UK Ministry of Defence takes recruitment system offline, confirms data leak The UK Ministry of Defence has suspended online application and support services for the British Army's Capita-run Defence Recruitment System and confirmed to us that digital intruders compromised some data held on would-be soldiers. The army was informed of the break-in on March 14, and "that a group of hackers was going to …
Honestly, with so many failures on its CV, how the Hell is it that Capita continues to get contracts ?
Who's is whose cousin in the upper spheres ? Or is it somebody's wife's son ?
Because there is absolutely no financial, professional or reputational reason to choose Capita. With its history of delays, overcost and underdelivering, it simply boggles the mind that it keeps getting new contracts - that it regularly fails at.
Apparently, under the Civil Service procurement framework you can't consider the previous track record of a potential supplier before using them, only the price etc.
Hence why we see so many procurement fuckups; The civil service has institutionally forbidden "once bitten, twice shy".
Except in Scotland, where it turns out that "quality" (sic) was considered enough of an issue to give the contract for two new ferries to Ferguson's, despite their being the highest bidder. Still, a company owned by a pal of the then First Minister wouldn't let us down and I am sure that every is proceeding smoothly.
I find that in most things if you want better quality then it costs more. A £10 bottle of whiskey vs a £30 one, a £150 phone vs a £500 one, often the more expensive one is the better quality one.
How do you think it works?
not if the 500 phone has a 450worth kardashian label on it.
Depends on the 30 whiskey, ive had some bad "local" nolabel and some really good local nolabel stuff.
beats audio is shite, you pay for the label but is consistently more expensive.
Dell XPS line has almost the same components as an asus ROG line but is twice as expensive with the same level of basic RTB support (im not talking about adding on the onsite support: apples with apples)
Are they still buy up small companies?
Only reason we had to use them years ago, they purchased several small companies, one relating to our voip system (Can't remember the others). Service then tanked we moved elsewhere.
Currently only Capita service I don't have issues with is O2 Business.
What gets me is how anyone with Capita's track record can even be considered in the first place for so many high-profile contracts.
Fine, as someone else said, previous track record can't be used when making the final decision - but surely it should be on the list of criteria when choosing initial tenders? As should be the people Capita employs.
I mean, this is the MoD. Not a high street retail outlet with a need for a customer tech support line (such as I used to work for).
Our call centre had close to 1,000 staff. Over 95% were male when it worked, since that was the tech demographic involved.
That was before Capita were handed it and decided to balance things up by making it 50:50 immediately and break it. I don't mean women broke it, of course, but Capita's employment of people who were not technically aware did.
Over 80% of the staff in any case came from non-UK backgrounds (students, mainly). Nothing of significance to National Security for us, but... the MoD?
You can't put previous performance in as part of the requirements anywhere in the procurement process - much to the frustration of many in the public sector IT world. Even if you could, it still doesn't stop behemoths like Crapita et al buying up the decent company you did manage to give the contract to and running it into the ground
We understand the affected candidates were contacted by the MoD. Britain's data watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office, told us the breach has yet to be reported to it.
"Organisations must notify the ICO within 72 hours of becoming aware of a personal data breach, unless it does not pose a risk to people's rights and freedoms.
"If an organisation decides that a breach doesn't need to be reported they should keep their own record of it, and be able to explain why it wasn't reported if necessary."
Surely this is the final, final moment that the Army stop throwing good money after bad with Capita? Why aren't the MoD seniors and the Cabinet Office telling the Army that enough is enough? Huge amount of tax payers money being spent on clearly a dated and insecure system from the last decade! Clearly the RAF and Navy did the sensible thing and jump ship while they could!
Unsurprisingly these guys have well paid departments of inshore experts that are exceedingly good at winning contracts.
The departments who actually do the work for the contract are stuffed with the cheapest talent they can acquire of variable quality and frequent new hires to cover those who’ve moved on to other accounts or other outsourcers doing the same thing.
Capita has zero incentive to complete projects on budget and on time. They always get paid more than originally scooped when projects go sideways.
If you follow the money in the outsourcers it’s the people who bid that get paid the most as they bring in the revenue, that’s the whole incentive of the business.
The businesses soliciting services from outsourcers have no idea of the technical nuances and therefore have no clue what they are getting into. They perceive it as business to business secured by Ola’s and sla’s with financial penalties that prove to be ineffective.
Outsourcers always get rewarded for failure.
When I served, the paper system worked just as reliable as an IT system. Missing information and lost files.
They brought some Unix system in as I was leaving. Talk about slow to adopt. But then, I was about the 1 in 20 that had ever used computers :-)
One NT4 Server resettlement course later lead me here :)
"If the Army decides to continue using the system, it will have to pay Capita for a licence. However, if the application is not suitable for modification, the Army will need to buy or develop a new recruitment system after the contract with Capita ends."
What if Capita have completely failed the contract by not only not patching the system, securing the system from outside entrants, resulting in lots of personal GDPR data being compromised?
It looks as if the contract needs scrutinised and lawyers involved. What Capita has done here is entirely unacceptable. They must pay.
Did a short stint for them years ago. Team Leader never interviewed me for the role and went out of his way to make me look sh!te (I can do that on my own).
Purposely only given half information for a job abroad. Flights later and on way home, ridiculed for half a job on client site.
I walked the following day. Why does this news not surprise me?
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