Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
CABINET OFFICE
AND OFFICE
OF GOVERNMENT
COMMERCE
27 NOVEMBER 2006
Q60 Mr. Mitchell: Sounds a bit makeshift
to me.
Mr. Oughton: No, I would not describe
it in that way. I would describe it as a way of pre-selecting
suppliers who have the appropriate skills and can provide a value
for money solution, and who can then be employed rapidly should
they be required by Departments.
Q61 Mr. Mitchell: Do you keep registers
of who does bad work and who is responsible for cock-ups? I remember
that, when we talked about Accenture, we mentioned that Andersens
after the DeLorean audit, which was a piece of bad audit—an
appalling and crooked audit—was precluded from Government
contracts. That meant Andersens' consulting arm was precluded
under the Tories. Bearing in mind that when we came in that was
suddenly lifted, have there been similar sanctions exercised in
the consultancy business against any consultants responsible for
any of the cock-ups or over-spends?
Mr. Oughton: I do not recall a
sanction similar to the one you have described in relation to
DeLorean.
Q62 Mr. Mitchell: Should there have
been one?
Mr. Oughton: What we do, however,
Mr. Mitchell, is that when we set up the framework arrangements
that I have described and assess each of the companies before
selecting them for this framework, which we do in competition,
we look at the track record of that organisation—not just
the track record of the company, but the skills and capability
of the individuals within that company.
Q63 Mr. Mitchell: So, you will warn
a Department if those people are not capable of delivery?
Mr. Oughton: Excuse me?
Mr. Mitchell: Will you warn a
Department that these people are not capable of doing what they
say they want to do?
Mr. Oughton: I would not select
them and put them on the framework if I thought they were not
capable of delivering value to their clients; they would not get
through the door.
Q64 Mr. Mitchell: Just to conclude,
the article yesterday argued that the private sector is much tougher
with consultants. It does not accept the grandiose prospectuses,
it cuts the crap and is pretty tough on price, and it does not
let consultants go with not paying compensation if there is a
cock-up. Would that be a reasonable impression?
Mr. Oughton: Yes. I have certainly
seen that happen in private sector circumstances. One of the things
we are trying to do in government is, first of all, to nail down
far more clearly in the original contract what is deliverable,
because you cannot decide whether someone has achieved the deliverable
unless it is specified clearly enough. Sometimes, in the past,
I think that we have been poor at specifying the deliverable.
We are also trying to ensure that when the potential supplier
makes his pitch to the Government, in the follow-through, when
the contract is placed, we acquire the same skilled people who
were promised in the original documentation to do the job. We
are buying people and intellectual skill, and it is important
that the people in whom we have trust do the job.
Q65 Mr. Mitchell: You would want
the public sector to be as tough-minded and as tough to deal with
as the private sector?
Mr. Oughton: I think that the
public sector should be as demanding a procurer as the private
sector.
Q66 Mr. Mitchell: Is it?
Mr. Oughton: Not in every respect.
I think that there is room for improvement.
Q67 Mr. Bacon: Mr. Watmore, you said
in one of your answers that rotation of staff was a bit of a problem
and that that needed to be addressed. Are you seeing staff who
are halfway through projects move out at moments when, for the
benefits of the project, it would be much better if they stayed
put?
Mr. Watmore: I think that is true.
Lots of people have asked me what has been surprising about the
civil service, coming in from the outside. Much of it has not
surprised me; it was as I was expecting it. However, one thing
that has surprised me is the frequency with which people change
roles rights across the civil service, not just in this area.
I think it would benefit the civil service more generally to have
people perform roles for longer periods and in particular to see
a job through to the point where they have achieved an outcome—
Q68 Mr. Bacon: In other words, where
the project is delivered before they move on.
Mr. Watmore: Or where a particular
phase of the project is delivered. If we are to bring on a successor
that should be done through a very carefully planned succession
programme with a handover.
Q69 Mr. Bacon: Whereas what happens
is that someone comes up and says, "Carruthers, your two
years are up and it is time for you to move on to the Department
for Transport."
Mr. Watmore: It is not quite like
that. In fact, it is actually more a case of an individual applying
for roles as they come up in the civil service.
