Unpeeling the Fluff - Layer by Layer - Part 4
The investigation of 9/4000+ government contracts
In Failed Covid Contracts, we provided examples of contracts awarded to various bodies by sundry governmental agencies during the madness of 2020-21.
Failed Covid Contracts
On June 2, the UK’s HM Treasury published, to little media attention, a report revealing the multibillion-pound price British taxpayers paid for the reckless handling of Covid contracts.
We used Contract Finder, a helpful tool that identified nine of the most atypical contracts we could find. They all have some common features. High value, all together £249,283,153 of our money, lack of clarity as to what the tender was about, all issued during the panicky 2020-21 period and, most of all, lack of visible deliverables.
In other words: what did we get for a quarter of a billion? How did Joe or Jane Taxpayer benefit from all of this kerfuffle?
We crafted nine FOI requests related to the nine tenders, essentially asking the same question: what did we receive for our money?
This post is about a 2 year contract worth “£30,000,000 to £25,000,000” awarded to Accenture LTD in 2022. The contract is called Digital Test Service Phase 3
In this series, we keep you informed about our efforts to hold these bodies accountable for their actions. We number them 1 to 9. Any answers (we shall be so lucky) or subsequent substantive activity (so, not receipts) will be numbered 2a, 2b and so on.
Here is the first attempt at finding out more about the fourth contract on our list.
We sent the same request to Public Health England as it assumed responsibility for all functions previously held by NHS Digital.
We are trying to understand how bankrupt we are and why. The TTE office would like to know what the deliverables were and where we can see what the taxpayer got for £30,000,000.
The Announcement provides some general statements of requirement, wrapped in the usual jargon (“core testing platform”).
However there is no supplementary material so we have no way of knowing what we got for our cash, unless, maybe, we ask.
This post was written by two dogged old geezers who would like to know why all the contracts are not being investigated, as a practical alternative to political hand-wringing.
Did you see the Fools and Horses when Mike was told by the brewery to get estimates for decorating the pub. He was about to pass on Paddy's quote for £2,00 until Del Boy explained to him that £6,000 would be better: " two thousand for vous, two thousand for me, and we give the job to the Irishman". Probably why they can't cancel HS2 - no refunds available!
"Core Services (Core): Core exposes the core services that stores [sic] subject (citizens) [apostrophe?] data and test data such as when and where a test was conducted. Providing [grammar?] this data to downstream systems to match test results for further distribution to GPs and PHE and subsequent Authority systems."
As usual, the people who write this guff are close to illiterate. But I know how to read a requirement through the project guff.
Could set you up the data structures for this on SQL Server in about 2 hours. Add in a DBA/sysadmin to handle load-balancing/backup, a security geek to manage that bit, and maybe a project manager to insulate the rest of us from the idiot client. Job done. Let's say £1000/day each (well _above_ my usual rate), 4 people. Maybe 2 months' work? Someone make that add up to a third of £30m, please, my maths doesn't extend to Transfinite Govt-Contract Calculus.