Sopra Steria widens legal challenge to Capita's Whitehall outsourcing deal

Sopra Steria has expanded its legal challenge to a major UK government contract award after obtaining an unredacted copy of the agreement between Capita and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The company alleges that previously undisclosed terms gave Capita preferential treatment, reduced the outsourcer's exposure to …

[Geoff Campbell]

Steria vs. Capita?

Can we arrange for them both to lose, somehow?

GJC

[smudge]

Re: Steria vs. Capita?

I was going to say "frying pan versus fire" :)

[cyberdemon]

Re: Steria vs. Capita?

I was going to say, Slopra vs Crapita

A pox on both their houses.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Steria vs. Capita?

I was thinking of the pot calling the kettle black?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Steria vs. Capita?

Bizarrely I’m rooting for for Sopra Steria here …. As this bringing some of this bollocks out into the light.

TBH both of them should suffer Debarrment from Government contracts using the 2023 Procurement Act … but this will do for now.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-act-2023-guidance-documents-procure-phase/guidance-debarment-html

[PB90210]

Re: Steria vs. Capita?

"Can we arrange for them both to lose, somehow?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarndyce_and_Jarndyce

[Anonymous Coward]

"otherwise compensate for the deficiencies in Capita's tender."

Bloody hell.

I read that to say that, if Crapita have cocked up and missed something out, they get paid for putting it back in.

I'd have just been fired if I'd made an mission on a major contract tender.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: "otherwise compensate for the deficiencies in Capita's tender."

That's how I read it too. As I read things, it means Crapita could deliberately bid low, knowing that there are deficiencies, and then ask the customer (i.e. us taxpayers) to pay for fixing their screw ups. Given Crapita's track record, that secondary (and presumably unbounded) bill could be "quite a lot of money."

[Like a badger]

Re: "otherwise compensate for the deficiencies in Capita's tender."

As I recall, Capita have already admitted to shareholders that they're taking a massive hit on the contract in question, so they're not actually getting paid for things they may have left out. They probably will be paid to put right any things that Whitehall left out, but that's how all big services contractors milk government. When Sopra or anyone else appraise an invitation to tender, the first thing they'll do is prepare a list of things they're confident have been omitted, and which they can make all their margin on.

The only things unusual here is that (a) Capita lowballed far below every other companies lowballs, (b) Capita fluffed up and couldn't actually deliver the service because of their own optimistic assumptions about how much work they needed to do, and (c) Sopra are daft enough to think that the long term impact of this high profile legal challenge will not be harmful to the whole ecosystem of big outsourcers feeding off government.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "otherwise compensate for the deficiencies in Capita's tender."

"so they're not actually getting paid for things they may have left out. "

.... Yet

[Throg]

At what point...

...do "we" (or rather our representatives) stop and have a serious review into the whole process, from tendering through contract and on to delivery?

All sarcastic responses will be upvoted. :-)

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: At what point...

Well all the lawsuits add to the UK's highly profitable legal industry and raises GDP

[cyberdemon]

Re: At what point...

That's what's called servitization, apparently..

I.e. there's more money in selling shitty 'outcome-based' services (on which there are a plethora of side channels to monetise other people's data, and legally wriggling out of any failure to provide the outcomes promised) than selling actual products. And now our economy has been so hollowed-out as to have become dependent on this infernal practice

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: At what point...

I think you mean enshitifucation.

[elsergiovolador]

Payroll

Paying hundreds of millions for those parasites to essentially run payroll is insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Payroll

Government (and Defence) Procurement is a rich seam of lucre for Burnham to mine/solve … and hopefully then they not need need to take money off people getting the state pension which is a miserly £12,547pa.

(They will only have to make it up in pension credit anyway).

[Missing Semicolon]

silly

Wine and steak doesn't buy itself, you know.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: silly

But, I'm a vegetarian.

[teebie]

Huh, it's not like the DWP to take a half-arsed look at something and then decide that it's fit to work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Data security

I can't help wondering if Sopra pays more attention to their data security than Capita, and both pay more attention to this than their customers.