Within the context of the ongoing Post Office Scandal, I want to share some of my knowledge of building software systems, particularly from a government or social infrastructure (police/NHS etc.) point of view as opposed to building for banks or private companies. No technical knowledge is required to read or understand this essay, it’s all about business, reason, and the problems in building systems for large organisations.
Government systems are big systems
When the government or government departments build systems, they tend to be on a much grander scale than standard business systems. This is because government systems tend to be conceptualised on a population scale versus a specific customer base.
Consider an NHS system, it has to be capable of holding data for all citizens. Now not everyone will have to visit hospital with conditions, but consider the Covid-19 vaccines, that’s over 80% of the population with an NHS record of the double dose vaccine. But most will be registered with a GP and the two systems do ‘talk’ to each other. Additionally, (almost) every birth and death will be registered with the current system.
In Scotland we have a system called “Emergency Care Summary” and everyone registered with a doctor will have a record on this national system. This record contains key information (demographics, GP, and any allergic reactions) and it is intended that if you are from Glasgow but on holiday in, say, Inverness and have to go to hospital, the staff will have immediate knowledge of any medicines you are allergic to or any conditions (such as asthma, diabetes etc.) before administering treatment. Thus it must support the 5.4 million population.
This means that right from the start, government systems are difficult systems to build and require specific expertise which is vastly different from building an IT software system for, say, an HR department for a company with 5,000 or so employees.
Government lack of expertise
One of the key problems in government procurement of IT systems is the lack of understanding and expertise of what IT systems are, how they operate, and what is and is not possible. Managers are making decisions on highly technical solutions they do not understand.
Consider the doomed “test and trace”. Any competent IT specialist could have told the relevant government departments that what they were asking for with mobile phone technology was essentially nonsense. Not only did it break all the intrinsic security of the mobile phone owner, but social distancing meant NFC (near field communication – when you tap your phone/bank card to pay) would not work. Secondly, people don’t keep Bluetooth on, and Wi-Fi security would prevent phones from talking to each other to prevent data theft!
In addition, the Civil Service (I used to be one), despite the senior managers’ exorbitant salaries, does not pay enough to keep skilled technical people in the roles they need to be in, in order to prevent being ‘duped’ by vampire tech companies.
Big systems take time
Government systems typically take years to develop. Consider projects like NHS24 or Universal Credit etc. These are large complex systems that take time to build and happen over the course of two or three years or more. For the supplier, this means a guaranteed incomeof millions or billions of pounds for that period of time.
Additionally, this could be brand new territory with nothing to base (copy) the system on because governments are not tried and tested business models selling a particular product but instead legislators passing laws without regard to cost-benefit-analysis of the impact of those laws.
Vampire tech companies
I use the term “vampire tech companies” to describe software and system suppliers that just blatantly bleed the government dry of money to deliver systems that do not work or work very, very badly.
Consider the typical scenario for system delivery:
- Government proposes new initiative
- Government passes laws for initiative
- New system is required and tendered for
- Vampire Tech Company bids low and promises delivery
- Note: There may be underhanded machinations such as donations to political parties, political lobbying, MPs/spouses as non-executive directors of companies that will benefit
- People start creating the system
- System is not ready, runs late (lots of bad press and shouting from opposition MPs)
- More money is allocated to system to fix things and extend deadlines or ensure deadlines are met
- Return to ‘System is not ready’ and repeat as required
Wilful ignorance and plausible deniability
It seems to me that government ministers excel in not knowing anything about what they are in control of. I believe this is deliberate, and this is so they can ‘honestly’ (ha!) say everything is going well and they do not have to lie to the press and others that things are actually a total disaster.
If they do not know, refuse to listen (c.f. Ed Davey refusing to meet Alan Bates over the post office corruption scandal), then they have ‘plausible deniability’ and can say that they did not lie to parliament or anyone else and were misinformed or not informed at all of the problems with the system and “it wasn’t my fault. Honest governor, nothing to do with me. It was that boy over there wot done it! Can I still get a promotion, peerage, or medal?”
