Examination of Witness (Questions 1220-1239)
MR JOHNSTON
MCNEILL
15 JANUARY 2007
Q1220 Chairman: They took the decision.
Mr McNeill: I can only say that
we fielded people who I have affirmed with them made it clear
what the increased complexity added to risk.
Q1221 Chairman: By definition you
provided Defra with information as part of their decision making
process and Defra did not come back and disagree with your risk
profile, did they?
Mr McNeill: I do not think there
was any doubt they understood that increased complexity was increased
risk.
Chairman: So if they understood it, and
if they understood it and the decision was made on the basis of
the information supplied, they must have accepted it. I cannot
come to any other conclusion.
David Taylor: They must have accepted
the risk.
Q1222 Lynne Jones: Did you not give
them the cop-out by saying it was do-able? Did you understand
the risk?
Mr McNeill: At the time this was
being announced we had a certain understanding of what the policy
was going to be. It took until nearly a year later before we had
all of the information we needed to do a full, thorough impact
assessment.
Q1223 Lynne Jones: All the time you
were telling them it was do-able despite all of that.
Mr McNeill: Not all the time.
Yes, we continued to find ways in which we could deliver the programme,
I have accepted that, Chairman. We never turned to them and said,
"This is not do-able". In fact, we made payments but,
unfortunately, at the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour
we had a problem which meant that we could not continue to get
the cheques out of the door.
Q1224 David Taylor: At what point
were Accenture selected and contracted to adapt and provide the
IT systems?
Mr McNeill: I have got the date
here, Chairman. 31 January 2003 was the initial Accenture contract
and then the revised CAP Reform contract was about 12 months later.
Q1225 David Taylor: That will do.
That is perfectly adequate for the purpose of the question I am
about to ask.
Mr McNeill: Sorry, it was shortly
after May 2004.
Q1226 David Taylor: Okay. Were you
aware from your contacts with Sir Brian in 2003 of the concerns
that there were that he made public in 2003 on "the quality
of the people they were putting in for testing"? That was
his quote. Were you aware of that concern in your role as Chief
Executive in mid 2003?
Mr McNeill: Absolutely, Chairman.
The briefs for Sir Brian Bender's meetings with Accenture were
developed by the RPA. I saw every one of them and attended a number
of the meetings personally. I would often have a pre-meeting with
Brian, either I or Simon Vry mainly. We developed the brief, we
supplied it to Brian in line with best practice from the OGC where
they encourage contact at the highest level.
Q1227 David Taylor: So you fed him
that comment to an extent?
Mr McNeill: Absolutely . I am
not suggesting that he followed our line verbatim. We went
through the major issues of concerns we had with Accenture and
Brian was able to explore that with Juan Dominic from Accenture
on a regular basis.
Q1228 David Taylor: Thank you. Also,
his further comment that the regret he had about Accenture's performance
were issues around delays, that was his quote, presumably delays
in delivery compared with the plan?
Mr McNeill: It depends what stage
you are talking about. We had particular difficulties with Accenture
at the start of the change programme to do with business process
re-engineering, which we never actually paid for. It moved on
to concerns about the quality of the Accenture staff we had in
terms of the design and build of the new IT system. Then we had
concerns about the quality of the IT testing regime and the number
and quality of the Accenture staff in the testing regime, and
so it went on. It depends what particular stage you are referring
to.
Q1229 Chairman: Could I just be very
rude and interrupt for a second. Mr McNeill, you have been very
patient and we are about two hours into our questioning. Do you
need a little break?
Mr McNeill: Unless the Committee
wants one, Chairman, I am happy to continue.
Chairman: As long as you are we are happy
to carry on asking questions, but I just thought we ought to take
into account, as they say, the natural processes and ask the question.
Q1230 David Taylor: You will have
read the NAO report, I am sure.
Mr McNeill: Yes.
Q1231 David Taylor: You may recall
that they observed that Accenture fell short of expectations in
the early stages of the new programme and that the OGC, who will
crop up later again in questioning, expressed concerns in January
2005 over significant weaknesses in Accenture's management of
their testing team. Were they observations which at the time you
found to be accurate?
Mr McNeill: Yes, indeed. Those
would have been some of the briefing that would have gone to Brian
Bender for his discussions with Accenture.
Q1232 David Taylor: Earlier on the
Chairman referred to the RPA IT Applications Agreement, the details
of which we have, and he quoted one section in that and I will
quote the immediately following paragraph: "The user acceptance
test will enable the end user to execute the software that has
been proven through the previous testing in a production like
environment. The test will prove the functional requirements and
the end-to-end processing of the system in combination with the
procedures, and the links to external organisations." You
were the user, were you not, you were the most senior person within
the user agency?
Mr McNeill: I was the senior responsible
owner. As I recollect in PRINCE methodology, the user was Hugh
Mackinnon and then Ian Hewett.
Q1233 David Taylor: So they would
have been the—
Mr McNeill: The senior user, yes.
Q1234 David Taylor: They would have
been the ones that signed off the acceptance test as the user
of the system to comply with the contract within which Accenture
were working?
Mr McNeill: Yes. The way it worked
was the senior user was the business and, as I recollect, that
was the Director of Operations, which was initially Hugh Mackinnon
and then Ian Hewett. They would have been close to the findings
of the testing regime and when the system was rolled out they
would have accepted that it was fit for purpose.
Q1235 David Taylor: I am paraphrasing
very, very heavily indeed but Accenture said to the effect, "We
gave them what they wanted. We gave them what they specified",
in other words that RPA and Defra in a sense designed the business
process which underpinned the whole system and signed that off.
Would that be correct?
Mr McNeill: Certainly Accenture
were working to a fixed price and a fixed specification as they
have stated in their evidence, that is correct. From that point
of view, from the first contract to the revised contract my understanding
was we specified what our requirements were and they worked accordingly.
Q1236 David Taylor: So the RPA did,
under your leadership, did take on the whole design of the business
process and also the IT specification and one presumes, therefore,
accepted the risk that went with that?
Mr McNeill: I am not sure about
the design aspect of that. My specification was, "This is
a scheme and we require this to happen". In terms of the
actual design of the system I would need to take advice, Chairman,
but I am not sure that we designed the design, I think that was
down to Accenture.
Q1237 Chairman: Our understanding
was that Accenture did, if you like, some core functions but the
Agency's own IT people did some other work that was bolted into
it.
Mr McNeill: Having read Accenture's
evidence, I think what Accenture were saying that there were many
aspects to the whole package in the RPA that made up the system.
For example, Chairman, the finance system was ours, we operated
that, we did not use Accenture, it was an Oracle based package,
we did an IIi upgrade and made sure it was pretty much state of
the art. That was nothing to do with Accenture. I have to say
this was a point of some concern on Accenture's part in that we
did these pieces of work without engaging them. Accenture's work
was delivering RITA, the RPA IT application, and we specified
that initially for the nine schemes, although there was this concept
of generic end claim to pay processing with the rules engine,
we moved from that to where they were going to have design a scheme.
Q1238 David Taylor: Accenture deny
that their systems failed, they say that in essence their operations
were successful but the SPS patient died. We are still struggling
with putting our finger on quite where the responsibility might
lie.
Mr McNeill: If I can just comment
on that. The difficulty with the Accenture system, and I think
there was some comment made in the NAO report to a breach of contract
letter, and—
Q1239 David Taylor: I was about to
come to that. What breach of contract did RPA allege against Accenture
in the month of February?
Mr McNeill: The difficulty was
not that the system did not work, the difficulty was its availability
to our staff and the fact that the system kept falling over.
| 
