UK government awards £3.6bn management consultancy deals amid scrutiny of rising external expertise spending
- Reference: 1632990544
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/09/30/uk_governments_awards_36bn_consultancies/
- Source link:
Mammoth accounting and consultancy firm Accenture is one of the big winners in the tendering round, which dates back to 2019, racking up a maximum of £2.6bn in government contracts.
The [1]contract award notice describes nine lots under the Management Consultancy Framework Three (MCF3) deal put together by the Cabinet Office through the Crown Commercial Service, its buying agency that takes a 1 per cent commission on all the money spent via agreements it organises.
[2]
The deal includes lots addressing business, finance, HR, procurement, environmental services but also looks at strategy and policy, and transformation and infrastructure including transport. These involve IT categories such as information systems or technology strategic review and planning services, software programming and consultancy services, hardware consultancy services, business analysis consultancy services, and information systems or technology strategic review and planning services.
Contract winners
Accenture, accounting, consultancy, outsourcing: up to £2.6bn
Agilisys, an IT software and business services firm: up to £1bn
4C Associates, a procurement consultancy: up to £700m
6 Point 6, a computer support and services firm: up to £500m
The PSC, a public service consultancy: up to £500m
The 4OC, a change management consultancy: up to £250m
AA Projects, a management and property consultancy: up to £700m
Agilia, an infrastructure consultancy: up to £1.2bn
Actica Consulting, a business management consultant: up to £250m
AECOM, engineering and infrastructure firm: up to £1.25bn
31ten Consulting Limited, a public sector consultancy: up to £250m
Albany Beck Consultancy Services, business management: up to £700m
Alchemmy Consulting, business management: up to £700m
Accenture has won across lots including IT, but also those involving finance and procurement, a move bound to raise questions over its ability to influence future IT purchasing decisions. For a full list of winners and how much they can potentially bill for, see the grey box.
The official notice says the framework is for "objective advice relating to strategy, structure, management or operations of an organisation", and adds: "This included identification of options with recommendations as well as implementation and delivery."
[3]
[4]
Buyers on the framework could be any UK public sector bodies – this means central government departments and their arm's length bodies and agencies, local government, health, education, police, fire and rescue, housing associations and charities.
Government spending on consultancy work has come under the spotlight in recent months. [5]The Register recently revealed management consultancy McKinsey appears to be well-placed to influence UK government's future technology strategy after winning a £3m, eight-week contract to build business cases ahead of the Spending Review '21.
[6]Yet another Big Tech exec heads to central government: This time IBMer Dan Bailey in 6-month stint
[7]£3m for 8 weeks of consultancy work: McKinsey given contract to advise UK.gov on tech project business cases
[8]Five consultancies with severe branding difficulties win spots on UK government's £580m 'transformation' services framework
[9]Consultants bag £375m for their role in developing the UK's faltering COVID-19 Test and Trace system
[10]So lemme get this straight. UK.gov ministries are getting better value from AWS... by spending more on AWS?
[11]North of England NHS buyers name IT consultants who got in on £200m framework deal
[12]Writing in the Guardian , Rosie Collington of UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose and Mariana Mazzucato, professor of economics at UCL, argued that UK state's spending on consultancy had rocketed in the past five years – with Brexit and the pandemic making the trade lucrative for these advisors.
Between 2017 and 2020, approximately £450m was spent on consulting fees related to Brexit by government departments, with the receipts for COVID-19 contracts coming in at over £600m. These figures alone could pay the salaries of more than 10,000 civil servants for three years – and total spending on consultants across the public sector is much higher, they said.
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In September last year, Cabinet Office and Treasury minister Lord Agnew, a public exponent of SMEs and a fierce critic of large consultancies, [14]reportedly wrote to senior civil servants saying Whitehall has been "infantilised" by an "unacceptable" reliance on expensive management consultants. [15]Agnew is behind the new Government Consulting Hub, launched in May, which is aimed at "reduc[ing] the amount that the government spends on consultancy, maximising value where consultants are really needed and upskilling civil servants to deliver consultancy-type work."
He was said to not be involved in the appointment of McKinsey, or more recently the [16]hiring of an IBM CTO into an advisory role for hybrid cloud and the formation of a UK government cloud council. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:490415-2021:TEXT:EN:HTML
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YVWK54WPNZwciZ@uUWQ@hgAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YVWK54WPNZwciZ@uUWQ@hgAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YVWK54WPNZwciZ@uUWQ@hgAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/13/mckinsey_awarded_3m_8_week_contract/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/27/ibm_exec_moves_central_government/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/13/mckinsey_awarded_3m_8_week_contract/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/07/uk_gov_580m_framework/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/06/uk_test_and_trace_consultants/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/17/aws_dwp/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/22/north_of_england_nhs_buys/
[12] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/20/britain-public-sector-consultancy-habit-pandemic-private-services
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YVWK54WPNZwciZ@uUWQ@hgAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/29/whitehall-infantilised-by-reliance-on-consultants-minister-claims
[15] https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2021-05-20/debates/21052013000005/GovernmentConsultingHub
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/27/ibm_exec_moves_central_government/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Grey box
" ....they either don't have anyone who can formulate a contract or in order to be seen to be doing something they scatter contracts .... "
On the other hand, we must consider the quality of the advice. Experience to date suggests that Govt. doesn't generally get what it thinks it's paying for. I've been subjected to some of these consultancies when they've been brought in on assignments I've headed, and I've often found they've sent in nattily suited jargon spouting young men who actually deliver like interns.
The fundamental problem is that if you aren't an expert you can't really judge the expertise of those you hire, so promo takes precedence in the decision making. The folks actually doing the procurement are not sufficiently expert and haven't engaged with the necessary experts internally. It's a great pity that past performance doesn't get considered sufficiently though.
Re: Grey box
Don't forget the old trick of presenting actual experts in the tender process and then when it comes to delivering, just throwing fresh faced grads at the problem
Exactly that Mike, how can anyone foemulate a contract without the expert knowledeg of what is required.
I was involved with tendering for local government contracts in the ninieties, neither my bosses who wre ex council EOs or the incumbent EOs inthe council fully understood what the tender required on the one hand or how to estimate and compile the tender on the other.
It came down to me to advise both sides and do a lot of the donkey work, an absurd situation that was potentially a conflict of interests, aside from beingvwork above my pay grade.
SMEs?
This is confusing. Some of those companies are SMEs and have been awarded contracts of hundreds of millions of pounds?
Re: SMEs?
Possibly a conflict of acronyms - SME can mean "Small to Medium Enterprise", but it can also mean "Subject Matter Expert". In this context I suspect the latter.
Nice Picture
Nice piccie on the home page about this article about more dodgy Govt 'consultancy' deals - wads of £50 notes.
Well known fact - the only people who use £50 notes are drug dealers and forgers. That's why most shops won't accept them.
When I can no longer do ASIC design, I know what I'm going to blag myself into.
Another day ..... another few billion announced
Just waiting for the day when they announce that they are working on procurement for a new strategy to deal with all the procurement strategies they've bought.
It appears that an infinite amount of advice is required in order for government to understand that you can automate administrative processes with IT systems.
Grey box
The grey box in the article tots up to over ten billion pounds worth of consultancy contracts.
All I can say is the UK goverment ought to one of theost well advised on the planet, the future must be looking very rosy for the UK.
On the other hand the record tends to indicate the UK gov' has little success in outsourcing because they either don't have anyone who can formulate a contract or in order to be seen to be doing something they scatter contracts like throwing bread to the ducks.