy principles.

And there is still no news about HMRC's planned October 2013 trial of identity assurance for PAYE on-line. What was the result? Did it happen?

You've got to be agile in this business. Be prepared for the announcement of a third candidate to be the first user of GDS's elusive identity assurance services.

Seconds away:

PRESS RELEASE The Universal Credit tragedy 4 November 2013 It is over a year since Frank Field wrote The universal credit programme is on course for disaster. He was right then and he still is. According to an internal DWP report leaked to the Guardian, a decision will be made in the next few days what to do about Universal Credit. DWP are said to have backed themselves into the anomalous position where there are only two options to choose between, Aor B, and neither of them will help, please see: Universal Credit and GDS – think twice http://www.dmossesq.com/2013/11/universal-credit-and-gds-think-twice.html Will DWP waste hundreds of millions of pounds more of public money and add another government IT failure to our unenviable tradition? Or will they turn Act IV of a tragedy into Act I of a new play where Whitehall starts to behave rationally and responsibly? ---------- Notes to editors The word “agile” is endlessly incanted in favour of option B. That’s all it is. A word. A noise made by people clinging helplessly to the mirage of £38 billion of savings to be made by Universal Credit. About David Moss David Moss has worked as an IT consultant since 1981. What started 10 years ago as a campaign against the Home Office’s plans to introduce government ID cards into the UK has turned into a campaign against Whitehall’s misfeasance in public office.

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Updated 11.11.13:

Should G-Cloud and the GDS be taken seriously as contenders to run Universal Credit?

First G-Cloud Cookie land: This may indeed be a very sensible approach towards providing a common front-end to citizen-facing on-line and commodity services (like Payroll and HR) that have been unnecessarily "customised". But it is, as yet "unproven" for "heavy lifting" service delivery. Cabinet Office  has not yet demonstrated that it can deliver anything more than comparative trivia (e.g. website rationalisation) - although it has demonstrated that it can help prevent others from wasting money.

Updated 16.11.13:

Who won the battle between DWP and Cabinet Office over ID Policy? 

We know who lost in the battle between DWP and Cabinet Office over ID Policy - the taxpayer and the private sector bidders. Who won, apart from the fraudsters?

DWP v. the Cabinet Office – seconds away

The Department for Work and Pensions  (DWP) want option A – please see Universal Credit and GDS – think twice – and the Cabinet Office want option B. Neither option will benefit Universal Credit but that won't stop them fighting.

Normally there would be no contest between the country's biggest-spending department and the Cabinet Office – DWP spend even more than the Department of Health. You may think it's different this time and that DWP haven't got a leg to stand on, having wasted over £100 million of public money so far on Universal Credit.

You're wrong. It isn't different this time. DWP are still huge and anyway, it's not obvious that the Cabinet Office have got a leg to stand on either, with their "agile"-is-a-magic-bullet and big-companies-are-all-useless-unless-they're-Apple arguments. Just in case these points aren't clear to the protagonists, DMossEsq issued a press release the other day, please see below. That should help.

Whitehall's rethink headache. And the Whitehouse's

That wailing you heard throughout the land last week, the rending of shirts clothes and the clatter of teeth being gnashed – what caused it?

Company		Market cap ($bn)
Exxon Mobil		385.65
Apple		378.25
Google		259.13
Wal-Mart		258.49
Microsoft		241.45
General Electric		236.04
Johnson & Johnson		234.67
IBM		233.68
Chevron		223.04
Pfizer		221.82

Was it the fact that only-one-way-to-go-from-there Apple was knocked off the top spot in the list of the world's biggest companies by market capitalisation?

Probably.

But there is another hypothesis to explore.

Even though it shouldn't have been, the world was shocked by the failure of the Obamacare website. Millions of dollars spent on it, and it didn't work. And the seven or eight of us who follow these things were also a bit agitated at the failure of Universal Credit here in the UK, millions of pounds spent on it, etc ...

How can so many experienced professionals work so hard and be paid so much and yet the ObamaCare and Universal Credit IT systems don't work?

The thoughtless answer that has launched a thousand lazy-minded op-ed pieces is that these big government systems are written by ponderous, greedy, bloated contractors, so huge that if they stub their toe it's two years and a couple of billion dollars before the signal registers with their brains.

