UK government names suppliers on £3.5bn contact centre, shared services, and outsourcing framework

The commercial wing of the UK government has named the winners on a £3.5bn framework to provide public-sector contact centres, including enterprise and infrastructure software to support them. Reading like a rogues' gallery of repeat offenders, the list features Capita, G4S, Serco, and Accenture, which take their place on a …

[Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse]

So...

Similar to most large organisations these days, I assume a large proportion of that will be spent on bean counter centric strategies that (A) put costs before actual "public service", (B) prevent or dissuade people from actually being able to make contact in the first place, and (C) reduce the overall number of people employed, because, you know... less people always == better service right?

[Anonymous Coward]

A disaster waiting in the wings.....?

......... I think so!

[Just an old bloke]

Will the Civil Service ever learn from their myriad mistakes? Nope.

[NeilPost]

Is it really Civil Serviceat fault here - you know the former profession, hollowed out by 2 decades of waste, outsourcing, off-shoring, contracting and frameworks?!

[Terry 6]

Not in the slightest. They've been slandered, sidelined and blamed so that ideologues can override theor commitment and sense.

[poohbear]

"Reading like a rogues' gallery of repeat offenders" .... did you mean "Reading like a list of Tory party donors" ?

[John Brown (no body)]

"did you mean "Reading like a list of Tory party donors" ?"

So, what did the list look like when Labour were in power?

[elsergiovolador]

One man's catastrophic waste

another man's private jet.

Just grease the Tories well, nobody is investigating :-)

[Howard Sway]

blasted as a "catastrophic waste of public money" by MPs

That must presumably be the same MPs who decided that this whole stupid outsourcing malarkey is a wonderful idea, have voted time after time in parliament to keep on doing this shit, and got the same expensively disastrous results every single time. Nothing like owning your own failures, is there?

[elsergiovolador]

Re: blasted as a "catastrophic waste of public money" by MPs

That's how politics work these days. People are accustomed to cognitive dissonance. Politicians say about doing the right thing and blind people with virtue signalling, while actually doing quite the opposite.

It's not like you can do anything about it. Every politician does it, because why wouldn't they? Corruption is effectively decriminalised, nobody is going to check their accounts in tax havens or why their partners have millions without a job to show for it.

[Doctor Tarr]

Re: blasted as a "catastrophic waste of public money" by MPs

Unfortunately else.... You're right. There should be a law that prevents any company (inc senior board members) who donates to a political party or employs a sitting MP from winning Government contracts like these. MPs should be banned from taking roles in companies with these contracts for 5 years after leaving office (they are already well compensated if they lose their jobs once every 5 years). However, the turkeys won't vote for Christmas and too few of the voting public ever know about this or would care if they did.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: blasted as a "catastrophic waste of public money" by MPs

I think every MP and their close family should be subjected to financial monitoring when they are in office and for at least 5 years after they leave. The conflicts of interest should be investigated by independent bodies as well. You can't have a situation like it is currently that Chancellor is implementing a law that directly benefits his wife's company and the party is satisfied there isn't any wrongdoing.

Sure this won't stop corporations lodging money in an Escrow and e.g. release them 10 years after requested Act or regulation has been enacted or contracts awarded. But it should at least weed out the impatient ones.

[Potemkine!]

That's unfair, Fujitsu doesn't get its share of money.

[Terry 6]

You know that thing....

....after an unmitigated disaster, total fiasco and massive waste of public money with untold numbers of lives being harmed. And they say that " lessons will be learned"?

I'm starting to think, that maybe, just possibly maybe, perhaps, it could be that they don't actually learn any lessons ?

Eh?

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: You know that thing....

"I'm starting to think, that maybe, just possibly maybe, perhaps, it could be that they don't actually learn any lessons ?"

Of course they do. But next time around, someone else is in charge, either due to election results or cabinet re-shuffles. They need to learn the lessons for themselves.

[Terry 6]

Re: You know that thing....

Well, the idea is that it's a corporate lesson,irrespective of who sits in the chair. In theory (huh) lessons learned are meant to be incorporated in the organisational culture. I'd suspect that beancounter culture and MBA culture both think it's their role to overwrite company culture when they arrive in the C suite- even when it's a good one. (Maybe especially when it's a good one).

[PES1976]

Deckchairs on the Titanic

The biggest issue with these big outsourcing deals is caused by TUPE ...

... if you move the same people around and only ever change a small layer of management ... what chance do you have to improve.

Failing services must be allowed to die and reborn with new staff, processes and cultures ...

Our society wants its cake and to eat it. Protect workers rights ... then complain about the performance of the very same workers.

[Terry 6]

Re: Deckchairs on the Titanic

Nonsense. There is not one single jot of evidence to suggest that these multitudinous outsourcing calamities have been anything to do with the frontline staffing, except in as much as that the outsourcing companies have attempted to undercut the in-house costs while also funding their own management and "shareholder value" by using fewer staff to do a bare bones version of the same tasks.

In no case that I've ever met or heard about ( and there's been a heck of a lot of both) has the quality of the work been a factor in the decision to outsource. It-has-always-been-about-cost-cutting.

[Boris the Cockroach]

And just how many

brown envelopes changed hands ?

Or promises of directorships to ministers/mps

Lets face it.....theres something strange about the number of times these companies have screwed up and yet still win contracts.......

[Winkypop]

Race to the bottom

“Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is?

Insanity is doing the exact... same f***ing thing... over and over again expecting... sh*t to change...

That. Is. Crazy.”

- Vaas