Labour Waste 500 Million - No one Cares.....

[andyandy]

A microcosm of just about everything that is wrong with our governmental system:

Quote:

An attempted reorganisation of the fire service by the last government cost nearly £500m and was one of the worst cases of project failure MPs have ever seen, according to a highly critical report published on Tuesday by the all-party Commons public accounts committee (PAC). It warns that finally getting the system working properly is likely to cost an additional £85m.

The damning report – published following an investigation and hearings by the committee this summer – says that the concept of abolishing 46 local fire and rescue control rooms and reorganising them into nine regional control centres was flawed from the start. The FiReControl project was launched too quickly with insufficient consultation, it is claimed.

The committee also says a contract for designing, developing and installing an IT infrastructure was awarded three years late, to European Air and Defence Systems, now Cassidian, a company with no experience of dealing with emergency services. The project's development was heavily reliant on advice from PA Consulting, whose services alone cost £42m.

The scheme was terminated last December with no objectives achieved and at least £469m wasted, the MPs say.

Margaret Hodge, the Labour chair of the PAC, said the scheme had been a complete failure. "The taxpayer has lost nearly half a billion pounds and eight of the completed regional control centres remain as empty and costly white elephants.

"No one has been held to account for this project failure, one of the worst we have seen for many years, and the careers of most of the senior staff responsible have carried on as if nothing had gone wrong at all, and the consultants and contractor continue to work on many other government projects."

snip

"The new fire control centres were constructed and completed whilst there was considerable delay in even awarding the IT contract, let alone developing the essential IT infrastructure. Consultants made up over half the management team (costing £69m by 2010) but were not managed … The committee considers this an extraordinary failure of leadership. Yet no individuals have been held accountable for the failure and waste."

The MPs say the department now estimates it will cost a further £84.8m to put the project right and is inviting bids from fire and rescue services, but remains unable to say whether that will provide value for money, or provide a more efficient and co-ordinated service in the event of a major emergency. It says the eight empty regional control centres are costing the taxpayer £4m a month to maintain and it is likely that only five of them will ultimately be used.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/se...n-500m-failure

1) constant reorganisation
2) rushed processes before facts are known
3) a belief that "private is best"
4) unaccountability for failure

and most damningly of all,

5) no one cares. This is a massive massive story. 500 million pounds completely wasted. And yet, whilst the daily mail runs 2 stories a day about 20,000 pound benefits cheats, it doesn't devote the equivilant 20,000 times more column inches on this monumental waste of money....

depressing...

[The Don]

......and the other key element, that the fire service personnel were so dead set against it that it could never have worked regardless of how good the technology is or how well the other aspects of the project were managed.

[Rolfe]

Worse even than the Edinburgh trams? Sounds like it, and yet the Edinburgh trams are all over the bloody papers every other day.

Rolfe.

[richardm]

Originally Posted by The PAC[/quote

the eight empty regional control centres are costing the taxpayer £4m a month to maintain and it is likely that only five of them will ultimately be used.

How is this possible?

[Darat]

Originally Posted by richardm

Quote:

the eight empty regional control centres are costing the taxpayer £4m a month to maintain and it is likely that only five of them will ultimately be used.

How is this possible?

Contracts.

[Ivor the Engineer]

Look on the bright side: consider the £500m an economic stimulus. Economies work when money flows around - to a large extent it doesn't matter what the money is spent on, just so long as it keeps on flowing around.

[andyandy]

and once again this is a story that readers of Private Eye will have been aware about for years.....

why is our mainstream media so utterly abject?

[Ivor the Engineer]

Originally Posted by andyandy

and once again this is a story that readers of Private Eye will have been aware about for years.....

why is our mainstream media so utterly abject?

Because Private Eye presents everything governments do as being stupid (while rarely if ever presenting a sensible alternative), and cock-ups are so much easier to see in hindsight.

Everyone’s an expert bar the poor bugger who has to do the job.

[Corsair 115]

£500m wasted? I can top that. Here in Ontario there was a case where some $1 billion (nearly £640m at current exchange rates) was wasted in an effort to digitize the province's medical records and set up an electronic system to handle them. Here's just one news article on the subject.

When governments screw up they do so spectacularly, don't they?

Quote:

The project's development was heavily reliant on advice from PA Consulting, whose services alone cost £42m.

Consultants figure prominently in Ontario's eHealth scandal as well. In the U.K. case it might be interesting to know exactly who was on the staff of that consulting firm and if any of them had any connections to anyone in the government at the time. (I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find out there was.)

