Online dole queue tech 'not grounded in reality', say councils

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) needs to revise its 'agile' approach to developing ICT systems for universal credit to avoid additional costs, the Local Government Association (LGA) says. In written evidence (PDF) to Parliament's work and pensions committee, the councils' body says that if the plans for the new …

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume they will be getting in those Javascript programmers who were very successful in stopping a user from closing a window? Imagine how hard they could make the process...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell

Do all these 326 Billing authorities have their own software instead of using one package?!

"Oh but OUR requirements are snowflake unique and couldn't possibly be the same as the other 325..."

[The BigYin]

Re: Why the hell

I'm guessing it's historic with each council getting bespoke systems from suppliers, not realising that some other council was trying to solve the same problem. So the problem gets fixed at twice the cost, this is the way the suppliers like it and thus the way government wants it (gotta keep trousering all that tax revenue).

And once you have bespoke systems, you now need a bespoke solution to nail them all together.

Government funded contracts are paid for by the people. They should be owned by the people. This means they should be F/OSS (the only exception being for national security).

There is, of course, one major problem with F/OSS. Open code implies open data (or open formats at least). This will make much, much easier for interested people to audit their councils. Something the councils will not stand for. Open democracy in the UK? Pfft. Dream on.

[Matt 21]

Re: Why the hell

I think the whole thing goes round in circles.

1. Let's have a centralised system that everyone uses.

The system is late, over budget and doesn't do what is needed.

2. Let's have distributed systems that talk together.

They don't talk very well, the overall results is higher costs. Someone says, "why don't we have a centralised system to save costs so we don't keep re-inventing the wheel".............

Perhaps the problem behind both approaches is poor management by the government and poorly defined requirements.

[AndrueC]

Re: Why the hell

Everything in IT goes in circles.

Dumb terminals/mainframes - Centralised computing.

Clever terminals - Distributed computing.

The Cloud - Centralised computing.

Wait long enough and most things come back around again. Usually somewhat improved but there's little that's really new in IT. The trick to a successful career is to keep your eye on the trends and stay ahead of the game :)

[The BigYin]

Re: Why the hell

"2. Let's have distributed systems that talk together.

They don't talk very well, the overall results is higher costs."

Only because the code and formats aren't open. There are distributed systems all over the globe that are perfectly happy to blab to each other and can act, kind of, like a centralised resource if that's what you want. Obviously when dealing with personal information the system needs to be secure. oddly enough, there are open system to secure such comms.

Making such stuff F/OSS doesn't just solve the problem locally or nationally, it can help solve it globally. You can bet benefits in France, USA etc all come down to a few basic checks "Who are you? Are you eligible? How much for?". There can only be so many ways to answer those questions.

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Re: Why the hell

When you have enough braindead bespoke systems, the cost of adapting an off-the-shelf package to work with them can exceed the cost of building a new one.

But I agree that all development paid for by publicly funded bodies should be open sourced. Politicians have accepted that argument for science. Now they must be made to do the same for software.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why the hell

There I was thinking that El Reg commentators were all into SMEs and all that jazz. You think that friendly SME will COTS or write it themselves with the ongoing support and maintenance..

One supplier pah cant have that, <insert various random comments about single supplier, golden handshakes, late delivery>

[The BigYin]

Opensource it

Why not? Each council has (slightly different) itches to scratch but the same general goals (fix roads, get payments/bill out, track payments/bills in). Seems ripe for a bit of extreme F/OSS action if you ask me. Nothing wrong with a supplier acting as manager and be hired to provide bodies, but F/OSS would allow each council (and each contractor) to build on the work of others; thus driving down costs.

Heck, the public could even help.

Roll on the downvotes....

[Tom 7]

Re: Opensource it

If only - you'll find that if there are API's that allow data transfer between the commercial apps and the real world they're commercial in confidence according to the contracts with the council.

We should ensure that all future systems must allow open standards access to their internal data.

This will probably have to be EDIF as current works like OData seem to be very slow - though you can say what colour something is going to be even if they cant work out how to do an address or an invoice line yet.

Cant think why they're so slow....

[Elmer Phud]

Staff

"The LGA says that some councils have reported difficulties in coping with the overwhelming volume of information produced by the system.

"This has required manual intervention by council staff and led, in some cases, to delays in payments," the LGA says in its evidence."

There are council staff left out there?

Who's slipped up then?

[The BigYin]

Re: Staff

By "council staff" they probably mean workers provided by a PFI contractor. It's probably the exact same staff in the building, but they get paid half as much whilst costing twice as much. Kerr-ching! The UK politicos do like to see their friends keeping those (almost tax free) profits rolling.

