Examination of Witnesses (Questions 440-459)
MR SEAN
SHINE, MR
PETER HOLMES
AND MR
ANDY NAISH
22 MAY 2006
Q440 David Taylor: One of the Committee
last week put to Helen Ghosh the fact that you might have seen
Defra as a dream customer and she retorted that they are pretty
tough actually. How do you rate it?
Mr Holmes: I would agree with
that. We competed for the contract under public procurement. It
was a highly competitive competition. We gave what we believed
was a fair price based on our estimate of what it took to do the
job. As part of that original tender mechanism there was a very
clear mechanism in place to deal with change control and change
request which is the mechanism that has been subsequently used.
Q441 David Taylor: Is the customer
always right in terms of the specification that they want?
Mr Holmes: I guess rhetorically
the answer to that is, no, they are not, but in this particular
case we were brought in not as advisers, we were brought in as
an IT developer to build the system to meet a fixed specification.
Q442 David Taylor: So your devil
in the detail comment a moment or two ago, was that Accenture
code for "Not us, guv"?
Mr Holmes: Sorry?
Q443 David Taylor: Are you trying
to wriggle out of responsibility by saying that the customer said
what they wanted and you merely delivered what they asked for.
Do you not have a moral and, more importantly, a professional
obligation to nudge them away from things which you strongly feel
are going to be costly or less likely to work? The task-based
approach, if you like, would be an example.
Mr Holmes: No, we have an obligation
to deliver what we are contracted to deliver. We are not in that
role in an advisory capacity; we are there very much with a fixed
price to do a fixed piece of work, delivered to a certain level
of performance against an agreed specification.
Q444 David Taylor: How does Defra
compare with your other public sector clients in terms of being
"a tough customer!"?
Mr Holmes: I would say that Defra
compares very well in comparison to other public sector clients
in terms of being a good customer. There have been good governance
arrangements in place throughout the project. We had regular meetings
with Sir Brian Bender and now Helen Ghosh. There has been good
engagement at senior levels and regular contact and governance
arrangements.
Q445 David Taylor: Rapidly changing
specifications or amendments that are added thereto can be a bit
of a cash cow can they not for the Accentures of this world?
Mr Holmes: No because, as I have
already said, we had a contract which, whilst it was part of the
competition process, had a defined mechanism to deal with change
request. Defra have full visibility of the resources that are
going into the change of request and understand the mechanism
and overall price, so it is not a cash cow.
Q446 David Taylor: In the bills of
quantity and specifications for the construction of houses there
is often a phrase something along the lines of "unforeseen
works below ground level". Is there not that equivalent built
into contracts of this kind therefore companies sometimes have
a vested interest in a rather loose specification being part of
the agreed contract.
Mr Holmes: Certainly in this case
there are no such phrases and it is very clear what the mechanism
was to deal with the changes. RPA officials had full visibility
of the resources that were being committed to those changes and
to understand why they were happening.
Q447 Mr Drew: Do you have any interest
or partnerships with companies who are delivering agricultural
payment systems in any other EU country?
Mr Shine: I am not aware of any
formal interest but I think, given the scale of Accenture, we
would tend to work with most companies. If I take for example
Oracle—the database provider and some of the software provider
in the RPA—we would of course work with Oracle in multiple
countries and multiple projects, but in terms of your specific
question around interest in agriculture payment systems the answer
is no. I am aware of one project we undertook in Ireland a number
of years ago when we used some sub-contractors around spatial
systems and other components of payments, but the specific answer
to your question is no, not that I am aware of.[2]
Q448 Mr Drew: You will have had people
from Accenture who will have gone to conferences discussing issues
to do with IT capability and how that will help the reform of
the CAP. Surely there must have been international conferences
to look at this issue. In terms of the budget of the EU this is
the biggest issue the EU has to grasp. Are you saying that you
did or you did not have members of staff going along to look at
those issues?
Mr Shine: I am not aware of any
specific people who have attended. I am happy to check for you.
Q449 Mr Drew: Could you check that
up? We would be intrigued to know whether you had any interchange
of ideas with what was happening in other countries which would
at least give you an idea here that things might be more problematic
if the UK, leading the charge for a new system of agricultural
payments, were to say, "Okay, Accenture, you fix it".
Could you come back to us on that?
Mr Holmes: Yes, I will.
