Capita: Cyber-attack broke some of our IT systems Capita – everyone's favorite outsourcing badass – is still working to restore services for some customers after admitting the IT outage of certain services on Friday was caused by a cyber attack and efforts to contain the infiltration. The shape-shifting tech outsourcing biz, which has £6.5 billion ($8 billion) worth of public …
"A wave of 415 contracts held by Capita said to be worth £700 million ($869 million) are due to expire between 2022 and 2025, so this security incident won't help the corporation's cause when it comes to renewal time"
I appreciate the sentiment and would very much like to think so, but given the govt's past history of re-procurement from suppliers that have screwed up, it could quite well make no difference. However, here's hoping...
Given what happened with the failure of Carillon, I would be very surprised if the UK government is in a position to ditch Crapita.
The government is in the "awkward" situation where they want big suppliers to manage contracts but the existing suppliers struggle to meet the governments or public's expectations and smaller suppliers can't be "trusted" with such large contracts.
While it's easy to say that the government needs to take on more responsibility that comes with cost and political consequences that no one really wants to deal with....
The reasons for that should be obvious:
1) Our fuckwit/incompetent/corrupt/sleazy/clueless government doesn't know any better.
2) Crapita and its so-called competitors are happy to offer lucrative sinecures to recently retired civil servants and politicians.
3) Outsourcing means nobody's to blame when it all goes tits-up.
4) IT is less important to Oxbridge's Old Etonian PPE wankers than the poetry of ancient Greece and Rome.
All four points dance around the issue.
It's less embarrassing for the government to have this embarrassing failure than it is for the associated government department to experience the same issue.
In terms of "lucrative", large revenues do not automatically translate to large profits. Government contracts I have seen details of were for 10 year deals with a 1-2% annual profit margin and multiple departments (sales, operations and procurement) were all trying to claim that margin for themselves. As long as inflation remained under control they may have even made a profit.....or not.
"Immediate steps were taken to successfully isolate and contain the issue. The issue was limited to parts of the Capita network and there is no evidence of customer, supplier or colleague data having been compromised,"
Translation:
PR damage control template response with the usual empty platitudes
“Working in collaboration with our specialist technical partners, we have restored Capita colleague access to Microsoft Office 365 and we are making good progress restoring remaining client services in a secure and controlled manner,"
Translation:
We gave GCHQ a call on their “please help us unfuck our business at tax payers expense” hotline
FFS! It's Crapita, not Capita.
And it's the BBC licence fee.
In the civilised world, licence is a noun and license is a verb.
For the hard of thinking at El Reg, nouns are words for the name of something. A verb is a word signifying an action. I learned that in primary school 50+ years ago.
Make me wonder how they can charge the BBC £456m for a bloody database, and out of date one at that.
I keep on getting bailiff threats for non TV license. Wouldn't mind, but the address they have is clearly at least 2.5 years out of date as the "annex" was removed and made part of the main house around that time - before I bought the house. Told them a few times in the last year the address does not exist and still get the threatening letters - still waiting for a bailiff to turn up, they keep promising me, but they never arrive
So BBC, get a copy of the an upto date postcode address from the BBC and then use a really simple process to work out who has / has not paid.
> I keep on getting bailiff threats for non TV license.
That surprises me, because last year I cancelled my TVL (avoiding using the L word in case I get it wrong and the AC above comes after me). Submitted the cancellation online, gave a reason that I don't watch any live services or any of the other crap they claim to have jurisdiction over. Think they had me print out and sign a form declaring the same and email back to them (edit: found below). They did send me one letter afterwards which I ignored but haven't heard anything from them since.
Maybe you need to fill this out: https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/telling-us-you-dont-need-a-tv-licence
It does say that's only valid for two years, but they're still getting ignored if they do start sending stuff again.
Why do Govt or in fact ANY organisation get these clowns in? And I include Fushitesu and Acccenshite et al in all of that!
TUPE the staff back in house, give them the positive experience of working for an end client rather than a bunch of shysters that you know are charging triple your rate to the client and KEEP the expertise in house and reduce the inevitable churn of staff.
I bet all those engineers working over the weekend after having cancelled their plans got TOIL rather than the traditional double time AND I bet you if this WAS actually a cyber attack, that many of the requests for security software were probably turned down as "too expensive".
the problem with outsourcers like crapita or fap gemini is that the staff are OK but every process put in and the crappy management make doing a good job impossible.
Even if you want to do a good job you can't be arsed because the staff are treated like crap as well as being underpaid, overworked & talked down to. Why would you bother doing a good job?
By TUPE'ing the staff back in house, you get rid of the crap "the only thing is profit" part and you increase productivity and the staff are more engaged.
The big 4 lot though..are crap..
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