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Whenever I hear about large outsourced IT project disasters in the UK I go to check ‘computer weekly’, and sure enough, they’ve been investigating this for well

Whenever I hear about large outsourced IT project disasters in the UK I go to check ‘computer weekly’, and sure enough, they’ve been investigating this for well over a decade https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office-settles-legal-dispute-with-subpostmasters-ending-20-year-battle-for-lead-claimant#Timeline https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252475310/Post-Office-se... It’s the same large IT contractors whose names seem to come up again and again in these public cases

oferzelig 7y ago
Who are these IT contractors?
- noir_lord 7y ago
  ICL/Fujitsu in this case (now Fujitsu Services). Could just as easily been Capita (informally known as Crapita here in the UK).
  - arethuza 7y ago
    Outsourcing armed forces recruiting to Capita went as well as could be expected... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/15/capita_defence_recruiting_rpp_drs_public_accounts/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/15/capita_defence_recr...
    - noir_lord 7y ago
      Always does. They put out a RFP and because they are a large org they assume only another large org can actually do it, which narrows the list down to 3-4 companies even though they've all previously proven many many times they can't be trusted one of them gets the contract. Decade later and hundreds of millions of pounds of fuckups later it sorta works or it ends in questions in parliament. Then a different gov branch needs a system, puts out an RFP..and on it goes. Honestly amazes me anything works.
- OJFord 7y ago
  Had to dig through the archive a bit, but this one calls Fujitsu its 'IT partner': https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252459274/Post-Office-considered-Horizon-IT-system-as-high-risk-court-told https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252459274/Post-Office-co... I don't know why it's not more prominent, Wikipedia 'Horizon (IT system)' doesn't say who created it either. Between 19th century and the second world war, the Royal Mail (General Post Office) employed engineers and researchers, established telephone service (British Telecom later span out), telegrams, and built Colussus, the computer that helped crack Enigma. But I imagine those days are over; I doubt Horizon was developed in-house.
  - mannschott 7y ago
    Colossus was used to crack Tunny (Lorenz cypher machine) used by German High Command, while the Bombe machines were used to attack Enigma.
    - OJFord 7y ago
      Thank you, you're right of course, I couldn't recall 'Tunny' and hoped I'd get away with 'helped' as general contributory effort in that line of work with 'Enigma' as something everyone's heard of. Probably should have said 'used at BP' or something instead though.
  - eru 7y ago
    Well, even earlier private entrepreneurs were running the London Penny Post (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Penny_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Penny_Post) before it got nationalized as a cash cow for the government (and divers other reasons).
    - OJFord 7y ago
      I meant that it was doing technologically advancing work around that time rather than that it was necessarily entrepreneurial. I don't know if that was the case earlier, whether it involved itself with the R&D of better/faster road or railway carriages, for example.
- michaelt 7y ago
  There's Raytheon, who the government fired after they fell way behind schedule on e-borders.... and the government had to pay £220 million to fire. [1] There's CSC, who were paid £10 billion for a failed NHS IT project [2] - and Accenture and Fujitsu who made billions from the failed 'NHS Connecting For Health' project [3] There's HP Enterprise, IBM, Accenture and BT who have so far made £12 billion on the Universal Credit IT system which was supposed to cost £2 billion. And it's still beset by problems, of course. [4] Obviously, there's a complex set of problems and incentives at work here. For one thing, these contractors are often paid by the hour - so they make more money if a project is late or unreliable. For another, there aren't any companies big enough they could offer a fixed-price contract without going bankrupt. For another, the government generally can't provide a specification that's succinct, clear and watertight because things like benefit systems are so complex, figuring out the requirements is 70% of the work on such a project. For another, most other sectors can lock out customers who are expensive to serve - good luck using Amazon if you're illiterate, or don't have a bank account, or don't have an address - whereas state health and benefit projects can't. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/18/uk-bill-eborders-contract-termination-raytheon https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/18/uk-bill-ebor... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-system-10bn https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-... [3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24130684 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24130684 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Credit#cite_ref-guardian-20180720_6-0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Credit#cite_ref-guar...
  - johnnycab 7y ago
    >Obviously, there's a complex set of problems and incentives at work here. For one thing, these contractors are often paid by the hour - so they make more money if a project is late or unreliable. You are right about a complex relationship with numerous contractual obligations and SLA's etc. in place; usually loaded in favour of the big contractors, but it is extremely rare for them to be paid by the hour. They might parachute individuals or a team of IT contractors/consultants and pay them on a hourly basis, to clean up some mess or cover up their ineptitude and provide a level of plausible deniability, which almost always involves political machinations.
  - 7y ago
aaronharnly 7y ago
Thank you for the link. Reading through the articles, I am not led to the conclusion that the people accused are clearly exonerated or that one smoking gun bug(s) in the accounting software caused a huge accounting error. I see a decade-long legal and political battle, in which the existence of any software bug, for example a logout bug, was used to cast doubt on the entire situation. In the end, the drawn-out case was settled. I of course don’t know the full facts of this case at all, and I don’t doubt the software in question is shambling, but I would hesitate before lending credence to a simplified version of the story.
fanf2 7y ago
For this specific case, probably the best analysis is at https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/01/articles.html https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/01/articles.html
PaulAJ 7y ago
Thats because winning a large government contract requires a great deal of expensive jumping through hoops. Those contractors treat the hoop jumping as their core competence: what they do after the contract is awarded is much less important to their bottom line.

