Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle
- Reference: 1697790607
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/10/20/royal_college_excel_blunder/
- Source link:
Last week [1]The Register exclusively revealed that the body responsible for recruitment – the Anaesthetic National Recruitment Office (ANRO) – told all candidates for positions in Wales they were "unappointable" despite some of them achieving the highest interview scores.
A subsequent Significant Incident Review showed how seven differently formatted spreadsheets were combined into one using manual processes. An error meant "rank" was confused with the interview score, and the best candidate got a score of one. Since there were only 24 candidates, all were considered below the threshold interview score to be considered appointable.
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In an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Royal College of Anaesthetists this week, the body responsible for training and accreditation for UK doctors in the specialism [3]voted to consider if there is evidence that the doctors at ANRO acted according to the guidelines of the General Medical Council (GMC) when it comes to their management responsibilities. It also voted to consider whether it has confidence in ANRO. An overwhelming majority carried the motion.
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ANRO only disclosed the outcome of its investigation following a Freedom of Information request from Richards Marks, a former consultant anesthetist in the NHS and former vice president of the Royal College.
[6]UK government slammed for Palantir 'free trial period' deal in Ukraine housing scheme
[7]Excel Hell II: If the sickness can't be fixed, it must be contained
[8]Excel recruitment time bomb makes top trainee doctors 'unappointable'
[9]It's time to celebrate the abysmal efforts to go paperless in the NHS
Proposing the motion at this week's meeting, Dr Marks said: "I'm no expert on HR software, but I do know that manually copying and pasting from seven different Excel sheets, all laid out in different ways, is bound to go wrong one day. So who set up the system? Who set up the QA processes and the staff training?"
The Royal College voted to consider whether HR records were not kept clearly and accurately, and whether adequate auditing and benchmarking systems were in place. The General Medical Council (GMC) registers doctors in the UK and can strike them off if they do not meet its standards.
"The GMC has a whole booklet on leadership and management, covering what it terms 'doctors with extra responsibilities.' And as you would expect, it mentions things like ensuring HR records are kept accurately, ensuring audit and benchmarking processes are in place, and that delegation and supervision are appropriate," Dr Marks told the meeting.
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The final part of the motion was designed to hold ANRO's senior management to account for the debacle. "Not the junior tasked with manually copying and pasting from sheet to sheet: we don't need more copy and pasters. We need senior management that know what they're doing, who realize that this is not, and never was, the way to run an HR system," he said.
The Register has contacted NHS England to give it the opportunity to respond. The health service quango took ANRO under its wing via the merger of Health Education England. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/excel_anesthetist_recruitment_blunder/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZTJPyQKMdSD8Vr8M8XNqHAAAAoc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://rcoa.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/2023-09/EGM-briefing2023.pdf
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZTJPyQKMdSD8Vr8M8XNqHAAAAoc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZTJPyQKMdSD8Vr8M8XNqHAAAAoc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/17/uk_government_slammed_for_palantir/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/16/excel_hell_comment/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/excel_anesthetist_recruitment_blunder/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/05/pick_your_year_its_time/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZTJPyQKMdSD8Vr8M8XNqHAAAAoc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
"None of this means "the government was asleep on the job"."
Well actually it does. ANRO are part of Health Education England, and were an executive body within the Department of Health & Social Care, based out of the government hub in Birmingham. In the timescale of both clangers (see post below), HEE were being merged with NHSE (also an executive body within the Department of Health & Social Care) as part of the stupid, misguided changes instigated by that disgusting little twerp Hancock, so over the past two years staff have been operating with poor morale, no clarity on their future*, and leadership and management structures that are as clear as mud. Those changes were made specifically so that Hancock and his sub-par successors could have more direct control over the NHS in totality, so perhaps "asleep" is not the right term, but in terms of ultimate accountability yes, it is the miserable, bumbling, lying government we currently have.
* The NHSE reorganisation was announced and accompanied by statements of intent to get rid of 10k+ employees. The whole reorganisation has been a mismanaged, barely legal screwup, and many staff have been heavily paid off (usually to their great satisfaction), only to hear that the team they've left is having to re-recruit because it turned out that the work did in fact need doing.
Experts
The proposer: "I'm no expert on HR software, but I do know that manually copying and pasting from seven different Excel sheets, all laid out in different ways, is bound to go wrong one day."
No, I think that does qualify you as an expert.
Re: Experts
Excel is an excellent and very powerful tool, and to mangle a phrase: "When you have Excel, everything looks like a spreadsheet".
It's not an appropriate solution for anything that needs a rock-solid paper trail or anything covering sensitive information, however.
(Not that I probably couldn't have done a better job or anything, even if it had to be in Excel for some reason)
Re: Experts
Excel would have been entirely adequate, but it shouldn't have been visible as a spreadsheet to users. The problem is, creating a web interface, or configuring macros and Sharepoint settings to achieve the desired result with reasonable security and auditability is a high degree of expertise that would not have been held in a user team. They probably didn't understand the data processing requirements properly, and if they had, and had asked for the boss to hire a competent developer, they'd have been told "no, that'll be too expensive and too slow, just use copy and paste".
We've all seen what happens with Excel when needs get even moderately complex - cells merged that mess up future changes, faulty formula, idiots messing up formatting and layout, then somebody does something clever with a pivot table that nobody else understands, no documentation, lack of or troublesome field validation, crap macros....but that doesn't mean it couldn't have worked if properly planned. Trouble is, they'd rather pay an admin clerk a pittance and hope they sought it out, rather than pay a dev a decent wage to create a proper solution.
Is it me, or is the reporting sub-par?
It isn't very clear from the two Reg articles, but from the ANRO web site it seems that the latest fiasco is a repeat event. The first bungling took place in late 2021, the most recent in Feb 2023. In both cases it was down to poor processes and lack of holiday control*, so despite the claim that "lessons were learned" in response to the 2021 mess, they clearly were not. I fail to understand why ANRO is a discrete entity within HEE - surely all CT1 roles should be managed by a single (competent) team, regardless of the specialism?
* Oh, and "staff working from home" was allegedly a contributory factor, because natch it wasn't down to poor supervision or inadequate leadership.
Re: Is it me, or is the reporting sub-par?
"and lack of quality control".
Like my own post on the matter. I'd downvote myself if I could.
Re: Is it me, or is the reporting sub-par?
You’ll never go far in the civil service with an attitude like that
Oooohhh - a vote of no confidence. I bet they're really scared.
None of this means "the government was asleep on the job". The government doesn't manage data transmission between different health bodies, those health bodies manage that. And, in the article itselt, nowhere does it mention anything about the government, it clearly solely identifies the responsibility with the management of the various bodies directing the data movements. "Incompetent driver drives into wall, government at fault"?