Q450 Sir Peter Soulsby: In your evidence
you have described the governance arrangements for the RITA project
and amongst that number is the RPA and indeed others within Defra.
I think you told us a little while ago that you had, throughout
the process, regular contact with the permanent secretaries. Is
that the case?
Mr Holmes: Yes.
Q451 Sir Peter Soulsby: Not just
with the Rural Payments Agency itself but also with the permanent
secretaries.
Mr Holmes: That is the case, yes.
Q452 Sir Peter Soulsby: At what stage
did you tell the permanent secretaries that all was not going
well?
Mr Holmes: We had regular meetings
with the permanent secretary, Sir Brian Bender at the time, and
we had discussions and we would provide a view based on the deliverability
of our IT systems. We were not asked for a view and we never presented
a view. In fact we would have actually said that we believe we
could deliver our IT system on time—as we subsequently did—but
would remind the permanent secretary that there was a whole pile
of other activities which were outside the scope of our contract
which we were not in a position to comment on deliverability.
Q453 Sir Peter Soulsby: At no time
did you tell the permanent secretaries that all was not going
well with the projects.
Mr Holmes: In the early stages
we had some challenges with the project.
Q454 Sir Peter Soulsby: You are not
answering my question, with respect, Mr Holmes. Are you telling
us that at no stage in this project did you tell the permanent
secretaries that all was not going well with it?
Mr Holmes: I do not believe that
at any stage we did tell them, no.[3]
Q455 Sir Peter Soulsby: At no stage you
told the permanent secretaries that all was not well with the
project.
Mr Shine: Part of our meetings
with the permanent secretaries was to take the review of progress
on what we were doing as one would expect given the scale of the
IT project. At any point in time there would be a series of issues
and risks that we were assessing, so every discussion would have
focused on the issue of the moment or particular issues. As Peter
has said, our focus was on delivering the IT component of the
systems and therefore at times we would have discussed challenges
and issues around delivering the IT components so therefore we
would have raised issues, but we would not have raised other concerns
because we were not directly involved in the other aspects that
were involved in the bigger business process and indeed with the
other IT system components. We were focusing on an area and quite
frankly we had a lot to do as Peter has said. We had a series
of issues there in getting on with the project and we were focusing
on getting those under control and ensuring that we were delivering.
Q456 Sir Peter Soulsby: So despite
your intimate involvement with the delivery of this project, the
permanent secretaries could reasonably believe what you were telling
them, that it was going to be delivered successfully and on time.
Is that right?
Mr Shine: I think as my colleague
has said, we were very clear to say that we could comment in detail
on the IT components . . .
Q457 Chairman: When you had these
meetings with the permanent secretaries, were you on your own?
Was it Accenture to permanent secretary, full stop?
Mr Holmes: The RPA officials were
there.
Q458 Chairman: The RPA officials
were there and they, I presume, would have had the knowledge about
the other bits that were not your responsibility.
Mr Holmes: Yes.
Q459 Chairman: So let us come back
to the question that Sir Peter was asking. When the question was
raised about how things were going, presumably at some of the
meetings the permanent secretary would have asked the question,
"Is everything going well? Is everything on time?" and
you, from your standpoint, would have given a reassuring answer.
Mr Holmes: As Sean said earlier,
the whole point of the meetings . . .
2 Note by witness: Although Accenture do not
have any interest or partnership with companies who are delivering
agricultural payment systems, we want to clarify that we work
with the Department of Agriculture and Food in Ireland where we
have built IT systems to support the processing of Area Aid, SPS
and Forestry payments. We have also built the Integrated Fisheries
Information System (SI2P) for the Portuguese General Direction
of Fisheries and Aquiculture (DGPA). The SI2P system provides
functions including processing of applications for EU fishery
project grant aid and the management of fishing boat licences.
In addition, one of our subcontractors (eSpatial) provides a spatial
software package (iSmart), spatial software development expertise
and spatial data cleansing. eSpatial has had some involvement
with other paying agencies. Back
3
Note by witness: Relative to all questions relating to
our communications with the Permanent Secretaries, we want to
confirm that in these communications we did talk about the RITA
system and highlight some factors critical to the RPA getting
the full benefit from the RITA system, and therefore being able
to make payments on time. These were factors that were outside
the scope of our contract and beyond our control and into which
we had little or no visibility and we were therefore not in a
position to comment on their deliverability by the RPA (as per
our responses to Q452 and other questions). Back
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