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back to article Gov IT write-off: Universal Credit system flushes £34m down toilet

The UK's spending watchdog has scolded the Department for Work and Pensions for so far wasting £34m of taxpayer money on its botched attempt to implement a one-dole-to-rule-them-all IT system. In a stinging rebuke of the government's handling of Universal Credit, the National Audit Office concluded that the DWP, which is led …

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  1. Bluenose

    Does anyone ever think about what they are writing.

    Don't want to appear defensive in respect of the big IT firms but....

    Do you really think that just because they get paid they are not concerned about these projects? The reality is that big IT firms like small ones are desperate for their projects to succeed. Without successful projects the cannot get reference sites/stories that they can use to win new business. A failure damages their reputation and credibility (ask Fujitsu and Capita) with new customers in both public and private sector.

    If the project is going titsup then they will be called in by the relevant minister who will blame them and ask for money back, which is often granted for fear of impact on their ability to do business. The big suppliers are just as badly damaged by these projects as the Government and people without access to ALL the facts come on forums like this and accuse them of fraud and even theft at times or simply lining their pockets.

    But here is why they are used; SMEs good though they are cannot accepted the limits of liability that govt puts in to their contracts. Nor can they take on the full project since they don't have the hundreds developers, engineers and other resources that are needed to develop a large project. If you use multiple SMEs on a project you need to be able to manage them and the management company you use will not have any contractual lever to make them do what they are supposed to. Worse still they compete against each other to try and win more business whilst blaming other SMEs for the problems. And ultimately lots of SMEs means lots of competing claims in respect of failures by the others which are impacting the ability to deliver.

    Don't get me wrong the big IT players do get wrong and more frequently perhaps than they should but like SMEs they are dependent on their workers to do their jobs properly and on the customer to know what they are doing. Universal Credit like all such projects is probably having problems because of a mix of failings on the part of those involved from the smallest to the largest, from contractor to customer.

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    1. oomonkey
      Reply Icon
      Stop

      Re: Does anyone ever think about what they are writing.

      I don't think anyone complains that the big IT players prime these projects due to financial risk. The problem is they do not bring in specialist SMEs to work on these projects, they try to do it all themselves. The big IT players are generalists they should bring in specialist SMEs to help with aspects of delivery, Database Specialists, Network Specialists, Agile Specialists, Middleware Specialists etc. etc. etc. and programme manage the lot. Do they do that? Do they F*** Instead they have their new grads and off shore devs google stuff to keep their margins up.

      A good analogy is big civil engineering infrastructure projects. Do the big civil engineering primes try to shoe-horn every single one of their employees in to do the job right down to employing the brickies and chippies. No they build a supply chain of reputable specialist companies for steel, structural design, cladding, concrete pouring, architecture, costing, testing ad infinitum.

      The IT industry supply chain is FUBAR because of these big IT guys and their greed.

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      1. ecofeco Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Pirate

        Re: Does anyone ever think about what they are writing.

        "The IT industry supply chain is FUBAR because of these big IT guys and their greed."

        Been there, seen it myself.

        And they WILL actively prevent anyone from even suggesting a better way to do things up to and including loss of job.

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  2. Maharg

    Cost

    “the implementation of Universal Credit is estimated to cost £2.4bn.”

    To put that into perspective, that’s the cost of having Trident for a whole year…

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    1. breakfast Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Cost

      Oh, Lewis is going to ban you so hard for that one.

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      1. Maharg
        Reply Icon
        Happy

        Re: Cost

        "Oh, Lewis is going to ban you so hard for that one"

        Never said I support or dont support it, just putting the info out there....

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    2. Magister
      Reply Icon

      Re: Cost

      ... or the cost of the interest on the National Debt for about 3 weeks.

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    3. Thomas Whipp
      Reply Icon

      Re: Cost

      or alternatively - somewhere under the cost of 10 days benefits payments from 2010

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11466178

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    4. Loyal Commenter Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Cost

      is estimated to cost

      Judging from the typical final costs of various gov. IT projects, I don't think it would be unreasonable to add a zero to that figure to get what it's really going to cost.

