Scotland waves £15m for low-code partner to help with social security overhaul as technical debt mounts
- Reference: 1609846030
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/01/05/scotland_lowcode_partner/
- Source link:
Having selected low-code platform OutSystems to help modernise IT services from its executive agency Social Security Scotland, the Scottish government is now looking for a "strategic partner" to help develop solutions on the platform. These might include case management, web portals, and mobile applications, for example.
According to a [1]prior information notice designed to gauge the market interest, the deal could be worth £15m.
The Scotland Act 2016 gave the Scottish Parliament the powers to administer a benefits system devolved from the UK government, while the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 provides for types of assistance that will be created using those powers. The government said it required a technology platform to build a technical solution to get the benefits of devolution.
In January last year, the [2]government contracted OutSystems , a low-code technology platform, to administer Scottish citizens applications for welfare benefits in a £1.6m deal via reseller Softcat.
In May, it awarded consultancy giant Deloitte a £9.1m contract to "configure the technology platform to meet the... design requirements" including the "scope to reuse the technology platform" to meet the needs of different services.
The current procurement goes further, looking for an ongoing "strategic" partner or partners, rather than "configuration partner", which is Deloitte's role.
According to [3]a report from public spending watchdog Audit Scotland , Social Security Scotland has not "fully developed longer-term planning for key areas such as finance, workforce, estates and IT which will be critical to the success of the Scottish social security system".
James Wallace, Social Security Scotland's deputy director of finance and corporate services, told the audit body that the agency would, by 1 April 2021, appoint a chief digital officer who would "start to develop our longer term IT plans", but the organisation was still "heavily reliant" on the separate Social Security Directorate's programme for developing its systems.
The auditors found that the directorate programme uses agile development to launch minimum viable products which "may lead to a significant volume of technical debt and workarounds in the interim".
"There is currently a backlog of digital work that is outstanding for Social Security Scotland systems, with this new technical debt adding to it," the audit said.
It's fair to note, then, that the agency may be hoping a low-code approach, with some outside help, might reduce technical debt. But without a longer-term plan, it could be hard to tell if it is heading in the right direction. ®
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[1] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:638085-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML&src=0
[2] https://www.publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk/search/show/search_view.aspx?ID=JAN378017
[3] https://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/uploads/docs/report/2020/aar_1920_social_security_0.pdf
[4] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Low-code and no-code - ultimate examples of fire and forget management?
Soctgov is having to do this on the cheap since their pockets are not deep. So compromises are necessary and shortcuts inevitable.
Note Scotland went sensible with our contact tracing app, which worked out of the box and genuinely Scottish NHS using iOS and Android systems instead of standalone apps. I ran it, had to delete it as my ageing handset doesn't have to storage capacity. But it ran seamlessly. Is still running AFAIK.
So they have some recent form in being suitably pragmatic and not seeking to reinvent the wheel or build unnecessary empires. I see these as strengths, not weaknesses.
Re: Low-code and no-code - ultimate examples of fire and forget management?
It's just another abstraction layer just like using something like a java runtime is. I see "low code" platforms growing in popularity in my region as there's a shortage of programmers interested in this kind of work / technical dept and outsourcing does not appear to work quite as well either.
Low code needs to start at the policy end
The last time I had any sight of social security systems in England - which was about 20 years ago - the people processing benefit claims could only do around 60% of them using their aging ICL mainframe, the other 40% had to be manually calculated. The reason for that was mostly that as new benefits were introduced there were a whole load of transitional issues relating to people still being entitled to elements of old benefits that were no longer available to new claimants but also being entitled to other benefits from newer programmes with different criteria. The systems simply couldn't cope with the significant number of people who straddled various policy eras.
The only way to have a truly "low-code" benefits system is to select a set of parameters and for politicians to accept that their future policy options are mostly limited to changing the parameters rather than the algorithm for deriving the payment - or creating entirely independent benefits.
This, of course, will never happen - so there is a perpetual accumulation of cruft, however little code you (pretend to) start with.
Re: Low code needs to start at the policy end
The beauty of low code is you can adapt at make changes at a rate of knotts. It's not your traditional truth around time of someone upends a policy. Having worked with Outsystems and Mendix I can confidently say it's more than up to the task.
Re: Low code needs to start at the policy end
The beauty of low code is you can adapt at make changes at a rate of knotts. It's not your traditional truth around time of someone upends a policy.
Well, I'm now totally reassured that the speed of a low code response has no detrimental effect on its quality or accuracy.
Can't wait for this day to come
[...] we can still rise now
And be the nation again
That stood against him
Proud Edward's Army
And sent him homeward
Tae think again
Free Scotland!
Re: Can't wait for this day to come
Born and bred Scot here and this sort of thing just makes me cringe.
it could be hard to tell if it is heading in the right direction
Doesn't matter from the Scottish government's perspective. If it works well, it's due to the brilliance of the devolved powers. If it fails - blame the English.
Low-code and no-code - ultimate examples of fire and forget management?
Ultimately code must be created and run, so the reality is that someone else is writing the code, it's concealed from you and you're blindly taking its quality and security on trust. This is possibly not the safest way of fulfilling your corporate governance obligations.