Exodus: Tech top brass bail on £1bn UK courts reform amid concerns project is floundering

A raft of senior techies working on £1bn project to modernise Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) have stepped down amid concerns the flagship project is floundering. Kevin Gallagher, director of digital change at HMCTS; Damon Norville deputy director of digital change; John Smith, head of delivery; and Mike Ede …

[Chris G]

TCEP

Transforming Compliance and Enforcement Programme, so are they getting rid of fat blokes who threaten you with ridiculous prison sentences for not paying a parking fine and replacing them with robocop?

PAY NOW! You have three seconds to comply!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: TCEP

No this is the one that drags you to dozens of court appearances for the parking fine. At each you are told that they don't have the documents and after waiting for 8hours you are sent home, until ultimately you plead guilty to mass murder just to get it over with.

Or it sends you a notice to appear 3 days after the date and then they arrest you for failing to appear.

Or it moves your appearance to Auchtermuchty ... ditto ...

[Rich 11]

Is this the last of Failin' Grayling's wondrous reforms or are there still some other turdbombs waiting to explode?

[macjules]

Oh there are far more to come yet.

Such as closure of regional probate registries with the intent to move them to one single centre and remove the human aspect completely, which fails when you realise that the vast majority of probate documentation has not actually been digitised yet. But never mind, probate fees are set to escalate from the current £155 to over £6000 in order to pay for this.

By the way, Carillion's contract to arrest anyone who fails to pay a HMCTS imposed fine (valued at over £300m annually) has still not found anyone stupid enough to take on the contract.

[Rich 11]

probate fees are set to escalate from the current £155 to over £6000

Well, that just makes me glad my mum got that awkward dying business over and done with last year.

[Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse]

If ever you wondered...

If every you wondered as to how we could be regarded as the 5th largest economy in the world, yet with a rubbish government that pleads poverty at every turn... then this kind of answers the question as to how much of that cash gets flushed down the toilet. The problem being in my eyes that those who want the power of controlling how the money is spent have not actually had to go out and earn it; and therefore take no real responsibility for its governance.

Criminal. Ironic then really.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: If ever you wondered...

I would suspect the problem is more likely to be the civil service re-writing the spec once a month and the lack of oversight on the money being spent is proportional to the directorship on offer to the politician who's suppossed to be doing the oversight.....

[zaax]

Re: If ever you wondered...

Its the problem that the average civil servant wage is £7000 below private industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: If ever you wondered...

Working on a project for the NHS for the last 18 months. Things keep changing. Every. Single. Week.

There is no accountability/responsibility for how much this costs or impacts the delivery schedule.

If it was a poorly funded startup, the project would've been done in 3 months.

Anon for obvious reasons :-(

[Terry 6]

Re: If ever you wondered...

In public service, and I get an impression in lots of companies,IT projects seem to start with, "It would be better if we put this ( one thing) on a computer.." So they get it started. Then someone will realise that they aren't really making proper/best use of the new system and so much more could be gained. And ask for it to be added And this rolls on.

It never seems to start with "We have a problem, how can we solve it". Or, "What are we doing manually that would be better integrated into a computerised system?"

[Terry 6]

Re: If ever you wondered...

No. Most of them are earning money like anyone else.

More like "those who want the power of controlling how the money is spent... " haven't a clue about what the job entails, but listen to favoured lobbyists and assorted carrion crows who want to skim billions off the top.

[Tim99]

Re: If ever you wondered...

OK, the main purpose of all very large Government projects is to syphon off very large amounts of taxpayers' money to the "right people". Has any large UK IT project worked properly, and come in at vaguely near the projected cost since the original DVLC database (or did we just not know what their overspend was?)?

[macjules]

Re: If ever you wondered...

yet with a rubbish government at every turn

FTFY

[colinb]

Think i've seen this film before

is this

Goverment Fucks up Software Project 272 False Hope

or

Goverment Fucks up Software Project 270 The Phantom Outsourcer

You know the one where the Director and Deputy Director leave because its a dysfunctional environment

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Think i've seen this film before

No this is government fscks up software project -1 because they didn't use unsigned integer

[A.P. Veening]

Re: Think i've seen this film before

And the previous version was 32.767‬.

[Doctor Syntax]

I don't suppose they're going to starve.

OTOH I have considerable sympathy with anyone who tries to write a court scheduling system.

[Grikath]

The designing and writing is actually easy..

It's just that that particular version never comes past first draft, because if implemented it forces civil servants to actually work, managers to actually be accountable for messes with a paper trail, and actually serves the wrong kind of customer: the people who are at the business end of the project. You know.... those unwashed civilians.