oferzelig 7y ago

Who are these IT contractors?

noir_lord 7y ago
ICL/Fujitsu in this case (now Fujitsu Services). Could just as easily been Capita (informally known as Crapita here in the UK).
- arethuza 7y ago
  Outsourcing armed forces recruiting to Capita went as well as could be expected... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/15/capita_defence_recruiting_rpp_drs_public_accounts/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/15/capita_defence_recr...
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    Always does. They put out a RFP and because they are a large org they assume only another large org can actually do it, which narrows the list down to 3-4 companies even though they've all previously proven many many times they can't be trusted one of them gets the contract. Decade later and hundreds of millions of pounds of fuckups later it sorta works or it ends in questions in parliament. Then a different gov branch needs a system, puts out an RFP..and on it goes. Honestly amazes me anything works.
OJFord 7y ago
Had to dig through the archive a bit, but this one calls Fujitsu its 'IT partner': https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252459274/Post-Office-considered-Horizon-IT-system-as-high-risk-court-told https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252459274/Post-Office-co... I don't know why it's not more prominent, Wikipedia 'Horizon (IT system)' doesn't say who created it either. Between 19th century and the second world war, the Royal Mail (General Post Office) employed engineers and researchers, established telephone service (British Telecom later span out), telegrams, and built Colussus, the computer that helped crack Enigma. But I imagine those days are over; I doubt Horizon was developed in-house.
- mannschott 7y ago
  Colossus was used to crack Tunny (Lorenz cypher machine) used by German High Command, while the Bombe machines were used to attack Enigma.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    Thank you, you're right of course, I couldn't recall 'Tunny' and hoped I'd get away with 'helped' as general contributory effort in that line of work with 'Enigma' as something everyone's heard of. Probably should have said 'used at BP' or something instead though.
- eru 7y ago
  Well, even earlier private entrepreneurs were running the London Penny Post (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Penny_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Penny_Post) before it got nationalized as a cash cow for the government (and divers other reasons).
  - OJFord 7y ago
    I meant that it was doing technologically advancing work around that time rather than that it was necessarily entrepreneurial. I don't know if that was the case earlier, whether it involved itself with the R&D of better/faster road or railway carriages, for example.
michaelt 7y ago
There's Raytheon, who the government fired after they fell way behind schedule on e-borders.... and the government had to pay £220 million to fire. [1] There's CSC, who were paid £10 billion for a failed NHS IT project [2] - and Accenture and Fujitsu who made billions from the failed 'NHS Connecting For Health' project [3] There's HP Enterprise, IBM, Accenture and BT who have so far made £12 billion on the Universal Credit IT system which was supposed to cost £2 billion. And it's still beset by problems, of course. [4] Obviously, there's a complex set of problems and incentives at work here. For one thing, these contractors are often paid by the hour - so they make more money if a project is late or unreliable. For another, there aren't any companies big enough they could offer a fixed-price contract without going bankrupt. For another, the government generally can't provide a specification that's succinct, clear and watertight because things like benefit systems are so complex, figuring out the requirements is 70% of the work on such a project. For another, most other sectors can lock out customers who are expensive to serve - good luck using Amazon if you're illiterate, or don't have a bank account, or don't have an address - whereas state health and benefit projects can't. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/18/uk-bill-eborders-contract-termination-raytheon https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/18/uk-bill-ebor... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-system-10bn https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-... [3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24130684 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24130684 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Credit#cite_ref-guardian-20180720_6-0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Credit#cite_ref-guar...
- johnnycab 7y ago
  >Obviously, there's a complex set of problems and incentives at work here. For one thing, these contractors are often paid by the hour - so they make more money if a project is late or unreliable. You are right about a complex relationship with numerous contractual obligations and SLA's etc. in place; usually loaded in favour of the big contractors, but it is extremely rare for them to be paid by the hour. They might parachute individuals or a team of IT contractors/consultants and pay them on a hourly basis, to clean up some mess or cover up their ineptitude and provide a level of plausible deniability, which almost always involves political machinations.
- 7y ago

aaronharnly 7y ago

Thank you for the link. Reading through the articles, I am not led to the conclusion that the people accused are clearly exonerated or that one smoking gun bug(s) in the accounting software caused a huge accounting error. I see a decade-long legal and political battle, in which the existence of any software bug, for example a logout bug, was used to cast doubt on the entire situation. In the end, the drawn-out case was settled. I of course don’t know the full facts of this case at all, and I don’t doubt the software in question is shambling, but I would hesitate before lending credence to a simplified version of the story.

fanf2 7y ago

For this specific case, probably the best analysis is at https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/01/articles.html https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/01/articles.html

PaulAJ 7y ago

Thats because winning a large government contract requires a great deal of expensive jumping through hoops. Those contractors treat the hoop jumping as their core competence: what they do after the contract is awarded is much less important to their bottom line.