[andyandy]

Originally Posted by Ivor the Engineer

Because Private Eye presents everything governments do as being stupid (while rarely if ever presenting a sensible alternative), and cock-ups are so much easier to see in hindsight.

Everyone’s an expert bar the poor bugger who has to do the job.

This particular cock up was pretty much forecast right from the start. Ditto PFI, ditto rail franchises, ditto IT systems failures. The problem isn't that private eye is cynical (which it is), it's that no-one else even cares. This should be a massive front page scandal. MPs pilfer a million, headlines for weeks, benefits cheats exposed, every single day in the Wail. A monumental cock-up wasting 1/2 a billion? Virtually no coverage and no accountability. Shocking.

[andyandy]

Originally Posted by Corsair 115

£500m wasted? I can top that. Here in Ontario there was a case where some $1 billion (nearly £640m at current exchange rates) was wasted in an effort to digitize the province's medical records and set up an electronic system to handle them. Here's just one news article on the subject.

When governments screw up they do so spectacularly, don't they?





Consultants figure prominently in Ontario's eHealth scandal as well. In the U.K. case it might be interesting to know exactly who was on the staff of that consulting firm and if any of them had any connections to anyone in the government at the time. (I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find out there was.)

It would be interesting to see how much we ended up wasting on our own attempts to digitalise all medical records.....I've got a feeling it was in the billions - certainly hundreds of millions - with lawsuits in the courts now as the companies are suing after their contracts were (finally) terminated....

It's probably the same IT consultancy firms....

Again the NHS debacle was a massive massive story which was barely reported - again it was Private Eye that was the only one interested for years....

And I think from memory we wasted another 500 million on buying helicopters that couldn't fly

and about 1 billion on an aircraft carrier that's never going to carry aircraft and is going to be mothballed when completed....

ID cards is another multi-million pound fiasco

PFIs are spectacular wastes of money - probably in the tens of billions over their lifetime of contracts.....

and no one cares! I do wonder if maybe we get the government we deserve.....

[andyandy]

Goodness, just reading through the Canadian example:

Quote:

At one point, the auditor writes, the eHealth program branch had "fewer than 30 full-time employees but was engaging more than 300 consultants.

Quote:

Consultants were contracted by eHealth at up to $2,750 a day. They then billed taxpayers for out-of-pocket expenses that included $1.65 for a cup of tea and $3.99 for cookies.

Kramer billed thousands of dollars for limousine rides, including one $400 trip from Toronto to London, Ont., before she resigned from her $380,000-a-year job in June. She was given a $317,000 severance package and received a $114,000 bonus after just 10 months on the job.

All aboard the gravy train..........

[Corsair 115]

Yup, it was a big thing here when the news broke about eHealth Ontario. (And the story breaking was inevitable given the annual reports of the provincial auditor.) The consultant examples were pretty egregious.

Whether the scandal will hurt the Liberals in the current provincial election remains to be seen. Some time has passed since then, and the government has issued the necessary mea culpas. Plus it seems folks are still wary about returning the Progressive Conservatives to power.

[andyandy]

Originally Posted by Corsair 115

Whether the scandal will hurt the Liberals in the current provincial election remains to be seen. Some time has passed since then, and the government has issued the necessary mea culpas. Plus it seems folks are still wary about returning the Progressive Conservatives to power.

Surely an oxymoron?

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Originally Posted by Corsair 115

£500m wasted? I can top that. Here in Ontario there was a case where some $1 billion (nearly £640m at current exchange rates) was wasted in an effort to digitize the province's medical records and set up an electronic system to handle them. Here's just one news article on the subject.

When governments screw up they do so spectacularly, don't they?

Consultants figure prominently in Ontario's eHealth scandal as well. In the U.K. case it might be interesting to know exactly who was on the staff of that consulting firm and if any of them had any connections to anyone in the government at the time. (I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find out there was.)

To be completely fair to eHealth Ontario it has not been an unmitigated disaster. It was not very well managed (per the Provincial Auditor General's Report) but is has, and continues to produce results.

[richardm]

Originally Posted by Darat

Contracts.

I had some of them once, but got laser surgery done eventually. If I'd known I could be paid so much I might have kept them.

[Undesired Walrus]

Originally Posted by andyandy

and once again this is a story that readers of Private Eye will have been aware about for years.....

why is our mainstream media so utterly abject?

It was the main story on the BBC today and you got this information from the guardian website.

