Universal Discredit: Gov admits Treasury HASN'T signed off biz case

Re: "signed off"?

Things have changed a bit in the last couple of years since I was working in this area of government (currently working in the private sector - exactly the same screw ups but you never hear about them), but big projects typically have several stages to the business case as work to develop it progresses and funding is released.

Given the disaster that is UC, I suspect they are not going along the normal process, but there should have been a strategic business case (SBC or SOBC), an outline business case (OBC) and a full business case (FBC) - its probably the sign off of the full business case (releasing the remaining funding for the project) that has yet to be approved, probably due to missing approval gates from the major project authority and /or complete IT disaster.

Remember, when it comes to the public sector, never assume its deliberate if it can be explained by a screw up.

He believes that everything is A-OK and all will be tickety-boo.

Re: Only asking

"Is GB PLC any different?"

Yes. Any spending on non-BAU contracts over a certain amount (usually on the order of a couple of hundred thousand quid - it depends on department), has to be approved by some combination of the department's executive (e.g. HMRC's ExCom), cabinet office/MPA and HM Treasury.

These days, the signoff process is, on paper, decidedly not terrible. Treasury are quite happy to sign off monthly rolling contracts/work orders in the early days, in line with wider gov't pro-Agile policy. These evolve into bimonthly delivery gates as a project expands before finally committing to a multi-year work package.

Funding, often quite substantial funding, is released at every one of these points, but it's only at that final point of committing to a large work package that the "Strategic Business Case" (SBC) is signed off, and that's what will be referred to here. Prior to that it's simple work orders or provisional/limited business cases, depending on the department and the supplier.

Now, any sharp readers will have spotted the problem here. So we've got monthly/bimonthly delivery gates in the pre-SBC phase. You must be thinking that can't go on for much more than 6-9 months, right? It's a process designed to promote flexible growth/realignment of an early-days project right? Well, yes, you're right. Absolutely right.

And that highlights the problems endemic in some (not all) uk.gov IT procurement. Universal Credit is now a two-and-a-half year old, multi-billion pound project, and yet no one has ever had to submit a document explaining how it's actually going to make the government any money in the long term. It's gotten by, printing money for Atos and co., on drip-feed provisional business cases and emergency work orders.

In this case it is primarily because this is a flagship policy, to which the minister is personally tied. This makes it a sacred cow, so the department will move heaven and earth to throw money at it. However this project also illustrates all the other failures you can see in uk.gov IT procurement. The department don't understand their own Agile delivery framework; neither do the lead SI. The SI have no incentive to deliver on time or to budget. The department don't understand their own requirements. The SI have no intention of helping them develop those requirements.

And, perhaps most damning, the other departments in government supposed to oversee this kind of spending have not stepped in and put a stop to it, due to a mix of the political weight attached to it and frankly (speaking from my own personal experience) not a single one of them actually having the slightest clue how IT actually works - probably a consequence of government IT being 100% outsourced for more than 20 years now. It is frighteningly rare to find someone outside of GDS who doesn't just expect to pay their money and get their product off the shelf.

AC for blindingly obvious reasons.