Future of the Child Support Agency is on the line after the
release of a damning report
In one of the most damning reports ever seen on government IT, the
House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee last week outlined how
IT system failures have caused an increasing backlog of unresolved
cases at the Child Support Agency.
But the committee members do not simply pin the blame on technical
errors. "We believe the problem to be more organic and systemic,"
the report said. "Correcting the [IT system] CS2 problems will
help, but will not, on their own, bring the CSA to an acceptable
standard of service to the public."
The lack of transparency and accountability, poor planning, absence
of management information and breakdown in communication with its
IT contractors all contributed to the catastrophic implementation
of the new system at the CSA, the MPs found. As a backlog of 30,000
families waiting payment builds up each month, the report shows
many problems contributing to the failure are yet to be
resolved.
The MPs launched their inquiry into the CSA's performance after it
became clear that, despite the introduction of a simpler system of
calculating maintenance payments for new cases in 2003, a backlog
of claims was building up.
The MPs found the £456m system from US-based EDS was "nowhere near
being fully functional and the number of dissatisfied, disenchanted
and angry customers continues to escalate".
The problems were not simply a result in technology failures,
something which ministers have repeatedly cited as the root cause
of the backlog at the CSA, the committee found. It said a poor
management culture was also to blame.
A key indicator of this problem is the gulf between the accounts
given to the committee by the department and its IT contractor EDS.
Although Department of Work and Pension ministers, who oversee the
CSA, and senior management of the agency tend to blame the poor IT
system problems at the agency, EDS, while admitting systems
problems, also highlighted management issues, staff culture and
lack of training.
The two parties also failed to agree on the date when the new IT
systems would be ready to take cases from old systems. The
secretary of state has told Parliament that migration to the new
system could take place in spring this year, but EDS told the
committee that the system had been ready for data migration since
early December last year.
Meanwhile, the department is withholding millions of pounds of
payments to EDS, and the IT services company is contesting the
ground for withholding payment.
Should this dispute come to court, the CSA might not be in a strong
position. It did not reveal the grounds for withholding payment to
the committee and its chief executive admitted he had "not
attempted to make a specific calculation of the amount of [CSA
staff] time which has been lost as a result of IT problems".
Although versions of events differ between the two main parties,
MPs investigating the failure said their attempts to find the root
cause were thwarted by civil servants and ministers who were
unwilling to hand over vital information.
The committee said it had no access to policy or strategic planning
documents that led to the IT contract being signed. The committee
was left to conclude from subsequent evidence that the department
had underestimated the business transformation needed to make this
IT project succeed.
Instead of focusing efforts on building a partnership with the IT
supplier to achieve the business change required to implement the
new system effectively, DWP officials were simply trying to offload
risk to the supplier and avoid blame if anything went wrong, the
committee found. The DWP told the committee it would not repeat
such problems.
The committee also noted that the DWP seemed not to have considered
the consequences of a worst-case scenario, where EDS decided to
write off the contract and walk away from the project. "If EDS had
repudiated the contract, the reform programme would have stopped
and the system would have collapsed," the MPs said.
Whatever happens next, the committee's report is unlikely to be the
last investigation into this IT failure. The MPs have recommended
that the National Audit Office studies the background to the CSA
deal with EDS. By then the DWP may be able to share the lessons
from this catastrophe.
Department tried to avoid culpability rather than solve
problems - MPs
"The department appears to have been determined under the old
Public Finance Initiative rules to shift the risk of development of
the new system away from itself entirely onto the shoulders of the
contractor.
"Priority appears to have been given to avoiding culpability
instead of establishing an effective partnership to achieve the
extent of change needed to turn a decentralised, paper-based
business model into a centralised system, working in an entirely
new screen-based environment with all communications based on
phones, not paper. We are told that this kind of mistake will not
happen again."
Source: House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee report,
Child Support Agency (HC 44 - I)
Should the committee have ordered an independent audit
of the CSA?
"It is not possible for the committee to make judgments on why
the IT contract with the contractor EDS went so badly wrong. We
have not had access to any of the policy or strategic planning
leading to the agreement being signed," said the Works and Pensions
Committee report.
After an investigation lasting longer than a year, in which
ministers were questioned, the suppliers and civil servants,
including the head of the agency, the unions and the agency's
stakeholders were interviewed, the Work and Pensions Committee was
unable to ascertain what had gone wrong.
The committee was left to grapple with opinions rather than
facts. It found the views of suppliers conflicted with the view of
civil servants and ministers.
Faced with this, the committee decided not to order an
independent audit, although this would have provided the facts on
which to make a judgment on whether the agency should survive or
not.
The committee felt that an audit would distract the agency when
it was trying to get its house in order. The management of National
Air Traffic Services made a similar claim when faced with an
independent audit by consultants Arthur D Little, ordered by the
House of Commons Transport Select Committee.
The Transport Committee rejected Nats' objections, and the
result was a series of recommendations by Arthur D Little which
were mostly enacted and saved Nats and its troubled air traffic
control computer project.
Far from proving a distraction, the audit by Arthur D Little
focused the minds of management on weaknesses in their strategies,
contingencies and adhering to good management practices.
It also highlighted structural, cultural weaknesses in the way
bad news was handled: Nats' management could not admit the severity
of the agency's problems and so could not deal with them. This has
parallels with the CSA where officials have blamed systemic and
structural problems on the IT.
Failure to understand change management
"It would appear, however, from all the evidence that has become
available... that the department wholly failed to comprehend the
scale of the business transformation that was required to achieve a
successful outcome of the proposed reform before any new IT
considerations came into play."
Source: House of Commons Work and Pensions Committeereport,
Child Support Agency (HC 44 - I)
Mixed messages from ministers and the EDS
There have been mixed messages on the extent of the IT problems
and when they would be fixed, the committee said. Department of
Work and Pension ministers and the senior management of the Child
Support Agency tended to blame poor IT systems for the malaise of
the agency. The CSA's chief executive said, "At the heart of the
issues on implementation have been the difficulties we have faced
over 18 months with the computer system."
EDS, however, claimed that the IT problems were largely remedied
and the problem was one of management, staff culture and lack of
training. In a radio interview in October 2004, the EDS manager for
the CSA's IT system, CS2, said, "By the end of this year, we will
have given the agency the tool to do the job."
But the chief executive of the CSA told the MPs, "We will have
completed the recovery of the system by spring of next year
[2005]."
In a Parliamentary debate on 9 December 2004 the secretary of
state, referring to the problems with CS2, said that although an
upgrade of software had recently been installed, there remained a
further upgrade, version 3.6, which needed to be installed before
migration could begin "in the spring". According to the committee,
this still seems to conflict with the information given to MPs by
EDS that, "The new version of software implemented on 6 December
provides the capability to migrate cases from the old to the new
system."
Source: House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee report,
Child Support Agency (HC 44 - I)