Management of UK govt's £158b property estate held back by failed IT project
- Reference: 1671794945
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/12/23/management_of_uk_governments_158/
- Source link:
According to [1]a report from MPs , Cabinet Office, which helps run cross-departmental government, does not have the data or IT system necessary to oversee and manage the government estate, which costs around £22 billion ($26 billion) a year to maintain.
[2]
The building of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, Whitehall – one of the most valuable properties in the state's portfolio
“Good data is essential so that government can manage and maintain its property efficiently. In 2020, the Cabinet Office shifted from collecting data on the civil estate, such as offices and warehouses, to collecting data on all government property, including for example, hospitals and schools. However, the existing government property database, the seventeen-year-old ePIMS system, is unable to accommodate this additional data,” the report from the Public Accounts Committee said.
The plague of ageing, inadequate data systems strikes again, this time at the heart of Government’s £158 billion property estate
Following a series of hearings, the committee concluded the Cabinet Office’s efforts to update its system have so far been unsuccessful. “Until the new system is up and running, the Cabinet Office will continue manually collecting property data from departments,” it said.
Government property management current relies on the ePIMS system, which has been in place since 2005 but is not capable of handling the data for 136,000 properties, including schools and hospitals under the expanded remit.
In 2018, Cabinet Office announced its replacement, called inSite to be built by a supplier called Landmark Solutions. “The Cabinet Office told us that it considered commercially available systems in 2018 but believed off-the-shelf options, at the time, were not capable of receiving data from 160 different bodies across government,” the PAC report said.
[3]
But the bespoke system soon hit trouble in its development. Citing staffing problems, Landmark Solutions did not complete the inSite project, even when granted an extension. The Cabinet Office terminated the contract in July 2022, by which point it had paid out £880,000 of the £1.3 million ($1-1.5 million) contract.
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“The Cabinet Office told us that it negotiated a termination agreement with Landmark. Landmark has subsequently repaid £300,000 ($360,000) and the Cabinet Office has retained the software licenses already purchased and the work Landmark has undertaken to date. This consists of 140 webpages that can be used to enter information about property assets.”
However, the procurement to find another supplier also seems to be hitting problems. When the Cabinet Office recently “soft-tested” the procurement, the organisation which came forward was unable to meet the Cabinet Office’s due diligence or provide confidence that it could complete the inSite project. It is yet to say when the replacement database will be ready and how much it might cost, primarily because it is yet to engage a supplier. All this does not bode well for the government meeting its declared aim of cutting annual estate running costs by £500 million ($600 million).
[8]
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, deputy chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “The plague of ageing, inadequate data systems strikes again, this time at the heart of Government’s £158 billion property estate. A stalled £1 million IT upgrade is hampering savings reform across a property portfolio that costs the taxpayer about £22 billion a year to maintain.” ®
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[1] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmpubacc/48/report.html
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/12/22/shutterstock_foreign_office_building_london.jpg
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y6XetOtm4@qu2G8CFWWa8wAAANU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/20/tsb_fine/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/16/return_to_office/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/16/cyrusone_coresite/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/02/salesforce_office_worker_return/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y6XetOtm4@qu2G8CFWWa8wAAANU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Requirements analysis?
Well it is true that managing that many cells in Excel can be demanding!!!
So they wasted £2 million
Well, it looks like there's room for Oracle (or SAS) to hoover up a cool £50 million over five years, assorted with all the usual promises and below-par delivery.
Oh wait, I was confused with IBM.
Oracle delivers, it's only after delivery that it bleeds you dry in licencing costs.
ePIMS
Why do I fancy a Pimms now O_O
The obsession with data is unhealthy.
In asset management, which is what this is, the starting point is what decisions do you need to make; and then only then, to determine what data is needed to support it.
By starting with data you go down a rabbit hole of infinite requirements and zero direction.
Speaking from experience.
However this is the usual route.
Pen-pushers believe that the answer to everything like this is to collect data.
Usually they don't even know what they want to collect so just chuck a random list as the poor sods that have to find it and then enter it.
“The Cabinet Office told us that it considered commercially available systems in 2018 but believed off-the-shelf options, at the time, were not capable of receiving data from 160 different bodies across government,” the PAC report said.
Why does the number of data sources matter?
All you need to do is specify a standard that everybody will supply the data in, preferably something like CSV that's boring, reliable and universally understood and supported. Then you have one data format and 160 import jobs a month. If they get emailed in monthly then you want an email parser to save each attachment in a specified file system location, and then schedule run an import script to import from that location periodically.
Even if 160 different departments are providing the data via email in 160 different formats and you can't change the incoming formats then as so long as you know what's coming each month then switching it to a single format is merely tedious and time consuming to write the definitions, not technically challenging. Lets say that it takes one person one day to figure out what data is what and specifying put this in column1, this in column 2 etc, one day for programming it and one day testing it works and picking up on any faults afterwards then for 160 data sources that's 7 months work for 3 people; or 3.5 months work for 6 people.
How the hell do organisations manage to spend millions and multiple years doing these things? Even if you'd got one person doing the job it ought to be done in two years, even including holidays etc.
A failed government IT contract? Shome mishtake shurely
Requirements analysis?
The statement "In 2020, the Cabinet Office shifted from collecting data on the civil estate, such as offices and warehouses, to collecting data on all government property, including for example, hospitals and schools. However, the existing government property database, the seventeen-year-old ePIMS system, is unable to accommodate this additional data" suggests to me that their requirements analysis was inadequate, or, possibly completely lacking.
I suppose I should be happy that at least they are doing due diligence on alternative IT suppliers, after the first one failed, but this does look a bit like a minister having a 'good idea' about combining all of the management and data for the whole of HMG's buildings under one management to 'save money' without having thought it through.