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  3. breakfast Silver badge
    Headmaster

    Where do I sign up

    Seems like they need someone competent to run it. I may not be the best in the world but compared with the bumbling imbeciles who have been doing this so far I would basically have to be able to do a better job and my rates are probably lower. Who do I write to?

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    1. BongoJoe
      Reply Icon
      Meh

      Re: Where do I sign up

      Just share a bottle of 1960s port with the appropriate civil servant down at your Gentlemen's Club.

      Oh, what? You're not a member of one. Oh dear, that will never do...

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  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Joke

    I think the question we should all be asking is..

    What would Steve Bong do?

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  5. Anonymous John

    Re "A £25m identity market "

    Markets sell stuff. Identities?

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  6. miket82

    Ctrl Alt Del

    Rebooting, no boot them all out and zero down the memory.

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  7. Smoking Gun

    Is it because they rolled out Windows 8?

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  8. i like crisps
    FAIL

    ' Taxi for Mr Duncan-Smith'

    Let the icon speak for me today.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Easy-peasy

    To make it worse, the 1000 people in the trial were carefully chosen as the easiest to process with the system anyway. Not even a fair trial, while Emperor IDS plays to his sycophants among the ashes from the bonfire of taxpayer's money.

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  10. TkH11

    Doomed to failure right from the start

    Too many providers, like they're going to talk to each other effectively and have systems (such as requirements capture, defect management, test specification..) that are interoperable.

    What you need is a single provider (supplier),a prime contractor that can then farm out work to subcontractors, but only if there is a very clear division of work: such as, one subcontractor work on software, the other works on the hardware build, delivery.

    Even then, when you have a prime and sub contractors, from my own experience, you really want them using shared applications, otherwise inefficiency and mistakes creep in.

    I wonder if this is compounded by typical government BS to have multiple suppliers (because of some crazy rules), perhaps to reduce risk of a provider going into liquidation, when the risk is massively increased by having so many providers.

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How many programmers?

    Assuming 60 percent of the bill is for programmers, that means that 250 million pounds are for them, which equates to 2,500 programmer years. That;s a lot of coding, and it suggests that the best technologies, such as databases, were not deployed in doing this work. Government IT has to get out of the COBOL era, and the vendors stirred out of supporting dumb approaches.

    For vendors it is self serving to use the "old" methods. Getting a detailed spec that effectively enforces legacy+, and then charging through the nose for inevitable changes is a lousy way of getting these jobs done. How much the vendor in place colludes to write the new spec is another issue.

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    1. Sooty
      Reply Icon

      Re: How many programmers?

      Oh please, it will be nothing like 60% for coders.

      I'd be surprised if more than 20% of the budget went on actual design and build. There are all those management layers, possibly some time on the now old fashioned and mostly non-existent 'requirements gathering phase', all the bunfighting, the red tape. Lets face it some project has to pay for all those motivational conference calls, telling you that "we understand that you are stressed by being forced to work 60-70 hour weeks and we are dealing with it... we have stress management courses you can attend", your annual training has to be charged to some project, same with filling in your 'balanced scorecard'.

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  12. IT veteran

    A vital purchase

    Someone in the government REALLY needs to invest in a copy of "The Mythical Man Month". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

    And if the UC computer system is anything like as badly implemented as Universal Job Match, then god help those on benefits: https://universaljobmatchisarightshambles.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/universal-job-match-problems/

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    1. JohnMurray
      Reply Icon

      Re: A vital purchase

      If you wander along to the EU website, you will find the same jobs advertised, by the same organisation (dwp), but the site works....and the advertising employers get PAID for every applicant they employ...but never in England..

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  13. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "realistic plans and strong discipline"

    That is not going to happen when the strongest discipline you can use against someone is move him to another office.

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  14. ecofeco Silver badge
    Pirate

    It must be nice

    It must be nice to know the right people.

    Great job if you can get it. Take millions and deliver nothing.

    It most places, that would be fraud and theft.

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  15. JohnMurray

    "It most places, that would be fraud and theft"

    What can I say.

    Government.

    With all OTHER organisations it would be fraud and theft, for government it is pretty standard.

    And we still have the NHS data to go....exactly where it will go is not known yet, but probably India or China.

    At least the viagra emails will go to the correct people then..

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