This sort of development work should be done by small, hungry, lithe, agile, lissom, innovative, imaginative companies – SMEs, small- and medium-sized enterprises. It's the end of "big IT", ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken told the Cabinet last week, and Washington DC the week before.

But then the logic gates short-circuit and the previously bien-pensant brain starts to overheat.

After all, they don't come much bigger than Apple and Google, and what are they famous for? In a word, "agility". Imagination and innovation.

Bigness isn't necessarily the problem.

And then the agile, innovative, little CloudStore only went and fell over for four days. Smallness isn't necessarily the solution.

Intellectual over-heating, having to think again and re-assess the evidence, ... Bound to give you a headache. It's a poser, isn't it. No wonder a few shirts went for a burton amid the general brouhaha of wailing and gnashing.

Whitehall's rethink headache. And the Whitehouse's

That wailing you heard throughout the land last week, the rending of shirts clothes and the clatter of teeth being gnashed – what caused it?

Company		Market cap ($bn)
Exxon Mobil		385.65
Apple		378.25
Google		259.13
Wal-Mart		258.49
Microsoft		241.45
General Electric		236.04
Johnson & Johnson		234.67
IBM		233.68
Chevron		223.04
Pfizer		221.82

Was it the fact that only-one-way-to-go-from-there Apple was knocked off the top spot in the list of the world's biggest companies by market capitalisation?

Probably.

But there is another hypothesis to explore.

Even though it shouldn't have been, the world was shocked by the failure of the Obamacare website. Millions of dollars spent on it, and it didn't work. And the seven or eight of us who follow these things were also a bit agitated at the failure of Universal Credit here in the UK, millions of pounds spent on it, etc ...

How can so many experienced professionals work so hard and be paid so much and yet the ObamaCare and Universal Credit IT systems don't work?

Universal Credit and GDS – think twice

"Agile" is not a silver bullet

Universal Credit is a damsel in distress

but the Government Digital Service is not a white knight

A Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) report has been leaked to the Guardian, please see Universal credit: £120m could be written off to rescue welfare reform.

Universal Credit (UC) is DWP's system to spring the poverty trap and make work pay.

UC is in a mess. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on developing the system and there is very little if anything to show for it.

What to do?

According to the leaked report, ministers and officials (and contractors?) will make a decision in mid-November. There are, again according to the leaked report, just two choices:

A	Stick with the existing contractors and make UC work.
B	Start again with new contractors, using a more "web-based" approach to the development of UC.

Option A is said to be "not achievable within the preferred timescales", "unrealistic" and "vulnerable to security flaws". It is also said to offer poor value for money.

Option B is said to be "unproven ... at this scale" (21 million claimants), only 100 claimants would be on the newly written system by the summer of 2014 and until then ministers would have "no idea" if it would work.

To any rational person, the conclusion must surely be neither of the above. Either option, A or B, would be indefensible, unbusinesslike and irresponsible. On the evidence available, anyone choosing either A or B would be guilty of misfeasance in public office.

The Guardian article says "ministers may order both plans to be pursued at the same time and wait to see what happens after six months". A and B? That is presumably a court jester's way of indicating the absurdity of the situation.

The article finishes by saying that DWP still insist, against the odds, that UC will "bring a £38bn benefit to society".

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It is not the case that there are only two options available. That is an inaccurate, false way to describe the situation. There is the option of neither A nor B.

----------

It is also not the case that ministers would have "no idea" at the outset whether option B would work. They have already been warned that it is untested at the scale of UC. There are in addition all the reasons given below for ministers to be sceptical.

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What on earth is a "web-based" approach?

According to the Guardian article: "Sources working on the programme say Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, who is responsible for the government's digital team [i.e. GDS, the Government Digital Service], is in favour of the fresh web plan".