Aside: In Scotland, the government refused to meet with concerned women about the dangers of “self id”. By excluding dissenting voices, the government could make the decision they wanted to make and claim no one was against it.
Shame, saving face and sunk costs
It doesn’t matter whether it is a high-ranking police officer overseeing a new system, a middle manager implementing a new NHS system, a government minister overseeing a child protection system etc. etc. these people are all notionally in charge of delivering this new all-singing, all-dancing system that is going to increase productivity, save money and revolutionise work in that specific field.
It doesn’t really work that way does it? One year in, and it’s already behind schedule, costs are spiralling, the scope of work is woefully underestimated, and the technology can’t cope with the scale of the work and data involved.
The project already costs millions that cannot be recovered, sacking the software supplier will not work as that will put the project two years behind (re-tendering and starting from scratch again). Sacking the supplier will probably cost you your job for failure. If you are a government minister that might just mean two years on the back benches, if you are part of the organisation maybe you lose that police chief promotion, or the NHS chief promotion, or at worse, your job, then mortgage and family worries, so this system really, really, really has to work!
Vampire tech
In order to make the system work and save the reputation of all involved, the government now have to pump money into the system. The bad press of failure is too much to bear. Government deadlines for new laws must be adhered to. Ergo, more bodies are hired (always contractors), throwing more bodies at the problem can work in limited circumstances, but in general just creates new problems and confusion.
There are other issues with contractors who are chasing money and generally have no buy-in or invested interest in the project succeeding (so long as I get paid, who cares – Consider the £1,000 per day for Test & Trace consultants during Covid). Additionally, contractors typically have no “domain knowledge” by which we mean expertise in that industry. Think of it as “knowing the lingo” and acronyms that big organisations have. If a person works for four years in software for, say, an NHS system, then they develop knowledge of how that industry works and what various medical terms mean.
Consider the case of Universal Credit which was projected to cost £2bn but in the end cost £12bn. That’s six times as much. This is why I describe it as vampire tech – they just have to win the procurement and then the payoff, in this case is 6 times as much as the bid for or projected for the company accounts! That’s some gravy train!
Post Office scandal
This particular scandal has significantly different ramifications from traditional government IT systems in that it is both a financial accounting system, and that people were jailed for false accounting/theft. Some people were so distraught that they took their own lives. It also ruined people’s lives (and their families) over the course of two decades.
This is not just a case of incompetence, but of deliberately hiding failure and of “alleged” (ha!) perjury in court. This story is ongoing, but the depths to which people went, in order to jail others for the sole purpose of saving their own reputations is what many people find so reprehensible. My personal opinion is that those responsible should be jailed.
Relevant experience
This is not an exhaustive list, but just some of the fields I have worked in as a software developer and solution designer. When you cross fields you start to see ‘patterns’ in how software is developed and common pitfalls in teams, development processes and how things are done. This gives you a clear move into “System Architecture” and the “Development Process”.
I provide this to indicate that whilst there is a lot of opinion above, it is backed up by solid industry experience. My career has been a mix of permanent and contract work at various times.
- Tribunal Members System (converting a paper system to a brand new IT system as a civil servant)
- Life Insurance quotation system
- Scottish NHS online results reporting system
- Asset Management Accounting System
- Integrating Systems (getting different systems to talk to each other)
- Child Protection System (Contact Point)
- Hospital Medical Systems (US/Canada [sadly remote, didn’t visit professionally])
- Oil & Gas
Final thoughts
Clearly, building and delivering big systems is not an easy task. But this is different from wilfully underestimating the cost of a project, giving unreasonable expectations, or worse, covering up failure and blaming and jailing others.
I hope I have helped unravel some of the issues and complications and motivations (sunk costs) that explain why most government IT systems fail or overrun.
More in politics.
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