Government CIO hits back at critics of key DWP and HMRC projects

Joe Harley says government project leaders have learned from the mistakes of the past

Criticisms around the scale and ambition of the Department for Work and Pensions' Universal Credit system and HMRC's PAYE real-time information system were robustly rebutted by govenment CIO, Joe Harley, at a Public Accounts Committee meeting yesterday.

Both projects have come under fire for resembling the many failed government IT projects of the last decade.

The DWP's Universal Credit system will combine and assess all government benefits using citizen PAYE data from the real time information system being developed within HMRC. Both systems are due to go live early in 2013.

The criticisms have been around the scale and ambition of both projects at a time when the government has verbally committed itself to procuring at a smaller scale and from smaller companies.

In his defence of the projects, Harley argued that the government has learned to manage, procure, and govern projects differently as a result of some of the high-profile failures of the past. He went on to describe specifically how both departments were taking new approaches to these projects.

The DWP's Universal Credit system is being managed by several steering groups, with shared governance with HMRC and its real time information project team. The groups will meet regularly and are managing the project according to agile development principles.

"We adopted these principles on recommendation from an Institute of Government report and this development process suits this service because it allows us to run it by our customer base," said Harley.

The report was published earlier this month.

Through regular conversations with suppliers, both departments have been able to ensure that 60 to 70 per cent of the IT infrastructure required will be repurposed systems that are already in place, which will help to keep costs manageable, Harley said.

Malcolm Whitehouse, group applications director DWP, who was also speaking at the committee meeting, explained that with the Universal Credit system relying on information from HMRC's real time information system, it made sense for the two systems to be developed in parallel. To facilitate this an interoperability panel was established in June last year.

Both departments had agreed requirements for data at the end of last year, and file transfer protocols for both have now been developed.

There are also many key integration points planned over the next two years to ensure that the solutions will work together seamlessly.

However, despite mounting criticism of what was referred to in the last PAC meeting as the government's "cosy" relationship with several big suppliers, an original Aspire framework agreement will remain in place. Capgemini is a major provider of services for the systems and its services are procured through this framework.

HMRC CIO Phil Pavitt, who was also at the meeting, explained that for big, complex government projects, the stability afforded by big companies was required.

Both Harley and Pavitt denied that the ongoing procurement framework agreement with Capgemini, which covers 240 suppliers, was too restrictive, with Harley pointing out that between 50 and 60 per cent of all government suppliers are small or medium-sized businesses.

Pavitt also argued that sticking with the Aspire framework made it easier for the government to "re-use knowledgeable people". For example, HMRC's relationship through the framework agreement with Vocalink, a company that has in-depth knowledge of the banking sector, has to be maintained because the company has expertise that is critical to the development of the real time information system.

"Some of the people we have worked with in the past have critical knowledge of the systems: it would not be sensible not to make use of these," said Pavitt.

But while both Harley and Pavitt endorsed the use of agile for the big projects in question, Pavitt said he didn't want to take a blanket approach to rolling out agile development practices across all projects.

"We will use agile for about 60 per cent of our projects, however it best suits those that are client facing. We are less likely to use it with core infrastructure delivery projects. Our approach is likely to be more standard here."