[John Rose]

Re: Staff

There are plenty of IT staff in my Local City Council. I tried to persuade the Councillor responsible for IT to consider replacing their Microsoft PC/laptop systems (e.g. Windows & Office) with Linux distros as the council is trying to save millions. Even though I showed him magazine articles about Munich City, & the French Gendarmerie saving millions per year and the fact that the council made a disastrous decision (which cost approx £20 million) in previously trying to implement a SAP based set of applications, he wasn't interested. It's just like the old IBM mainframe days when no-one got sacked for buying IBM when there were much cheaper & effective solutions available.

[GrumpyJoe]

I think I know what the problem is with the 'overwhelming volume'

The council are having trouble importing the spreadsheet that they get from Central Government. I know I have trouble with doing that, but Excel is good for EVERYTHING!

[Anonymous Coward]

How can this agile project possibly fail?

DWP are being advised by the Government Digital Service (motto: Intercedi ubique, libera nusquam. Or at least that's Google Translate's rendering of "Interfere everywhere, deliver nowhere")

For those not in the know, GDS is Francis Maude's pet central government buzzword boutique who parachute into various departments and recommend they port their transactional systems to Django and MongoDB (or whatever's hot that week)

For a good laugh, have a look at the GCSE multi-media project (sorry, beta DirectGov replacement website) they've been tinkering with since the coalition came to power, and picture the resulting chaos if this were ever released into live

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How can this agile project possibly fail?

It's going live in December, at least for BIS, MOD, FCO, Transport and a few others, however everything you say about GDS is true. Anon for obvious.

If you really want a laugh they have a development blog.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: If you really want a laugh they have a development blog

I'm a regular reader. It's great to see a bunch of tyros rediscovering stuff you found out in your first week on the job, but presenting it as though they've just come down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments.

Praise the Maude!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How can this agile project possibly fail?

They've just announced www.gov.uk goes live 17 October.

Popcorn.

[Crisp]

The DWP doesn't have a very difficult job.

Hand out money to people looking for work. It's hardly rocket science!

They could probably afford to pay twice what they do now in benefits if they sunk more money into doing what they actually do, rather than spending it on flavour of the month ICT systems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The DWP doesn't have a very difficult job.

How wrong you are. DWP does have a difficult job. What sounds simple (hand out money to people looking for work) can become a nightmare due to all the rules and regulations. These are not DWPs rules & regs. They are from laws created by, and passed by politicians. When a minister comes up with a "new initiative" this may mean a new law, or an amendment to an existing one. Either way the rules and regs get more complex with potential knock-ons to IT.

DWP don't just handle benefits to those out of work. They handle pensions also. The clue is in the Departments name.

Paying twice as much in benefits? Doing this would have Daily Fail readers going incandescent with rage.

AC for the usual reasons......

[Wokstation]

On time, on budget? On yer bike...

How many big government IT projects have managed that, then?

[John Rose]

Re: On time, on budget? On yer bike...

They usually manage 'on budget' by increasing the budget as the project progresses.

[Brian O'Byrne]

Public code for public money

So the councils are hiring private contractors to build these bespoke systems. Who owns the rights to the source code after the system is delivered?

Presumably the contract can / should be written such that the code is owned by the council paying the bills. In that case there is no reason the council cannot decide to share that code with anyone they like. That could include the other councils or the public at large.

I can see that people might be wary of allowing updates from just anywhere, not least because it would make maintenance more difficult. That problem can be overcome with a small expert team acting as the gatekeeper to new checkins, as in the 'benevolent dictatorship' model in some of the most popular open source projects.

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Airstrip two

...the London Borough of Newham says it is unclear whether the IT system will be designed to provide different language formats to meet the needs of all claimants.

That's fine. If they can't read English, we shouldn't be handing them money.

The same if they're blind...or have arthritis....or can't afford a computer...or in anyway can't be a productive member of our pals' corporations society. We shouldn't be paying these scum!

[BongoJoe]

Re: Airstrip two

I didn''t know that it was a legal obligation to be a British Subject and also having to speak English.

There are a good number of people who are, for example, Welsh and don't speak English or can't read English.

That is why we have the Language Act so that people can speak the more orginal language of these Isles rather than this late arrival Saxon which everyone East of Offa's Dyke assumes that everyone in the United Kingdom speaks, or at least reads.

[Matt 21]

Re: Airstrip two

I think he was joking, in case you missed it.

To your other point: I've visited Wales quite a lot and have several Welsh friends. I've only ever come across three people who spoke Welsh as a first language (all as children but all of them had migrated to English as they got older). I've met loads who speak it, many who speak it fluently but only three who speak it as a first language. I've never heard of any who couldn't speak English. Do such people really exist?

I'm not trying to make a point about the point of teaching Welsh, that's for another day, I'm just curious :-)

[BongoJoe]

Re: Airstrip two

Er, come to the Llŷn . A good proportion of the people there are first language Welsh. These are the people who, even if they do speak, read and write English are not confident in doing any financial dealings with anyone other than in their first language.

As you ead down the peninsula and you will find more and more people who can't read nor write English. They may understand English (and there's quite a lot of Welsh who simply don't).