[Undesired Walrus]

Originally Posted by andyandy

ID cards is another multi-million pound fiasco

It was a waste when the current government didn't go ahead with them. They would have saved us plenty of money if the ConDems hadn't scrapped the idea.

[jiggeryqua]

Originally Posted by Undesired Walrus

It was the main story on the BBC today and you got this information from the guardian website.

And for the mainstream media to take that long to catch up with Private Eye is "utterly abject".

[Darat]

A very quick search on the BBC news site and this was the earliest mention I could find: 18th November 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8366723.stm

I don't think you can blame the lack of interest in this one on the media, for some reason outside the likes of the Tax Payers Alliance no one in the public seems to be that interested in this type of issue. As the saying goes you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink, without a lot of rubber tubing and ropes.

[Ivor the Engineer]

Originally Posted by andyandy

This particular cock up was pretty much forecast right from the start. Ditto PFI, ditto rail franchises, ditto IT systems failures. The problem isn't that private eye is cynical (which it is), it's that no-one else even cares. This should be a massive front page scandal. MPs pilfer a million, headlines for weeks, benefits cheats exposed, every single day in the Wail. A monumental cock-up wasting 1/2 a billion? Virtually no coverage and no accountability. Shocking.

There's always someone saying a novel/complicated project will never work. However, since novel/complicated projects going wrong, taking longer than expected and costing a lot more than estimated is the rule rather than the exception (both in the public and private sector), I'm not sure why you're outraged by it's occurrence in this or any other case.

I think it's important to distinguish between corruption and problems/failures caused through error or incompetence. There are few valid reasons for breaking the law, but there are many opportunities for individuals to make errors or become out of their depth with no one around willing to help them.

[Jaggy Bunnet]

Originally Posted by andyandy

It would be interesting to see how much we ended up wasting on our own attempts to digitalise all medical records.....I've got a feeling it was in the billions - certainly hundreds of millions - with lawsuits in the courts now as the companies are suing after their contracts were (finally) terminated....

£2.7bn with nothing to show for it according to this story:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...m-2330906.html

"The department has been unable to demonstrate what benefits have been delivered from the £2.7bn spent on the project so far,"

[andyandy]

Originally Posted by Undesired Walrus

It was the main story on the BBC today and you got this information from the guardian website.

It was buried as an also ran story on the Guardian, and not even mentioned on other newspaper sites I looked at. It's pretty disingenuous to suggest this is playing as a big story. If this was given commensurate coverage relative to the amount of money lost this would be front page for weeks. It will be a brief one-day wonder not even done justice on that one day.....

[andyandy]

Originally Posted by Undesired Walrus

It was a waste when the current government didn't go ahead with them. They would have saved us plenty of money if the ConDems hadn't scrapped the idea.

Are you sure you don't work for Labour HQ? ID cards were an abysmal idea - scrapping them was one of the few good things that the ConDems have done.....

[andyandy]

Originally Posted by Darat

A very quick search on the BBC news site and this was the earliest mention I could find: 18th November 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8366723.stm

I don't think you can blame the lack of interest in this one on the media, for some reason outside the likes of the Tax Payers Alliance no one in the public seems to be that interested in this type of issue. As the saying goes you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink, without a lot of rubber tubing and ropes.

I agree it's a mixture of both - the media lead public opinion, public opinion leads the media etc etc. but the media has a pretty important role. The Wail will report 2 benefits cheat stories every single day. In a year lets say they report on 700 benefits cheats each having cost £20,000 - that's about £14 million a year to whip their readership up into a febrile mass of anti-welfare state hate. And yet we waste 500 million on this utter travesty and it's hardly an issue.

[andyandy]

Originally Posted by Ivor the Engineer

There's always someone saying a novel/complicated project will never work. However, since novel/complicated projects going wrong, taking longer than expected and costing a lot more than estimated is the rule rather than the exception (both in the public and private sector), I'm not sure why you're outraged by it's occurrence in this or any other case.

If politicians stopped embarking on novel and complicated projects against the advice of service users, actually listened to advice, and didn't leave the public sector in constant revolution with a perpetual mantra of "bring in the private sector consultants" then fair enough. Until then their behaviour is outrageous.....

[andyandy]

In other news today:

Quote:

Jonathan Djanogly, the justice minister piloting controversial plans to cut legal aid and curb payouts – a move that could benefit the insurance industry to the tune of £1bn a year – has investments worth at least £250,000 in companies with insurance arms.

He is also weighing up proposals that may have a profound effect on his brother-in-law's business, which advertises compensation claims for accidents. Labour wrote to the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, on Monday night to demand an investigation following the Guardian's inquiry.

