Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360-369)
MS HELEN
GHOSH, SIR
BRIAN BENDER
AND MR
ANDY LEBRECHT
15 MAY 2006
Q360 Chairman: So you are saying
that your IT partner, Accenture, who designed the system, who
were fully involved in these risk assessments, did not see that
there was going to be this endgame problem. Mr Johnston McNeill
with his advisers could not see the endgame problem, the various
boards Sir Peter has just referred to could not see the endgame
problem, nobody could see the final showstopper right up until
a point, suddenly, when somebody could see it and the Secretary
of State pulled the plug on it.
Ms Ghosh: The nature of the interrelationship
there, of the state of play on the validation and checks which
had been done on the applications which were going through and
the nature of the process which had been built into the IT, that
was the thing which up to that stage it would have been very difficult
for anyone to predict, simply because of the interplay of—
Q361 Chairman: But suddenly at that
endgame point the penny must have dropped.
Ms Ghosh: Indeed it did drop.
Q362 Chairman: Where did it drop?
Who was the discoverer of the missing link? Who was the one who
was like the King in his altogether and said "It ain't going
to pay. There are no clothes on"? Who was it?
Ms Ghosh: It was the evidence.
I should love to be able to produce for you a series of individuals
on whom you could focus. The fact was—and again we shall
produce this in our management information which we have promised—that
we pressed the button and a surge of payments suddenly went out
and we can give you figures on that. Then, suddenly, when we started
to look at the management information, the surge began to decline
to a trickle and it became clear that something was going on there.
However, because of the interrelationship between the state of
the claims coming through and the nature of the process built
into the IT, you could not have predicted in that way in advance
because you had not been in that position in advance. That was
when we looked at the management issues. We were still getting
positive messages from the RPA that it would be possible, if we
speeded up processing, if we looked at some of the blockages in
the system, to get the payments out. It was only on 9 March that
it became clear that we were not going to be able to overcome
that.
Chairman: We are not IT experts. We are
but humble questioners. It is great to have a plethora, a tidal
wave of information coming at us but I would request that you
get somebody to help us interpret and understand it. We are hearing
you talk about a system with which you have far greater familiarity,
even in the relatively short time you have been there, than we
do. We are seeing the outward and visible signs that it is failing
and you are seeing the inner guts of it as to how it is evolving.
We could well do with something which gives us an overview, to
set in context the way that this system actually operates. In
fairness, we should not want to misunderstand what you are telling
us by virtue of our lack of understanding of some of the detail
of the way the system works. If we are going to write a report
where we can identify in our judgment where things went wrong
and who might be to blame, then we must be clear about some of
the things you have talked about.
Q363 Sir Peter Soulsby: I have to
say I am beginning to feel a little sympathy for Mr McNeill sitting
at home on his gardening leave. We are being told that all of
those, the ownership board, the executive review team, the programme
board, the ministers, and they were obviously quite close to the
project, were all of the belief that it was going to deliver.
In fact the phrase which was used a few moments ago was that it
was difficult to predict and that it was not just Mr McNeill.
We are told that he is at home on his gardening leave because
of lack of confidence in terms of communication. I think those
were the two phrases which were used. I think that means he is
at home on gardening leave because he did not tell his superiors
that the project was going to go disastrously wrong. I cannot
see how both can be right: that it is his fault because he did
not communicate that it was going to go disastrously wrong and
all of those people who were close to the project could not possibly
have seen that it was going to go disastrously wrong either. Either
he is to blame or he is not to blame. One might come to the conclusion
that actually he is something of a scapegoat.
Ms Ghosh: The model of setting
up executive agencies is one which assumes a personal responsibility
on the part of the chief executive for delivery. The model on
which Defra has related to the RPA since its establishment is
on the assumption that they are the deliverer of the programme.