Q70 Mr. Bacon: Is that partly to
do with recruitment, retention, remuneration and such things?
Mr. Watmore: It is partly to do
with the system that we operate within the civil service, which
is that the movement of jobs is largely left to the individual
and they move on when a suitable job comes up. I think there are
issues—
Q71 Mr. Bacon: It is not allied to
the projects sufficiently?
Mr. Watmore: It is not allied
to IT or projects in any one specific way. It is a generality.
It is something that is emerging as we are looking at, with my
other hat on, the capabilities of departments.
Q72 Mr. Bacon: Sorry, what I meant
was that the progress of the civil servant is not sufficiently
allied to the project and its success.
Mr. Watmore: Not in that regard.
They would apply for a job—
Mr. Bacon: Whereas you think that
it should be.
Mr. Watmore: I think that people
should see something through—it may be a phase in a project—before
they move on.
Q73 Mr. Bacon: Is it possible, Sir
John, that the NAO could find and send to us the transcript of
the evidence that Sir Peter Gershon gave to this Committee when
he was Chief Executive of the Office of Government Commerce, quite
some time ago—I think it was just after Andrew Turnbull
became Cabinet Secretary—in which he said something pretty
much identical to what Mr. Watmore has just said to us? I think
that it would be interesting to put them in a table side by side
and look at the verbatim comments side by side. Nothing has changed
since he said that. Mr. Oughton, when did you become Chief Executive?
Mr. Oughton: I became Chief Executive
in April 2004.
Q74 Mr. Bacon: And Mr. Gershon—now
Sir Peter—was doing it for three years?
Mr. Oughton: Four years.
Q75 Mr. Bacon: I think the evidence
was given fairly early on in his tenure, so it was probably four
or five years ago, but it would be very interesting to see it.
Sir John Bourn: We will find it
and bring it to the Committee.
Q76 Mr. Bacon: I would like to quote
from another report. Mr. Watmore, would you tell me whether you
agree with this: "To maximise ownership and accountability,
the same individual, where possible, will often see the project
through from inception to implementation"? Do you agree with
that?
Mr. Watmore: It depends entirely
on the length of the project.
Q77 Mr. Bacon: Yes. You mentioned
that there might be milestones where something can change. This
comes from a report that Mr. Oughton will be very familiar with,
because he led the study in August 1994: the Cabinet Office scrutiny
study on the Government's use of external consultants. What I
see in this Report from the NAO on the success of projects—it
is good that there are some successful projects—is Government
saying, "We are getting better at this." However, there
is not such a lot of evidence that the Government is getting better,
is there? There is a lot of evidence that the advice has been
out there by the shelf-load for not even 10, 12 but probably 20
years or more. The key question is how the advice is implemented,
is it not? Would you agree with that? Mr. Oughton, and then Mr.
Watmore.
Mr. Oughton: You are right that
the advice is there. Many of the projects that you see in the
Report here are ones that have benefited from that advice, in
the sense that they have learned the lessons at the beginning
and implemented them straightaway. That is a step forward. Too
often we have found in gateway reports that projects do not start
with all the success factors in place, and they have to retrofit
them later on in the process. That is always more costly and more
time-consuming than doing it right the first time. As I say, these
are more recent examples that show that it is possible to start
a project in good shape and deliver them successfully.
Mr. Watmore: May I add a supplementary
answer? The first thing that I did when I joined was re-read the
2000 document (I did not go back to 1994) which was, I think,
published under Ian McCartney when he was a Cabinet Office Minister.
I remember reading that and saying, "That is absolutely bang
on right."
Q78 Mr. Bacon: It does not really
matter which one you pick up, does it? They all say the same thing.
It is all pretty good stuff.
Mr. Oughton: What we are seeing
here is some of the early evidence of that coming through, because
these mostly started in 2002-03. What we are trying to do in the
IT profession is to make sure that those principles of success
are baked into people's training and experience, right from the
day they join us.
Q79 Mr. Bacon: You said something
interesting earlier, Mr. Watmore: that you did not think that
they were any IT projects, and that there were just business projects.
Later on, you said something along the lines of, "If the
project is not focused around the business deliverable, and what
gets delivered, you are doomed to failure."
Mr. Watmore: I agree with that.
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