Back in March I posted about a Freedom Of Information response I had received where the person at Job Centre Plus had used an old memo as a template and the original content was still in there. The memo was moaning about the "painful" state of the IT systems at Job Centre Plus, poor fault escalation communications.Interestingly the Commons Public Accounts Committee have just published a report which has slated the IT systems at Job Centre Plus. Apparently they "can be slow and cumbersome and some parts do not have basic functionality that would be expected in a modern office". The report concludes that whilst changing the IT systems can be "costly" it should be pressing its supplier* for improvements "given what the Department pays" for support.
The suplier in question is EDS, who apparently make a 30% profit margin out of their contract, and the major problem with the system? Apparently you cannot cut and paste in it. The Tory MP Richard Bacon said,
You might have thought that for a 30% profit margin you could get cut and paste thrown in, would you not?Well quite! And the value of the IT contracts? Well, according to the DWP Resource Account the estimated capital value of the contract, which started in 1998 and ends in July 2008, is £217 million.... but no cut and paste... bargain!
* With less than a year of the contract to go does it even have the leverage to pressure the supplier?
N.B. Smart arse colleague says the leverage will be a bigger fatter contract.
2 comments:
Well assuming they haven't already signed an extension with EDS it's probably just about the best time, with the threat of competitive re-procurement, to seek this kind of change. I wouldn't hold my breath though.
EDS and Job Centre - nice symmetry about that. A bunch of spivs who should be signing on themselves...
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