I am not knocking you at all but your post, whch I feel is genuine, reflects the complete misassumption that anyone who is umpreen dozen generations British is automatically a first language English speaker.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh dear

you have just pressed my big red button about the Welsh.

I am sorry, but there is nowhere in the world, a person who ONLY speaks Welsh. Of course there are a lot of people who speak Welsh AND English. But only Welsh. Nope.

Which means I hope it's the *Welsh* who pay extra for all those signs and paint, not the English.

[BongoJoe]

Re: Oh dear

Isn't there? I know of a good number of families, mostly in the farming communities. not too far from here who can only speak Welsh. And I know a lot more who can speak English only with lots of difficulty. and then about the words in their sentences tend to be Welsh.

Where did you get your information from? Do you know everyone in North Wales?

[Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face]

Re: Oh dear

We took a trip to the black mountain, where someone had thoughtfully painted "English Out" in both Welsh and English across a lovely stone bridge in 4 foot high letters.

It's like anywhere - you get a few people with a chip on their shoulder, most people are fairly sensible.

[TeeCee]

Re: Airstrip two

You jest, but that's how it works most places on the continent.

You get all the government and local authority bumf in the local language. Also utility bills and communications. If you're really bloody lucky, a precis of it might be available in English as well, but that's yer lot. A flatbed scanner, some OCR software and Google translate are essentials if you don't speak the language.

As far as I can make out, producing everything in umpty-something languages is something unique to British bureaucracy. Doesn't seem to cause any problems, so I guess the British approach exists purely to line the pockets of the IT providers.

[Jonathan Richards 1]

Re: Airstrip two - multilingualism

TeeCee wrote:

> As far as I can make out, producing everything in umpty-something languages

> is something unique to British bureaucracy.

Not at all. At NATO (OTAN) everything important is always produced in both official languages (English and French), as is also the case in Canada, I believe. OK, two is clearly less than umpty-something. But the British bureaucracy doesn't produce *everything* in many languages, just the things that need to be so produced.

[Alastair Dodd 1]

suspect it's muppets who don't understand Agile

who have love Prince 2 with all their heart and haven't been able to produce the massive 500 page project plans that they use to justify their jobs are feeling put out of joint by all this deliver what is actually needed rubbish.

Red tapers will always moan.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: suspect it's muppets who don't understand Agile

Not as much moaning as those who talk about "agile" and "rapid development" who are basically those who can't be bothered to plan, organise themselves or work out what is actually needed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: suspect it's muppets who don't understand Agile

Right. Because all those projects that went before where they spent an age planning, organising and analysing to the nth degree have resulted in successful delivery according to the plan.

You can always deliver to requirements if you have a sufficiently capable team of lawyers who subsequently argue what was actually meant and/or signed off on at the point that one party realises that they're about to run out of time, money or both.

AC cos he started it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: suspect it's muppets who don't understand Agile

...and all those "agile" projects always deliver what was wanted, on budget and on time! Of course they don't, any more than all projects before "agile" were failures....

"Agile" tends to have the weakness of producing a convoluted mess, which becomes a nightmare to support and doesn't scale. Of course a good manager will take steps to counteract these tendencies and sometimes the project doesn't need to scale.

Prince style project management has the weakness that it can get bogged down in the documentation and you can end up with a long running project where the business hasn't been involved for some time so you end up delivering something unwanted and late. Again, a good project manager should be aware of this and take precautions to ensure this doesn't happen.

[ukgnome]

This reminds me of when HMRC tried to get all their local systems talking.

It's not going to be on time, it's not going to be on budget, and in all likelihood it isn't going to work

[JimmyPage]

Options for the boss

1) Works

2) On time

3) On budget

pick any two.

[TeeCee]

A relative works in IT for HMRC.

I was recounting the tale of working in an IT department where, every year, the lead analyst would sit with a radio and earpiece listening to the Budget. We had the VAT rate hardcoded throughout our Jurassic zoo of code. Eventually the year came when the Chancellor announced a change from 15 to 17.5% and all hell broke loose.

He pointed out that pretty much everything the Chancellor says while stood on his hind legs affects them. I queried this, pointing out that at least they got advance warning. Turned out it's not so, the politicians are so terrified of leaks that HMRCs IT lads also used to sit glued to the radio for the budget speech. The march of technology has improved their lot........they get their specifications off the BBCs online news feed these days.

[Livinglegend]

And people with the same mindset

said exactly the same thing about the Titanic. The taxpayers will be fleeced again. The same people did the trials on ID cards and they were cost saving, in on time and ever so successful and they got a huge bonus for failure. Same again, as long as that failed PM, IDS is in charge.

No one will suffer except for the claimants, but they can starve (probably will anyway) as long as the government paper-shuffling wallahs get paid huge bonuses.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pass

the popcorn.

Feel sorry for the poor fuckers out of work though.