back to article With billions in UK govt IT contracts about to expire, get the next vendors to act right

UK government IT contracts worth £23.4 billion are due to end during the current five-year Parliament, according to researchers who warn that poor performing suppliers are hardly ever excluded from bidding again. A report by public spending research company Tussell and the Institute for Government found that a third of these, …

  1. Tubz Silver badge

    I bet there will be a few brown envelopes, dodgy deals and ex-civil servants Goggin through the revolving door to companies expecting their rewards

    1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

      All under uncaring and yawning security services watch. But they are happy to take our money.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      It doesn't need a revolving door. Just a spouse working on the contract letting who finally recuses themself when the final decision is to be made.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe naïve, but

    If, within the civil service, there were people who are tech and contract savvy, they could look at these deals and call these companies out when they are talking bollocks. Also, keeping tech oversight "in house" would mean that if there is a change in suppliers, then all the knowledge is not lost.

    But that would also mean that to get people who know their stuff, they would have to pay market rates.

    1. breakfast

      Re: Maybe naïve, but

      This article inspired me to write to my MP and beseech them to recommend the government look into in-sourcing a lot of technical work - it's a core government function these days and it would save so much money and retain so much skill. A massively low-hanging fruit.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Maybe naïve, but

      > If, within the civil service, there were people who are tech and contract savvy, they could look at these deals and call these companies out when they are talking bollocks.

      There are, and they do.

      Anon as I work for a large supplier but I point out to Gov staff where our competitors are failing and no doubt they do the same with us. :-)

      But the fundamental problem is that when evaluating call-off contracts (as that is where it comes into play) Civil Servants are not allowed to add a significant down-score for previous poor delivery. If the Gov are planning to change that then great - we'd pick-up a ton of extra business.

      1. Edward Ashford

        Re: Maybe naïve, but

        The fundamental problem is that customers are pretty crap at writing requirements, and contractors who point this out and submit a proposal that would work rather than bidding to the proposal do not get selected.

        Scope creep, variations on contract, oops we forgot inflation (again), and it's gone on so long all the technology is now out of date inevitably follow.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Maybe naïve, but

          Almost everyone is shit at writing requirements. To write software, you have to reduce everything to "if this then that else the other". Normal people do not operate like that. There are good business analysts but I suspect that they do not work for the government - for us

          1. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: Maybe naïve, but

            "Almost everyone is shit at writing requirements"

            Yes, but a vendor who says "this won't work as designed" gets shitcanned because they hurt someone senior's delicate ego

            The vendor who bids to the proposal - KNOWING it won't work as designed but staying schtum - gets to be paid for completeing on time and to spec, then makes serious bank in the "uncontracted" part - cleaning up the mess and trying to make the rotten design work whilst still resembling what was originally specified

      2. hoola Silver badge

        Re: Maybe naïve, but

        This is the fundamental issue with so much public sector procurement. There is nothing you can do to exclude an incumbent who is useless as you can only take the response to the tender in the evaluation.

        References can be supplied but you are not allowed to use yourself as a reference, unsurprisingly suppliers don't provide companies that are poor references. This is also where all the extras come in to maintain the "relationship" in the little extras like track days etc.

        The procurement process is designed to stop the organisation sending out the invitation to tender being sued. Now this issue is firmly with the private sector who see the public sector as a bottomless put of cash to be milked at every opportunity.

        You reject a tender response - you now have to have a ream of justifications that are all verifiable as the company can challenge an sue.

        Yes the public sector is not blameless however a combination of political interference and greedy private companies is what leads to most failures or cost overruns,

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Maybe naïve, but

      > Also, keeping tech oversight "in house" would mean that if there is a change in suppliers, then all the knowledge is not lost.

      This is already the case with my current client. Work has to be done on their laptops and stored on their Confluence and SharePoint sites. They have a team of architects maintaining an overview but they're stretched pretty thin (due to the long-running recruitment freeze that's been in place).

  3. Alan Mackenzie

    Who?

    Who commissioned and paid for this research? That is surely pertinent to the whole story.

  4. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Wishful thinking

    I wish as well, but enough billions have spent for no result that I seriously doubt that this sudden uprising of virtuous indignation amounts to any meaningful difference with the past.

    You'd have to eliminate all current pigs-in-the-trough for this to have any meaning. That means getting rid of Fujitsu, Capita and any other "consulting" firm that has given les than mediocre results.

    But of course, that would mean needing to find new companies to arrange brown envelopes and endless budget overruns and delays.

    One day, one fine day, you might finally ask yourselves where the real issue lies. Maybe it's not the consulting firms ?

    Maybe you need to get rid of the useless cruft that thinks it can make decisions. You can't do that ? Fine, here's another solution : name a responsible for every new government project. If it does not succeed, he is retired and stripped of all his medals and UK whatnot.

    Sometimes, the knout is the only answer.

    1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

      Re: Wishful thinking

      The system has been designed this way so it is not possible for departments to hire competent staff because of rigid pay bands, so the only way to get expertise is through 3rd parties where such restrictions don't exist.