So the whole thing gets swamped in committee meetings demanding endless rewrites because "we never dun' it this way" , etc., etc. Because manglement in general may not have a clue how to do a proper job, but they sure as hell know how to derail a project if it doesn't suit them.

So I don't have any sympathy for anyone working on such a project. To get at the level involved here, they must've encountered this pattern often enough to recognise it. So they're either on the gravy train, or so clueless you don't want them near a project that's actually important.

[JLV]

>slash court staff by 5,000

From Canadian experience (Phoenix) what you really need to do is lay off those people before the project is done and proved successful.

That way you can have an extra bang for the buck: a failing IT system _and_ a shortage of trained staff for manual workarounds. Can always hire consultants, sure Crapita wouldn’t mind.

In fact you can do one better, as a big pharma did when implementing SAP in the late 90s : Count your chicken before they’ve hatched savings and write new customer contracts w price based on those projected savings. If they don’t materialize, then ooops, bankruptcy. Thankfully, won’t happen while taxpayers pick up the tab..

[Anonymous Coward]

Trying to show lawyers that inefficient processes with lots of errors and information in many systems creates high levels of errors, a lack of transparency and insight and in many ways its own unfairness gets ditched again. ahhhh.

[Al fazed]

silly people

I am currently awaiting TWO dates for seperate appearances at the HMCTS. The HMRC one is evidence enough of the complete waste of resources that the manual system goes through already. An alleged overpayment of Working Tax Credits occurred because DWP assessor of my entitlement cannot make up their mind whether I have fallen foul of the 15 hour working rule for disabled people, or the 30 hour rule for none disabled people. Page one of the prosecution papers mention I have failed on both charges, though in fact I have complied completely with the 15 hour rule I signed up for at the beginning. The rest of the prosecution documentation continues and compounds the idiocy of the person in the Government Department responsible. Which has created the need for me to appeal against their claim that I must repay the £8,000+ so called "overpayment".

The other Appeal to HMCTS is to get my PIP money started again after another Government department employee was instructed to illegally/unwisely, whatever - advise me to transfer my DLA claim to a PIP claim because I had turned 65. The case will hopefully be heard in a court some time more than one year after lodging my appeal. The High Court (another court entirely) (when hearing cases of other DPW/ATOS cockups of similar nature), has already come to the decision that DWP stopping DLA benefits while an appeal is in process was not a proper legall course of action. Consequently whether I win the appeal or not [== October] I am still owed a considerable amount of money from DWP as back payment to make up the shortfall caused by those low waged idiots in Government employ.

Please do tell me, how the fuck anyone (no matter how much you pay them) can reliably digitise a system in order for it to be robust enough to compensate for rooms full of dickheads tapping away on keyboards !!!!

Oh yes, an AI system ought to do it.

Please sir, can I have a job ?

[Steve Medway]

Re: silly people

"Consequently whether I win the appeal or not [== October] I am still owed a considerable amount of money from DWP"

Sorry to disappoint but even with the ruling regarding stopping DLA during an appeal process they are still perfectly entitled to get that money back should you loose in court.

It's only if you win that you would be entitled to the back-dated sum, and even then you would have to take them to court again to get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: silly people

Sorry to disillusion you but these jobsworths really don't care.

I, Daniel Blake just about sums up the British civil "service".

[Gaius]

A raft of senior techies

How are these “techies”? When was the last time any of them wrote a line of production code, if they ever did?

These are no difficult problems of technology here, just the usual incompetence at management level. I bet they all got paid themselves with no hiccups mind...

[steviebuk]

Re: A raft of senior techies

They probably bought in the ideas. Hipster, bullshit ideas that were never going to work. Sold it as a cost saving. Other incomptents fell for this bullshit and hired them and allowed them to run the show. No doubt the people actually doing the work would of pointed out "This is a stupid fucking idea and is bound to fail", would of been ignored and due to needing work just got on with it.

Said higher ups finally realise they have been discovered as being shit and I jumping before being pushed and fully failed. So they can stick on their CV "Began a large project to digitise the court system, to cut costs in software and staff. This will save blah blah blah, cloud, blah blah, digital, blah blah blah." New employee will fall for said bullshit and they'll begin to fuck up elsewhere and put more needlessly out of work.

[Mike Pellatt]

Re: A raft of senior techies

Hipster, bullshit ideas

All to be coded in JS, no doubt.

[Claverhouse]

Privatisation 101

Last year the National Audit Office warned HMCTS's plans to slash court staff by 5,000 and chop physical cases held by 2.4 million per year via digitisation are at "serious risk" of not being delivered on time.