We work in cooperation and consultation and I hope we have given
a very clear picture that was absolutely shoulder to shoulder
with them in terms of what was delivered. There is an element
of personal responsibility on the chief executives of agencies
and that is reflected, for example, in the way they are rewarded
and personal performance targets and so on. In this case therefore
it was entirely valid for the Secretary of State to feel that
to have got to a stage where we were being assured that bulk of
payments would be able to be made by the end of March and yet
to discover only two working days later that that was not the
case, was a significant confidence issue for her. We are not here
either as a department or despite the plethora of governance and
checks and QA processes we had in place. It would have been unhelpful
and unrealistic to expect the Department to have had the absolutely
detailed, refined, day-to-day understanding of all the issues
which were going on in the Agency, in the business process, in
the IT systems which had been built on the back of the process,
otherwise there would be no point in having an agency. So what
we had to work on was a governance process which was as exhaustive
as you would find in any other project of this kind—and
I think the OGC comments reflect that—a detailed understanding
and analysis of a set of management information about what was
going on and a great deal of day-to-day interrelationship between
myself, Sir Brian before me, the team, ministers and the RPA.
I do not think therefore that we should have been able to predict
the systems issues which ultimately brought about the delay to
the process.
Q364 Chairman: You should not, but
somebody should have been able to identify these things rather
sooner than they did.
Ms Ghosh: Perhaps that person
is the chief executive of the RPA, to come back to Sir Peter's
point.
Q365 Chairman: Perhaps it is. I think
what Sir Peter is getting at—and that is why I asked whether
he was an expert in IT systems—is that you are only as good
as the information you get.
Ms Ghosh: Yes.
Q366 Chairman: I still do not think
I have quite got to the bottom of this. At one point the sources
of information in the RPA were communicating to all concerned,
boards, chief executives, everybody else, that it would be all
right and then all of a sudden, when the heat of delivery comes
on, the whole thing melts away. There is somebody somewhere who
can point to the bit of the system architecture which did not
actually perform on the night. There will be an audit trail going
back to tell us where that problem first arose.
Ms Ghosh: I think you will find
that is a complex picture and I should very much welcome your
outcome.
Q367 Chairman: It may be complex
but the Committee are still unclear as to where that audit trail
ends. I expect you are in the same boat, are you?
Ms Ghosh: I should say, in generic
terms, that if we look back at that particular cause of failure,
at the end of the process, in terms of the payment of the money,
it is something to do with the way the business process was defined
and the way the checks were built into the IT system right at
the end. The reason that it was designed in that kind of way may
well not be down to one individual but to a culture.
Q368 Chairman: Your Department and
your ministers have been let down. Right? Mr McNeill has gone,
for the reasons you have stated. Who are you going to be fingering
to accept some responsibility for this failure? Is it Accenture
or is it some people in the RPA or is it all of them? I am still
not clear where the responsibility for what has happened lies.
Ms Ghosh: In my opening remarks
I came back to the point that there is not, in my view—but
I shall be interested to see the outcome of the Committee's deliberations—a
single person, a single set of circumstances, one single decision
which was taken which led us to where we are today. There was
a complex set of circumstances, many of which we have discussed
and elaborated. Setting out on this path there was no question
that this was an undeliverable project. A number of issues arose
along the way, some of which—as I am sure the Committee
will no doubt point out—we should have predicted, for example
around land registry and the behaviour there, others of which
were less predictable to those of us looking in from outside.
It was a complex set of issues which can teach us a great deal
about how to run projects of this kind. I must say that what I
am focusing on, and I know my team and the team at the RPA are
focusing on, is not to apportion blame for the past but to get
it right for the future. I think the analysis this Committee does,
parallel work that the NAO are doing, will help us get a picture
of what the issues were in terms of the problems with the scheme
and help us to get it right for the future. We have significant
challenges left for 2006. We very much hope we shall be able to
get things on a stable base for 2007. That is where our energy
is going at the moment and then we may well come back to see whether
there are any other lessons we have learned from this process
that we have not already put right. That is where I am.
Q369 David Taylor: Executive agencies
are a useful device, are they not, for distancing home departments
from failure?
Ms Ghosh: I do not feel distanced
from failure as I sit here.
David Taylor: It does not show in the
structure, does it?
Chairman: Sir Brian, Ms Ghosh, Mr Lebrecht,
thank you very much indeed for sharing your thoughts with us.
We look forward very much to receiving, with perhaps a bit of
guidance and interpretation, further material which you are very
kindly going to provide us with and we shall be very interested
to see the official government response to the report which we
shall inevitably produce. Thank you very much.
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