      This of course is breeding ground for "lobbying" and vested interest for things to stay this way.

      Then there is ego. It wouldn't fly past many senior civil servants to have ordinary IT workers paid more than them, but that's what would have to happen.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ban offshoring etc

    If nothing else, large UKGov contractors should be banned from (on UKGov contracts):

    * offshoring any roles

    * bringing in foreign workers on visas on salaries massively undercutting the market rate

    And any foreign companies should be forced to contract solely through a UK subsidiary, subject to UK tax, with all employees working on a contract on UK PAYE or Self Assessment, and forbidden from partaking in shitty tax-avoidance schemes (i.e. no charging your subsidiary £Ms for "brand" or "IP" so that they make close to zero profit).

    If you keep more money in the UK, it supports the economy, and the "real" cost of projects is fundamentally lower as Corporation Tax, NI, Income Tax, and VAT on consumption recycles back into the exchequer's coffers.

    For too long we've let far too much money piss out of the UK into the pockets of foreign shareholders and foreign workers, at the expense of our own economy and development and living standards of our workers, purely because politicians and civil servants have been on a short-sighted gravy train.

    1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

      Re: Ban offshoring etc

      Don't forget about IR35 rules from which these large contractors are exempted. This means there is no level playing field in terms of bidding for contracts as smaller businesses are very much unable to operate under these conditions.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fujitsu will get some of these

    Because like in Politics people have very short memories.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Fujitsu will get some of these

      More to the point, they're one of very few bidders and they have some idea of how the existing systems are supposed to work

      It's less about short memories and more about "being strapped down over a barrel"

      1. James Anderson

        Re: Fujitsu will get some of these

        Exactly. Most of these contracts involve supporting existing systems. You are basically stuck with the lazy unhelpful dickheads who have been supporting the system for the past n years as they are the only ones who know anything about the poorly documented system.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why not start by

    Excluding all the usual suspects from bidding. Allow those who have not screwed up their contracts in any way.

    What? No one qualifies.

    That tells us the lot about the way the contracts are being let, monitored and managed.

    Time to fire those who clearly failed at their jobs. No more gongs for them.

    These are some 'CUTS' that I'd support. Starmer's shambles of a Government is going to cost this pensioner around a £1,000 a year.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why not start by

      Time to fire those who clearly failed at their jobs

      And who would that be then ?

      Would it be the underpaid and overstretched ones "at the coal face" who are trying to do a good job but are unable to because there wouldn't be enough hours in the day if they worked 36 hour days and 15 day weeks ?

      Or would it be their immediate management chain for putting them in that situation ?

      Or would it be the politicians hamstringing the departments by imposing real-terms pay cuts regardless of worth (and thus ensuring that the best and brightest can earn "much more" elsewhere even allowing for the perks civil servants get) and imposing arbitrary headcount cuts/recruitment freezes that ensure many people are being asked to do the work of several people ?

      Or would it be us, the general population who voted either shower into government - it doesn't really matter what colour their flag, it seems they all have the same disdain for the people who keep the machinery of government going ?

      The reality is that in many cases, if you look at the underlying reason for "government IT failure" - it's a failure of the underpaid and overstretched civil servants to outwit the highly paid and carefully selected corporate specialists in negotiating stitch up contracts (as already said, it's fairly standard to bid low and make your profit on the changes having kept stum up front about any loopholes you spotted in the spec). Once the contract is let, there's SFA you can do by monitoring - the vendor has you over a barrel, either pay more or less whatever they ask for, or go away and retender to pay someone else to start from scratch - and for good measure pay early termination penalties. I've seen this first hand, a simple change to the spec of some equipment still in the qualification phase, something we could (in theory) do ourselves with a few hundred quid of components from Farnell - but a 7 digit price tag for a change in the design contract with all that entails. The only alternative would be to scrap all the work done so far, set the project back by "many" years, and start again with a different supplier - simply not feasible and the suppliers know it.

  8. Boolian

    Trickle Downed

    I've no idea what I need, or how to achieve it... I better call call the "Consultants"

    Yeah no probs, that'll be 10 mill to deliver.

    "Yeah, Mike, I told them 10 mill, we've no clue though, better call the Consultants... "Yeah, Jim, it's a 5 mill project, you can do that? Great, welcome aboard.

    Yeah, I told Mike we could do it for 5 mill, you any idea how to go about it? Nah, me neither, better call a Consultant... "Hi, Bob...yeah it's a 3 mill deal, you can? Excellent...

    ...

    Better call an Agency... Yeah, Fiona, it's 500 thou for a 12 month Project. You reckon? Superb, I'll draw up the contract...

    Agency: We need 12 IT contractors for a 12 month project, 15 quid an hour, you can? Brilliant, welcome aboard.

    *source: decades of IT contracting.

  9. Don Bannister

    Er what ?

    "The report – also from bid-writing technology firm AutogenAI – found that"

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like