HMRC must grow 'intelligent client' function to sort out post-Brexit tech issues – watchdog The UK's public spending watchdog is warning that the nation's tax collector needs be become an "intelligent client" in its handling of tech service providers contracted to create a "single trade window" for post-Brexit border arrangements already beset with delays. HMRC has contracted Deloitte and IBM to realize its plans for …
What is the point of NAO. They don't look deep enough at problems and seems like just wave things through to go onto the next thing to wave through.
Their recommendations are meaningless, because they don't look at root cause.
It's like you built a house on a swamp and asked for an audit and auditors come back with a report that says that the house is tilted by 15 degrees to the right. That's basically what NAO is doing.
Hopefully the next government will either scrap this yet another pointless department taking tax payer money for legitimising waste or deeply reform it so it has teeth.
So every time this unified pile of crap fails, absolutely everything will stop.
It's hard enough just getting mail in across borders now, and too much 'tracked' stuff is vanishing. Scale that up to imports and exports in general...
The only Plan B they appear to have is to use emissions rules to limit traffic at Britain's ports, taking the strain off the system and killing what is left of the economy.
The NI border fudge has cost UK taxpayers over half a billion over the last 4 years. [Also NAO].
Nobody is allowed to report on the economic damage caused by Brexit (is there a D Notice?). At least the NAO can publicise the costs.
Anyone seen a 'Brexit bonus' yet?
Brexit bonus - absolutely.
People tend to conflate what Brexit was about - mainly because they fail to understand what the EU has morphed into. It's essentially a political & regulatory behemoth & has moved consistently in this direction for over 20 year's - especially since the Euro was born with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty.
The 2nd order of the EU was about trade & how it could support both German & French manufacturers & farmers.
The UK was a late entrant in 1972 & had little impact on the initial rules & set up of the then Common Market.
Moving on 45 years, our relationship with the EU was at best fractious, at worst, abusive as we had little love of the CAP/or fisheries,the European parliament or the euro.
In many ways Brexit simply stopped a historic anomaly in its tracks.
Looking back - Germany & France ( inc Greece, Italy & Spain) seem to be basket cases - especially France & Italy with no growth for over 20 years.
We've saved £45bn in 3 years for not paying membership fees plus, we're £80bn better off for not having to pay for a corrupt COVID recovery fund - with it's 300 fraud cases going on.
The Brexit bonus isn't just economic - we're about to go slightly left of centre when the EU is fighting a far right uprising with increasing social tension ( look at France).
Brexit is a long process - trade is a relatively small part of the equation.
Anyone who has recently tried to post goods into the EU, or dealt with pan-European VAT collection will be sharply aware that this whole area has been a disaster zone for years..
They'll also be aware that posting into somewhere as distant as Australia or as fragmented (from a taxation point of view) as America is still twice as fast as dealing with Austria for exactly the same reasons.
There was a brief opportunity to admit that bureaucracy had become unnecessarily complex (and entirely self-serving) in this area, and to make clear that minimising the friction when importing goods was only beneficial. However, it appears we missed the opportunity and are now committed to adding a few layers of inefficiency and governmental IT-chaos to the whole process.
It seems that some people in Government are completely committed to trying to be 'little Europe' in their public services when we are essentially just a single country with a single taxation system and border to manage. Then they complain that there has been no "Brexit Bonus"... the lack of self-awareness is impressive.
As for the actual implementation, of course it's no shock that the civil service has feet of clay and the memory of a goldfish when it comes to large-scale IT projects. The fact that we're not far from ten years notice that this modernisation was going to be required (and would have been needed regardless of the Brexit vote) is perhaps more shocking....
And the pressure to modernise is huge, right across the board - global trade is simply a fact of life now, and an absolute requirement if we wish to keep our economy running. As another example The Post Office should be leading the way on international goods transfer (we're a damn island nation, it's one of the things we need to be good at), and yet...
It's almost like this government has never done business in their lives.
> Otherwise, there is still DHL, FexEx, UPS...
We have a publicly owned organisation that should be providing a core competency for effective international trade, but it's ok if they don't because we can rely on a bunch of American companies instead? (Good luck with that by the way, they each have their own circles of hell for customers to dwell in).
Royal Mail is not a publicly owned organisation it is owned by International Distributions Services. In April 2024, EP Group (another company controlled by Daniel Křetínský) offered to buy the 72.5% shareholding in the company that Vesa Equity Investment Sarl does not already own.
"a bunch of American companies." Isn't that the Tory plan? Sell everything to or give preference to their mates across the pond. like the NHS.
Well going back to the early 1990s and there was an opportunity for Royal Mail to go international - a joint venture with a European post office, the Tories prevented it out of dogma, can’t have a state owned business becoming a commercial success and out performing private enterprise…
Quote: "....underestimate the complexity of what is required...."
(1) The Agile Manifesto
(2) "user stories"
(3) "minimun viable product"
(4) Two week sprints
(5) "product owner" -- who would that be?
Yup....a wall covered with yellow stickies, a "product owner", no idea what "viable" means..........
How long do you wait........till it all gets cancelled.......and some other "consultants" get another million pound contract?
Yup.....Fortnum and Masons shopping bags full of folding...........
You forgot:
(6) Doing nothing other than what you planned for that sprint, lest you bugger up your magic fairy story point quota, irrespective of how urgent the suddenly apparent but unplanned need, and,
(7) Rigidly applying this so-called methodology always, even when it makes absolutely no sense from the point of view of anyone other than project managers*.
Agile, my arse.
-A.
*Project managers, eh? Where did they come from?
" to create a "single trade window" for post-Brexit border arrangements already beset with delays." It would be simpler, cheaper, quicker and better for trade to join the Single Market, like Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. But no, lets make life more expensive and difficult because of (checks notes) bananas and blue passports.
