Margaret Hodge's book outlines 'mind boggling' UK public sector waste

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There is a story that has circulated in Washington circles for thirty or more years:

Enemies of our country have captured three US citizens: a sergeant of Marines, a government auditor, and a government program manager. All are condemned but shot, but each gets one last wish. The sergeant requests to hear the The Star Spangled Banner before he is shot. The government auditor asks to deliver a talk on waste, fraud, and abuse. The program manager asks to be shot right after The Star Spangled Banner.

When I worked for a GEC company the standard methodology for MoD contracts was:

1. Nail down the requirements - never underestimate the value of the legal team.

2. Cut costs to win the contract.

3. Develop rigidly to spec, even though you know it's not going to work and it's not what they want - it's what they asked for, resulting in...

4. Sell them consultancy telling them what they should have asked for in the first place.

5. Here's the money. Each and every change to the requirements results in a Change Request - which must be costed to include coding, documentation, test and debug and integration costs.

TLDR:

You undercut your competitors to win the contract and make your money on change requests.

nonchalant attitude to spending

"“We identified an alarming and deep-rooted culture where all too often the responsible officials displayed a nonchalant attitude to spending the hard-earned money we entrust them when we pay our taxes,” she writes."

Sounds EXACTLY like my local Labour-run council.

One tiny contribution of hers to waste in the NHS: according to her biog in wonkypedia she signed an early day motion in favour of homeopathy.

Same attitude I encountered everywhere

in 10 years of government (NZ & UK).

"Well that was a miserable failure. Let's do it again, only with twice the budget"

Lack of Project Management skills in the Civil Service

It has long been established as a fact that the lack of commercial skills in the Civil Service is hampering attempts to make central Government procurement more efficient – a point that the former Chair of the Public Accounts Committee highlighted time and again, during the last Parliament.

With respect to the Ministry of Defence, one must add the Project Management skills of its acquisition officials at MoD Abbey Wood, Bristol as a serious obstacle to value for money procurement.

Because, instead of requiring Defence Contractors to scope a fully costed and priced Programme of Work in Microsoft Project to advance the developmental status of their starting-points for their Technical Solutions from their existing condition, to a point where they will satisfy the qualitative and quantitative requirements expressed in the technical specification, MoD is persisting with the tried-and-failed practice of asking for a plethora of Management Plans as a response to the invitation to tender – which has given Contractors a chance to stuff these plans full of:

(a) Pretty pictures and diagrams.

(b) Grossly exaggerated claims regarding the maturity of the starting-point for the Technical Solution.

(c) Warm soothing words, false promises and hollow statements of intent skilfully crafted in such a way as to allow Contractors to rescind on work commitments later on, during the Contract performance phase.

(d) Organisational charts with names of self-important people on overheads who will not be getting hands-on with the work to be done in the next phase.

(e) An asking price quoted in the ITT response which bears no correlation to the work intended to be performed by the Contractor during the follow-on phase.

(f) A non-existent or useless schedule.

In addition, the widespread practice of digging out old ITTs from the archives, dusting them off, searching & replacing the project name and despatching them off to Contractors has resulted in the Principles of Natural Justice being routinely violated, because selection criteria essential to inform the decision on down-selection, phase-by-phase is omitted – leaving Bidders in the dark as to what evaluation criteria they will be measured against.

Such is the stupid folly of the moment that this is what passes for best practice in Project Management in the 21st century, as practiced by MoD civil servants and Defence Contractors!

It’s not so much a lack of skills in the Civil Service that is the problem, but a surplus of people with the wrong skills. Accordingly, innovation and new ways of working in the Civil Service will come only after the headcount has been cut, not before!

@JagPatel3 on twitter

The thing that bugs me is...

...when I worked in the private sector managing projects, I had to account for every quid spent. Wastage was not an option. If I needed an extra £100 to cover some overtime I had to jump through hoops so you planned accordingly so you didn't have to ask.

The thing is did it make managing the project harder? Not really. You just worked a little smarter, planned ahead. Worked out the potential pitfalls and made contingencies.

You know...basic project management.

All my projects arrived on time and on or under budget. So why is it that similar rules cannot be applied to public sector projects? The only reason I can think of is lack of a spine to force the twats to do the job properly.

costs us millions

Surely she means costs us billions?

More brass necked...

...ranting from a dodgy politician...

"With Hodge there are two bones for contention. The first is her and her family’s shareholdings in Stemcor. These involve a web of family trusts and one of the effects of these sorts of trusts is to protect money from taxation.

The second issue is Stemcor itself and how much tax it pays. Obviously every company has a duty to its shareholders to minimise taxation. Analysis of Stemcor’s 2011 accounts in the Daily Telegraph show that the business paid tax of just £163,000 on profits of £65million." (Hodge has a 50% holding in this company)

And casting our minds back to the MP's expenses scandal...

"Hodge claimed over £2,200 for “PR support” from Chilli and Spice between May and August 2007. This company is run by Janet Coull, who was Mrs Hodge press officer when she was a junior employment minister from 1998 to 2001. House of Commons rules say that MPs cannot claim expenses for “self-promotion or PR” for individuals or political parties. Receipts from Chilli and Spice submitted to the Commons fees office by Mrs Hodge stated that they provided “PR support”. (Hodge was also accused of other expense transgressions, but you get the picture.)

Do you remember...

....when the government had the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) to oversee big projects and provide world-class expertise when needed?

Government IT projects didn't fail then.

But then the Government closed CCTA down in the 1990s, because the industry said they could do a better job on their own...

And no doubt as one who was sipping from the public purse (and indeed had it been silk I hoped but do not anticipate that it should have been factored from a Sows Ear) this will be published in the full under any of the licenses that allow full replication.

Or would it be a trifle, if not a tad, unreasonable to expect an MP who was paid for the work that she documents to give it freely back to those who gave her the chance to do it? How silly of me - now we have to pay our employees to tell us how other employees are misbehaving.

Poor old Fats Waller - nowadays he'd have to sing

"Not a Chair(man), not a paid man, just saving all my shit for you"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSNPpssruFY

Additionally

Whilst I make not a single comment as to the veracity of the links this finds (Gosh I too should be either a liar, or that and in parliament; some readers may care to try googling this set of search terms

margaret hodge islington council child abuse

I am sure and certain that if the statements made in those links were inaccurate that there would be legal action to retract them. As I am also certain that if it hasn't happened then there are perfectly good reasons that as someone who is not an MP, nor enlightened enough to understand, I will be only too happy to apologise for, if this has caused any unreasonable distress.

But Hey, how can a google query cause distress? Haven't we got some EU act that allows these things to be removed if distressing?