GDS are noisy advocates of the so-called "agile" systems development methodology and they orchestrate a brand-building PR campaign casting themselves as the engagingly raffish, dynamic, modern champions, succeeding where fuddy-duddy traditionalists fail. It's not clear why they expect anyone else to be enthusiastic about "agile" when you consider that:

1	Despite GDS's agile approach, the G-Cloud CloudStore was "temporarily unavailable" to its users for four days last week. A four-day outage in a relatively tiny system like CloudStore is one thing. Four days without UC could be a disaster.
2	GDS have started their assisted digital project several times over the past two years but despite that agility there is still no sign of progress. Just like DWP, they may try to press the reset button repeatedly with UC.
3	A GDS-style web-based UC would be no more immune to security problems than the alternative.
4	Working with them on an individual electoral registration (IER) data-mining pilot, the Electoral Commission found that GDS: Caused delays. Made it impossible to assess the results of their pilot by changing procedures in mid-stream. Failed to support some participants in the pilot. Failed to provide the Commission with the cost of their work on the pilot, making it impossible to say how much the pilot cost or how much live operation would cost. Provided poor data specifications/inconsistent postal address specifications, leading to a failure to identify eligible voters who are not registered. The Commission's conclusion is that a national roll-out of data-mining is not justified, it won't help IER – GDS's efforts identified both people who are already on the electoral roll and people who are ineligible to vote as needing to be prompted to register.
5	GDS's identity assurance programme depends on a new pan-government "ID hub" which has been certified by no-one and which is impossibly meant to offer both anonymity and an audit trail, simultaneously.
6	GDS acknowledge their responsibility for the identity assurance programme (IDAP), which was first meant to go live in the autumn of 2012 and then the spring of 2013. There was no explanation for the absence of IDAP then and there is no news of the IDAP trial which was meant to be conducted with HMRC last month, October 2013. On 21 January 2013 GDS held an event called The future is here at which they announced that they had 400 days to transform government, which might suggest that IDAP should be live in February 2014 but there are no guarantees and it may yet transpire that the future was, in the event, somewhere else all the time.
7	The privacy principles which should govern GDS's digital-by-default plans for public services have still not been agreed. GDS have been quite cavalier with privacy. And their public consultation followed none of the recognised procedures.
8	GDS's attempt to depict public expenditure in a series of "infographics" was described as "either an attempt to obscure the data under the guise of transparency or the work of people who have no knowledge of data visualisation ...The charts in every case are either inappropriate for the data or appropriate but ineptly designed". Among other things, the charts omitted interest on the national debt.
9	GDS promise that their development work will be "open" and say that openness is "the best way to make sure that we’re accountable for the things we build. As our design principles say, if we make things open, we make things better". They promise that but do not deliver.
10	Four IT professors reviewed GDS's IT strategy and in their draft findings published on 7 January 2013 they declare it to be inadequate. Among other things the professors say: "It is appealing to hope that a radical change in digital service delivery can be accomplished simply through adoption of open source technologies, introduction of agile development practices, and contractual support for encouraging more SMEs with their high-levels of energy and diversity. However, this view is much too simplistic and highly risky".
11	It's not just the opinion of the Electoral Commission and of the four professors that GDS ignore. The National Audit Office have expressed doubts about digital-by-default, so have the BBC, and so have 52 members of parliament in an early day motion – they, too, have been ignored. How would GDS avoid people with no web skills becoming excluded by default? They don't say. Nor have they made any progress on assisted digital, please see 2 above. Digital-by-default is being promoted in denial of reality. Like any service organisation, GDS claim to put the users' needs first and they were even allowed to make that pitch to the Cabinet on 29 October 2013. But it looks as if UC claimants who can't use the web would be ignored by GDS.
12	The repeated claim that GDS's award-winning GOV.UK has replaced all central government department websites and the websites of several agencies and arm's length bodies requires some qualification. In particular, HMRC's website has not been incorporated into GOV.UK despite claims to the contrary.
13	The awards won by GOV.UK are for publishing government data. GDS's ability to cope with high-volume, complex transactions like UC which calls for quite different skills is unknown.
14	The billions of pounds of savings that GDS promise depend on making a minimum of 40,000 public sector workers redundant and replacing them with computer systems. Ministers have already been warned that agile is untested at these scales. DWP may find that there is no saving to be made – they may have to pay for both the agile digital-by-default public services computer systems and the staff. The four professors warn that public services are complicated transactions. More complicated than buying a book on Amazon, for example. It may simply be impossible to replace the mature judgement of human beings with a computer system.
15	The "web-based" approach includes certain fashionable components. You have to be besotted by Apple's products and you have to embrace cloud computing, please see 1 above. Cloud computing is marketed as a utility. For people struggling with fuel poverty this will hardly be a recommendation – we will not want to add IT poverty to our woes. GDS elected to host GOV.UK in the cloud. Placing the details of 21 million UC claimants in the cloud will expose their data to hackers against whom, judging by the daily stream of stories in the media, there seems to be no defence. The founder of Google has warned everyone of the dangers of cloud computing as has the Managing Director of Microsoft UK. Putting your data in the cloud means losing control of it. What do GDS have to say on this matter? Nothing.
16	The "web-based" approach has its exemplars, Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and eBay/PayPal among them. The veneration of these companies may not be shared by the rest of the population. Their aggressive tax avoidance in some cases and their reliance on slave labour in the third world in some cases could make it politically embarrassing to pay them to act as custodians of the nation's benefits data.
17	If public services are to become digital-by-default – and that is GDS's mission – then everyone must have an on-line identity. Thus the identity assurance programme, please see 5 above. To that end, GDS have appointed eight so-called "identity providers" for the UK. Everyone will be enjoined to maintain one or more personal data stores (PDSs) on the web. PDSs are being marketed by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills through their midata initiative as a way to "empower" consumers and a way to make the economy grow – they imagine that a thriving market in apps will develop advising us all what to eat and what films to watch. People should be warned that downloading an app may be little different from downloading a virus. It is not clear that consumers will be empowered by midata or that PDSs will bring economic growth with them ...
18	... What they will bring, to all intents and purposes, is ID cards, without the card. It is now mandatory in the UK to register to vote, registration is to be on-line and we will identify ourselves using our PDSs. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Minister, talks of a new way to conduct the national census, presumably via PDSs and/or the IER electoral rolls. UC claimants in a web-based scheme would have to identify themselves on-line via their PDSs in order to claim. Does the government really want to go through the ID cards debate all over again?

