A report published this week reveals how a criminal checking
system, although fundamentally flawed, was allowed to go live by
the Criminal Records Bureau
The need for a radical reform of the way government manages IT
projects was underlined by a report published last week by the
public spending watchdog the National Audit Office.
The report highlights a series of defects in the management,
planning, preparation and implementation of an IT system for the
Criminal Records Bureau.
The system was designed to check the criminal background of anyone
who wanted a job working with children or vulnerable adults, but
its implementation in March 2002 had calamitous results: in some
cases staff were recruited to positions such as care workers
without a background check.
In addition, businesses incurred administrative costs in chasing
lost or delayed application forms and backlogs of applications
built up at the bureau. Recruitment agencies lost income as they
could not supply staff, because job seekers could not take up posts
until they had been cleared with the bureau.
Although the system has now stabilised, the National Audit Office
said that customers have been dissatisfied with the service.
The problems occurred even though the bureau was a greenfield site,
unencumbered by legacy systems or ingrained cultures. The project
was managed by the Passport Service which had experience of IT
disasters because of a failed implementation in 1999 of a passport
system.
The fundamental mistakes highlighted in the report of the National
Audit Office include:
Timescales too tight
Project implementation timescales were so tight they did not
include a solid plan for a model office or pilot testing. This was
not realised until three months before the system was due to go
live, when it was pointed out in a gateway review by the Office of
Government Commerce.
As a result of the review, the go-live date was deferred by six
months until March 2002, to set up a model office and run pilot
tests. The main IT supplier Capita was paid an extra £4.5m to cover
the cost of additional system and pilot testing and for the
six-month delay.
Constructive criticism ignored
Stakeholders issued warnings that the assumptions underpinning the
project were wrong, but told the National Audit Office their
warnings had been ignored.
They had questioned the proposed use of a call centre and argued
that customers would prefer to apply for background checks by paper
rather than phone. The Bureau went ahead with a call centre - and
most applications came in by paper.
Stakeholders also questioned the bureau's planning assumption that
applications would be received from individuals rather than in
batches from an applicant's potential employers. The bureau went
ahead and designed systems around individual applications - and
many applications arrived in batches. Initially, the bureau could
not cope.
One of the main bidders, E-Cres, had warned that the timescales
were too short.
Beware the cheapest bid
Capita won the £400m 10-year contract with the cheapest bid. Its
prices were lower than PricewaterhouseCoopers partly because of its
shorter processing times. Capita worked on the assumption that 85%
of job applicants would apply for checks by telephone, as suggested
by the agency.
PricewaterhouseCoopers had based its bid on 40% of the applicants
using paper forms. In fact, the assumptions by the bureau and
Capita were wrong: four out of five applications turned out to be
paper-based. By the time this was realised, data entry screens had
not been designed for keying in paper forms and staff were not
trained to handle paper-based applications. Also, the telephone
systems did not work satisfactorily. Capita was paid an extra £1.7m
to manage the unexpected bulk of paper-based applications.
Effective consultation with potential users came too
late
Capita won the contract to build and run systems for the Criminal
Records Bureau in August 2000, but it was not until 2001, a few
months before the systems were due originally to go live, that the
agency realised from its consultation with customers via roadshows
that the systems and work processes might have to be redesigned to
handle mostly paper rather than phone applications.
The National Audit Office said, "The business assumptions made at
the start of the project and in the delivery of systems to process
all types of application were key factors in the bureau's
problems."
It said that "fundamental changes" were needed "when system and
process design was well advanced". The report emphasised "the
importance of consulting potential service users at the earliest
opportunity."
The cost of problems fell in part on the
taxpayer
Capita had additional costs of about £3.7m because of a failure to
meet service levels and a lack of functionality in the system, for
example, no web access. But in total it was paid an extra £8m for
changes in requirements during the implementation phase for
handling mostly paper-based applications and to cover the extra
costs of testing and delays in going live.
About 220 staff had to be seconded to the agency to boost capacity
and performance until the productivity of the system could be
improved.
The system lacked flexibility
After the Soham murders, the government insisted that people
working in schools had to be vetted before taking up their posts.
However, this could not be easily handled by the system. This was
because the system's design was based on applications being dealt
with in date order. It was not possible to prioritise particular
groups without manual sorting.
"The seconding of large numbers of staff from the Passport Service
mitigated the size of the problem and hastened recovery," said the
audit office.
Poor communication between the supplier and
customer
Capita considered there were clear boundaries to its involvement in
the project and hence it was limited in its ability to test the
agency's assumptions.
The National Audit Office said, "Both parties began the development
of the business processes and systems in a constructive way
although the relationship came under stress as problems mounted.
Matters were complicated by the lack of single operational
ownership of the whole process."
Computer Weekly has cited the shambles at the bureau as one of the
justifications for its call for a radical reform in the process of
accountability for government IT projects.