Do not libertarian economics teach us that slashing staff and paying the remainder less is the sovereign road to increased efficiency and a happier, if more docile, workforce ?

[MeggsChasm]

Wood. Trees.

Well, perhaps it's only in my world that technology begets requirements. Especially when dealing with large government projects, the key is to establish firm requirements, to test their user value and to institute passionate scope creep avoidance.

As an aside, I have rarely seen the introduction of a case management system actually benefit its case management "victims" in any reasonably defined way.

[david 12]

This is why you need contractors

...so that you hae somebody else to blame when the project turns to shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This is why you need contractors

Where's DXC when you need them?

[Rol]

Failure built in

It has been my experience that the process of digitising or upgrading existing systems fails at the first hurdle.

It seems every senior manager gets to throw their idea into the mix, while the staff who ultimately have to make it work get a power-slide presentation a week before implementation and asked "any questions?"

When I get the go on a project, the first thing I do is harangue the staff for weeks and weeks until I fully understand what they do and how it can be improved, and then throw my improvement ideas at them in a hope they will suggest others or point out the shortcomings.

It is they, not the senior managers who keep the wheels from falling off, and it is they who must have the greatest input on the design from the word go.

A systems analyst with no people skills would argue differently, and churn out failure after failure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Failure built in

Can I work for you ?

[Anonymous Coward]

(Another) British IT project goes to s**t

Who'd have thought?

Still, no doubt they'll have immigration sorted by the end of October...

/s

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is what "taking back control" looks like

Britain is seriously <expletive deleted>.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is the customer ?

If the scheme was written with the criminal in mind and their punishment this would have been implemented in very quick order.

[Anonymous Coward]

What should we expect when the IT providers are just serfs?

I was involved in a software company that produced community pharmacy software during the NHS electronic prescription, choose and book, and 'Spine' initiative. Pretty much at the same time the Scottish NHS launched their own independent project to implement e-prescribing.

The Scots were willing to pay suppliers to make the required software changes and the project scope was tightly constrained and pragmatic, with a free and open ongoing dialogue between the NHS and the suppliers. They had the whole thing up and running inside a year.

The England project started with a major launch meeting in Leeds. During this meeting several suppliers had the temerity to suggest that the project architecture was both overly complex and utterly under-specified. It was made clear to us that our status was essentially that of serfs. We would not be permitted to meet or even communicate with the architects. Nor would we be paid for the modifications required to our software.

Instead, an army of box-tickers descended upon us, with meaningless project 'milestones', none of which bore any resemblence to reality. The insanely complex design meant that every - already verbose - XML message had to bulked out with pointless OIDs and guaranteed that even modest traffic would saturate the limited bandwidth links available at the time to most pharmacies. And the requirement to authenticate with smartcards and the glacially slow initiation of the required infrastructure to make them available further exacerbated rollout issues.

Interestingly the overall design and architecture documents were also (and probably still are) highly confidential. Despite being publicly funded, the Great Unwashed were not to be allowed access - hence, the technical trade press could only watch from a distance, when some trenchant technical criticism early in the project might - perhaps - have allowed an informed discussion to be held.

So it's no surprise to read that yet another government IT project is mired in delay and experiencing a turnover at senior management level reminiscent of North Korea. Until and unless the medieval, feudal relationship between the project sponsors and those unlucky enough to have to deliver is ever changed, we will always endure shambolic projects; those who control the projects are both ignorant and contemptuous regarding technology, and they epitomise the UK snobbery that ensures that anyone who isn't a humanities-educated public schoolboy has no purpose other than to do the bidding of those who were lucky enough to have inherited that silver spoon in the mouth.

I'll post anonymously because even after all these years the capacity for vindictive and spiteful retributive behaviour from those in power remains undimmed. I no longer work in that vertical, but nonetheless, I've remained silent about this for years because it was made clear that dissent would not be tolerated. Not a healthy environment, but that's the power structure we have. The barons may well have defeated King John at Runnymede, but his successors live on and prosper inside our not-so-Civil Service.

[FrankRay1978]

My personal experiences of working on the HMCTS Reform programme

Hello, I have written openly about my most recent time on the HMCTS Reform programme on my personal blog for anyone interested in an insiders view. I'm not trolling for leads here and what I have written is not my personal axe to grind, nor does it contain any personal or commercially sensitive details - just my own experiences of being on the ground. Should you like to read more, and should this post including external link pass comment moderation, you can find my writings here: http://frankray.net/blog/tag/hmcts-reform/