Civil Service Cuts - Your Joking .....

In October a 'Public Spending Review' is meant to 'slash wasteful expenditure' in the Civil Service etc especially on the IT projects, which are very expensive in the 'Public Sector'.... it's not going to work, and I will illustrate why.

A mole in the local civil service I.T. development centre, informs me of all the waste and scams (which often leave them open mouthed) they come across, and its on the other side of 'a joke'. I was aware of these scenarios myself, as I had left the public sector over a decade ago, but theirs is a more recent account.

Before I can start exposing the lengths they go to to avoid reform or work, I need to first give a few brief technical terms of explanation:

• BA - Business Analyst - A specialist business user, who analyses, defines, documents, and propose solutions for large and/or complex business areas and prepares functional specifications of what the business want from an application or piece of software to be developed.
• PM - Project Manager - A manager, usually but not always from the business who co-ordinates all the work activities required to produce and deliver the required application or piece of software to be developed.
• Other - System Testers, System Analysts, Programmers / Developers, Project Office Management (POM) - other roles - some of which would normally come from within the business, but may come from contract workers e.g. System Analysts,and Programmers / Developers would be contracted in if there were not enough within the business - however the lead in each role should be business provided.

Now we come to the Civil Service I.T. sector .... my mole works on a high profile government project, for one of the major government departments .... as a contractor of course.

The mole reports that :-

• In the face of the department facing 20% to 25% budget cuts it has been busy extending all the contracts until next year, AND recruiting more contractors - apparently this so that they can then 'sack' all these additional contractors, and thus tell the government minister that they have made 20% to 25% budget cuts without actually cutting anything.
• On most of the projects, the Civil service is, through lack of anyone capable, unable to provide even BA's .... so the departments application requirements and development decisions are created by private contractors, who are not specialists of that departments needs.
• This complete lack of Civil Service talents or skills, even extends to not being able to staff the POM - a series of roles which are simply handling paperwork sign off, library functions, time-sheets etc .... very basic administration skills.
• When they tried to use Civil Servants on project tasks, the project immediately fell into arrears and chaos because they were totally incapable of performing any of the tasks - they were replaced with contractors, at four times the costs.
• The contractors are all provided by just one supplier, so its more expensive than the going rate for the same roles in private industry .... also its effectively a closed list of the same faces moving around the sites.
• The mole reports that you can usually spot the Civil Servant desks on site because there are rows of empty desks come 3 pm - they are also the ones who organise round after round of 'meetings' which perform no function other than to stop the civil servant organiser from actually having to do any work. 

Finally the mole told me a story which sums up why the Civil Service is never going to be reformed - recently, in anticipation of the 'cuts' the contractors have been shadowed by a Civil Servant who is to take over from them ..... what a laugh.

The 'shadow' assigned to the 'mole', came in on the Monday and was unhappy with their desk location (it was in the centre where the computer screen could be seen by everyone - so misuse i.e. cruising the Internet all day would be spotted) and went off sick for three days.  When the 'shadow' turned up again at 09:30am on the Thursday, they refused to listen to what the 'mole' was trying to tell them, and kept trying to query old 'signed off' work, instead off dealing with current matters, then they went home at 3pm .... on the Friday they sat with the 'mole' until 11:20am when they announced they were going on an early lunch.  'Mole' asked if they would be back at 12:20pm and was told not until 2pm - the 'mole' finally reported that the 'shadow' failed to turn up at 2pm and had gone home - they had said that they had 'done their weekly hours and had taken 'flexi time' for the afternoon.

Project Management Team



And this shambles is why the Civil Service can't run or deliver any I.T. projects - they have lost any skill base for even the most basic of the functions required to run or deliver a body of I.T. work (the destruction of ITSA, its own IT department was the initial cause of this).

But more pertinently, they have in many project areas, largely lost any culture of work ethic or responsibility, and that's the most damaging loss of them all .....