Child Support Agency system hit by new problems The Child Support Agency's (CSA) much-criticised computer system is again struggling this week, with staff unable to access case files because it is running so slowly. The problems began to emerge on Monday. Callers are being advised to try again later in the week, or being promised a call back when the system is back to …
You know, normally you'd write up contracts such that they specify the systems delivered provide you with a(t least one) specific function, and then you'd put in penalties for failure to deliver. This stuff has after years and years not delivered much of anything. Why is anybody getting paid? Are government agencies that reality challenged?
Have you ever dealt with the public sector? They never agree requirements, can't make decisions and usually demand fixed price contracts which the award to the lowest bidder. They then want to see the project team on their own site so they know they're working, paying travel and accommodation expenses but won't give them desks, phones or internet access...
If a government department actually detailed their requirements and told an IT provider to just go away and do it, they could get systems in a quarter the time and half the cost.
That said, as another commenter mentioned, EDS (as was) were very good at managing their engagement, bringing in good people to make a sale, planning their exit strategy then using low cost/skill resource to try to deliver but always knowing they'd make a profit, even with all possible penalties paid.
Big Brother? At least he got a wallscreen in every home!
I thought the recommendation from the National Audit Office or some such was that the CSA should be closed down, and that was about 3-4 years ago.
the reasoning being that it cost two to three times as much to run the department as it had ever managed to get from delinquent fathers.
Delinquent? Excuse me?
Speaking as one of the many fathers who have to deal with the CSA, not because of my own delinquency or unwillingness to pay, but because my child's mother is unemployed and hence my support payments HAVE to go through official channels, I have to say I rather take offence at your tone.
Mind you, I've always taken considerably more offence at the way the CSA are so egregiously incapable. Also, that my child actually receives roughly £40 of the £300+ that's taken from me monthly. I guess we know what's happening to the other £260/month...
The CSA is a dreadful fail. Mind you, junking it would require some sort of replacement (my stepkids' father has never contributed a penny to their upkeep, but he left the country years ago and is untouchable, it seems. Delinquent fathers like him SHOULD be pursued by someone) and I'm sorry to say that CSA MkII would simply be more of the same...
Anonymous, simply because.
I hear you dude!!!!!
Nothing infuriates me more than complete incompetence in an organization. One month, my local municipality hit me with a late fee for paying my utility bill "late". The funny thing is that I paid it on the "date due". Thank God, I had a computer issued receipt indicating not only the date of payment, but the time also. So, I went straight to the head of the billing office and reamed that woman a new arsehole. I used to run billing for a wholesaler, and before the statements went out, someone looked them over. many times mistakes in applying payments were caught before the statement hit the mail. The last thing I told that woman was "that if she had worked for me - I would have FIRED her sorry arse!".
When it comes to official incompetence, I suggest that you "Bitch, Moan and Groan" as loudly as you can. If the "public officials" don't like it, they can fsck off!
It might help you to know that CSA was sold on the basis of going after the assorted dead beat dads "In the projects" as our merkin friends would say.
In reality chasing down the assorted Darren's and Gavin's proved a) Difficult and b)Unproductive as those that have some kind of income were being paid in cash for whatever they were working on.
Leaving them to track down (IE or look them up on 192.com or through the DVLC) all those parents with jobs they could charge through PAYE.
CSA. Not very tough on dead beat dads.
£456 million for a system that doesn't even work the mind boggles. Why does a system even one that is as big as the CSA cost £456 million?
What makes matters even worse after discovering the system didn't work they pay them £300 million to fix it. :facepalm why would anyone pay for them to fix it?
Why not tell them it doesn't work and demand a refund?
Because if you do that you are into two years of very expensive lawyers arguing, at the ene dof which you have spent half the momney you would get back arguing and you now have to find another contractor, start again at square one, and even assumming this new bunch of idiots are any better than the previous, you will still be 5 years late on the system. Whereas if you don't start a war with the currnt bunch you might get an operational system within a year.
"The system is not 'down' but we are unable to immediately answer case-specific queries and clients are being asked to call back,"
I listen to support teams give me crap like this all the time, basically saying we shouldn't count it as a system being unavailable because it'll affect their availability stats.
If it can't do it's job then it's not available, ffs </rant>
"Is it working?"
"no."
"It's broken*, then."
Call me a simpleton, but looks reasonable to me.
* leaving aside such alternative diagnoses as "switched off", "on holiday" etc as simply silly. If you're turning people away because your system isn't delivering the data you need when you need it then it's failing to deliver to spec, and may therefore be considered broken. Pedant. Yes, you.