The UC choice facing DWP may be presented like Beauty and the Beast.

The disgraceful performance of the big IT suppliers and the ministers and officials who are meant to be in charge of them is an obvious Beast. But there are 18 reasons at least to make DWP – or whoever is making this decision – pause before casting "agile" as Beauty.

There is a decision to make in the next few days that could waste hundreds of millions of pounds of public money while doing nothing to help the putative 21 million UC claimants. In making that decision, remember, "agile" could add to the nation's unenviable stock of expensive government IT failures just as much as the alternative.

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Update 5.12.13

The jester wins – in the event, they seem to have opted for A and B:

Written Ministerial Statement Thursday 5 December 2013 THE DEPARTMENT FOR WORK AND PENSIONS Universal Credit progress The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith MP) ... Once fully implemented, Universal Credit will account for £70 billion of benefit spending each year, and bring a £38 billion economic benefit to society over 10 years ... - As part of the wider transformation in the development of digital services, the Department will further develop the work started by the Government Digital Services [B] to test and implement an enhanced online digital service, which will be capable of delivering the full scope of Universal Credit and make provision for all claimant types. - Meanwhile, we will expand our current pathfinder service [A] and develop functionality so that from next summer we progressively start to take claims for Universal Credit from ...

They have chosen the unachievable, unrealistic, wasteful, unproven, no idea option.

The Statement also says: “Rightly for a programme of this scale, the Government’s priority has been, and continues to be, its safe and secure delivery. This has already been demonstrated in our approach to date”.

Null hypothesis: what that adds up to is misfeasance in public office.

Can anyone disprove that hypothesis?


Updated 15.6.18

"There is a decision to make in the next few days that could waste hundreds of millions of pounds of public money" – that's what we said getting on for five years ago in November 2013.

Now the National Audit Office (NAO) have reported.

Option A above is known at DWP as the "live service", and the NAO say that: "The Department spent £837 million on live service, making it available to single claimants nationwide and to couples and families with children in north-west England from 2015. The Department closed live service to new claims in December 2017 and expects to decommission it in July 2019".

£837 million down the misfeasance drain.

There's more in the NAO report. As ever, Tony Collins has a level-headed summary.

Universal Credit and GDS – think twice

"Agile" is not a silver bullet

Universal Credit is a damsel in distress

but the Government Digital Service is not a white knight

A Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) report has been leaked to the Guardian, please see Universal credit: £120m could be written off to rescue welfare reform.

Universal Credit (UC) is DWP's system to spring the poverty trap and make work pay.

UC is in a mess. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on developing the system and there is very little if anything to show for it.

What to do?