Djanogly is pushing a bill through parliament that will attempt to slash the legal aid budget by £350m as well as shifting part of the costs of bringing "no win, no fee" cases from losing defendants to winning claimants. This reduces the liabilities of companies and their insurers if they unsuccessfully defend a claim as it will force claimants to pay out of any awarded damages their lawyers' success fees and insurance policies that cover court costs.

Last week the Guardian revealed that the minister could personally profit from the changes. In the past three years, Djanogly has been entitled to an average annual payout of £41,000 from being a "minority partner" in his family's firm of insurance underwriters, the Djanogly Family LLP.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...ares-legal-aid

No real wonder that the private sector keeps cashing in when most our ministers are either on their payroll or keen to secure non-exec roles immediately after office....

[The Don]

Originally Posted by andyandy

If politicians stopped embarking on novel and complicated projects against the advice of service users, actually listened to advice, and didn't leave the public sector in constant revolution with a perpetual mantra of "bring in the private sector consultants" then fair enough. Until then their behaviour is outrageous.....

Grossly oversimplifying....

People using the service are not the best judge of what is needed in the future. All they want is everything immediately for free.

People working in the service are not the best judge of what is needed in the future. All they want an easy life.

External Consultants are not the best judge of what is needed in the future. All they want is fee revenue

What is actually required is someone employed in the service who can take that long term view and understands the service intimately and thoroughly understands whatever is going to be used to deliver the change to that service (technology, process, whatever). Unfortunately these people do not exist.

The real problem is that there are literally a handful of people in the country who are capable of leading such large projects because the combination of attributes that person needs are very rare indeed. Trouble is that there are many projects in the public and private sector vying for those people's time.

[Ivor the Engineer]

Originally Posted by andyandy

If politicians stopped embarking on novel and complicated projects against the advice of service users, actually listened to advice, and didn't leave the public sector in constant revolution with a perpetual mantra of "bring in the private sector consultants" then fair enough. Until then their behaviour is outrageous.....

According to John Prescott (being interviewed on Radio 4's Today programme) it was mostly the civil service's fault and we can't expect ministers to keep oversight on projects that arise from their policies.

[Undesired Walrus]

Originally Posted by andyandy

It was buried as an also ran story on the Guardian, and not even mentioned on other newspaper sites I looked at. It's pretty disingenuous to suggest this is playing as a big story. If this was given commensurate coverage relative to the amount of money lost this would be front page for weeks. It will be a brief one-day wonder not even done justice on that one day.....

The famine in the horn of Africa gets less attention than Jordan's new boyfriend. What else do you expect from the mainstream media? This story doesn't exactly sell newspapers.

[Undesired Walrus]

Originally Posted by andyandy

Are you sure you don't work for Labour HQ? ID cards were an abysmal idea - scrapping them was one of the few good things that the ConDems have done.....

Why?

[commandlinegamer]

No-one cares. If the papers don't have Cher Lloyd* on the cover they won't get sold. And unfortunately this is just one of many such cock-ups. As Rolfe mentioned, the Edinburgh Tram fiasco**. There's also the Scottish Parliament, and of course Tony's Tent (the Millenium Dome, which did, to be fair, drawn in a few people out of the rain).

One can only hope consultants will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

* - I don't know who the **** she is.

** - Is is so impossible to specify a maximum costing? This is CT territory I know, but one get suspicious that an unreasonably low price is tendered initially, so that when costs eventually rise out of control, it's too late to back out.

[Architect]

When the Scottish Parliament went woefully over budget, it was all over the press and Westiminster politicians were more than happy to spount forth. Scottish presenters, however, discovered a very quick way to silence them which was to ask about Portcullis House - their new offices across the road from Wesminster. That project was woefully mismanaged and went way, way, way over budget too yet there was very little said about it.

The fact is, in my personal opinion, that large scale central goverment procurement projects in the UK are frequently mismanaged leading to additional costs. The surprising thing is that we hear to little about it.

Comman, regarding the fixed price mechanism you suggest, it is possible however the problem on construction processes is that the client then changes umpteen things - or it transpires that, say, they forgot to mention the asbestos-filled mineshaft below the site - and hence "variations" creep in. There's a tongue in cheek comment that the architects for the new Edinburgh Royal Infirmary designed the building four times, on full fees each time, as the NHS kept changing its mind. I suspect it may be true.