One of my former roommates used to work for the SBA (Small Business Administration) doing disaster relief appraisals. If he started work at 8am in Georgia, he was only able to work until 11am, at which point it was 8am in California, and the system became unusable, not just sluggish, but transactions would time out.
He used to go into work at 5 or 6 am just to be able to do his job.
Does anyone know of a guberment IT project that came in on time, on budget and without any technical glitches years down the line?
And the worst part is every story about guberment IT projects generally have the same incompetent idiots in charge, I learn from my mistakes, guberment can't learn because they never make any mistakes, do they?
It certainly does seem that, once you're identified as an "approved" supplier for the public sector, actual performance or competence no longer applies. You're guaranteed hideously overpriced projects that don't have to actually work or arrive on-time, and then you'll get further barrels of pork to fix the issues your incompetence caused in the first place.
Mind you, I've done a few public-sector projects in my time as well (on time-ish, on-budget) and I have to admit that a significant problem MIGHT be the calibre of people that seem to work in the public sector. Not all of them; some fine individuals, but on the whole it's a very different world from the commercial clients. No doubt there are further reasons (public accountability, targets, funding issues, recruitment guidelines etc) but there it is.
There are numerous projects going in on time and on budget, but no one is interested in reporting them. When was good news ever reported? The fundamental problem remains that Government doesn't understand IT, and doesn't understand why it's dumb decisions and constant requirement changes causes so many issues and so many cost increases.
> ...influential Public Accounts Committee labelled it "a turkey from day one".
Ahhh, now it makes sense! All of this stems from a typo. The brochure said turnkey solution...
My fave bit tho -
> staff unable to access case files because it is running so slowly ... Callers are being advised to try again later in the week.
I thought my lasses Celeron box running Vista was slow!
You've got to wonder when they'll learn not to let EDS / Crapita et al anywhere near their contracts, and that £400m is not good value for anything let alone a ****ty system running on MSSQL server 7.
And I'm *not* joking.
The purpose of a government IT con-tractor is *not* to design and implement government IT projects.
It is to make *profit*.
Ideally using as little "resources" as cheaply as possible. That's *real* resources (knowledgeable staff, and hardware they have to buy from someone else) they actually need to do the project, and not at the retail prices they bill the "customer" as the intellectually underpowered boobs working for the dept of whatever they're dealing with are called.
Also *ideally* (with details varying depending on the contract signed) the "solution" should have few enough bugs to pass acceptance while retaining enough bugs and conceptual fails to keep the support contract and version 2.0 implementation running along for *decades*.
I like to think of it as the "Dick Jones" business model.
Thumbs up for the CEO. His bonus is secure (and ample).
"So, I went straight to the head of the billing office and reamed that woman a new arsehole."
Nice. I don't suppose it occurred to you that the woman you spoke to was probably had nothing to do with the mistake? I get angry with bureaucracy all the time, but I try not to chew out the person who answers the phone!
You admit that mistakes get made, even in your smoothly-oiled wholesale operation (you seem to specialise in holes), and tacitly admit that some got through:
"many times mistakes in applying payments were caught before the statement hit the mail"
I.e. sometimes they weren't. Presumably you fired the perpetrator on each occasion?
Besides, I'm not sure 'ream' is the correct verb there - it's not a means of creation. There must be an orifice already existent for reaming to occur. 'Tore' is more traditional in the matter of new arseholes.
But hey, look how proud he is of how he totally owned her. Let the baby have his bottle.
Yes EDS couldnt blow themselves up in a well layed minefield but you have to wonder which fuckwitt at the CSA signed off on a contract with no support element!
Part of the reason these large contractors appear to get away with murder is they are doing deals with civil servants who are basically clueless and for whom multitasking goes as a far as breathing and walking but no further.
Until the government departments employ some people that actually have a vague idea what is happening this kind of things will continue.
...No, even that could be a challenge in my experience.
I think a significant issue with the public sector is that they have no concept of consequences.
Fucked up? Hey-ho. Never mind. Try again, it's not like it was real money anyway.
Fucked up badly? Oops. Best consider a sideways promotion until the fuss dies down.
Fucked up seriously badly (did it make the Today program?) Tender a resignation and find yourself a new position heading up a quango somewhere instead. Probably better-paid, and only a three-day week...
During a previous job I had to support a system written by a software house in a CASE tool. We did this in the language the program was generated in rather than the *model* the developers had.
Why?
Because some management **** had been quoted 2 prices. Model price and *code* price. Code *cost* would have been the time needed for the processor to chew through the model and spew out the (astonishingly) poor quality code. Naturally this was *lots* cheaper than the model price.
And of course, It's like the design will *ever* need changing or update, right?
You can be this **** got a promotion and a few "Attaboys" off senior management.
After all he saved the company a *ton* of money.
Right?
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