[Darat]

Originally Posted by commandlinegamer

No-one cares. If the papers don't have Cher Lloyd* on the cover they won't get sold. And unfortunately this is just one of many such cock-ups. As Rolfe mentioned, the Edinburgh Tram fiasco**. There's also the Scottish Parliament, and of course Tony's Tent (the Millenium Dome, which did, to be fair, drawn in a few people out of the rain).

...snip...

"Tony's Tent"? I agree the Labour government should have cancelled it when they got into power but that was a "Major's Mediocrity". And I almost think it was worth the cost to see how obviously pissed-off the Queen was to have to celebrate New Year in it!

[Skepticemea]

Didn't the Labour government (as it was being ushered out the door) commission a report on wasteful spending? I wonder how much that cost...?

[andyandy]

Originally Posted by Undesired Walrus

The famine in the horn of Africa gets less attention than Jordan's new boyfriend. What else do you expect from the mainstream media? This story doesn't exactly sell newspapers.

The question is twofold,

why do the media not care and why don't people care?

After all, this is waste of taxpayers' money (so more immediacy than famine overseas) on a monumental scale. The Wail cares about benefits cheats wasting taxpayers money, but not about this. That in itself is pretty odd. But then, the question of why this doesn't sell papers is pretty odd as well. It should be a very big story - which is why i suggested we get the government we deserve - ie if the public don't give a toss about hundreds of millions being pissed up against the wall, if there is zero accountability, if the same actors are employed again in the future with no lessons lost, then we deserve such abject outcomes....

[andyandy]

Originally Posted by commandlinegamer

This is CT territory I know, but one get suspicious that an unreasonably low price is tendered initially, so that when costs eventually rise out of control, it's too late to back out.

That's less CT than standard practise I think.....

[Undesired Walrus]

Originally Posted by andyandy

which is why i suggested we get the government we deserve -

Well, this time my hands are clean. I voted Labour in 2010. You got the government you deserve by voting Lib Dem!

[andyandy]

Originally Posted by The Don

Grossly oversimplifying....

People using the service are not the best judge of what is needed in the future. All they want is everything immediately for free.

People working in the service are not the best judge of what is needed in the future. All they want an easy life.

External Consultants are not the best judge of what is needed in the future. All they want is fee revenue

What is actually required is someone employed in the service who can take that long term view and understands the service intimately and thoroughly understands whatever is going to be used to deliver the change to that service (technology, process, whatever). Unfortunately these people do not exist.

The real problem is that there are literally a handful of people in the country who are capable of leading such large projects because the combination of attributes that person needs are very rare indeed. Trouble is that there are many projects in the public and private sector vying for those people's time.

If all the above is true, then we should either

1) stop embarking on so many massive service structural organisations, or

2) ensure that when these projects are initially proposed, we account for a high percentage chance of failure and very high cost over-runs. If the potential benefit outweighs all these potential negatives we can go ahead.

What happens instead is some pie in the sky "wouldn't it be nice if..." fag-packet planning, rushed through policies sold on absolute best case (or hyper-best case) scenarios and absolute lowest possible price scenarios....and then everyone walks away quietly when everything goes t*ts up.....

[andyandy]

Originally Posted by Undesired Walrus

Well, this time my hands are clean. I voted Labour in 2010. You got the government you deserve by voting Lib Dem!

Did you not vote labour previously? After all they've just wasted 1/2 billion of our money....does that not bother you?

Anyway, I think we've had this discussion before....All three parties are pretty obnoxious - if we had a genuine left wing alternative i would vote for them in a flash. Labour betrayed the left for a decade of neo-liberal privatisation - they're as much to blame for the state of British politics as the current coalition. They shifted so far to the right that they've allowed the Tories to take us even further....

Until labour voters stop blindly following them under the impression that they're actually left wing we're going to continue along the neo-liberal road ad infinitum....

Though this somewhat misses the point of what I was implying - ie. that because no-one cares, these things will keep happening with no accountability. This isn't a (notional) left-right issue, but an issue of government.

Quote:

Why?

Goodness, did you miss the whole ID debate? It's been well hashed out:

1) the technology didn't work
2) they were massively expensive
3) this wasn't about ID cards so much as integrated databases with tremendous amounts of personal information allowing monitoring of individuals on a massive scale
4) they made identity theft more severe not less - once you have your identity stolen you'd be completely screwed
5) university profs had already cracked security software
6) they were sold as a means of stopping terrorism - only all experts agreed they would have no effect on this.

That will do for starters.....

Still Blunkett's done well out of it - he now gets a fat paycheck from one of the ID card firms. Trebles all round.