Capita Week - Day 5 - Swindon

In 2009 Swindon Council's Internal Audit department published a report into the contract management of Capita. The report can be downloaded here.

Some of the issues identified in the report were as follows:

• There have been prolonged performance issues with some services that have not always been resolved on a timely basis. In the case of the Benefits Service, continued performance failures against contractual targets have not been clearly escalated to the Partnership Executive for resolution, where service performance has not increased to contracted levels.

• Key Performance Indicators are produced to measure performance of all transferred services. However, there are significant wider contractual obligations in the service output specifications that must also be delivered by Capita. There is not a consistent method of monitoring whether the partner is delivering these wider obligations.

• It was also found that, in some areas, the client is spending time carrying out activities that should be managed by Capita. The Council needs to resolve these issues, through escalation if necessary and then benchmark the client function to determine if it is under, or over, resourced.

• There is currently little validation of KPIs reported by the partner, but there is evidence of this taking place in Revenues and Benefits and Customer Services. There are three KPIs that are still not being reported, two years into the contract date, due to ongoing issues with management information.

• The Auditor obtained reports on the implementation of similar strategic Capita partnerships in Southampton and Blackburn with Darwen Councils and noted that these Authorities have   experienced very similar issues in contract/relationship management and service delivery.

• It is not clear whether all output specifications that were produced during the final stage of the contract negotiations are still relevant and are an effective mechanism to manage Capita service delivery against.

• The Head of ICT has stated that he does not have the resource to check the number of PC’s replaced by Capita, that are charged to the Council each month as part of the PC replacement programme. This charge can be in excess of £100k each month, depending on the number of PCs claimed. The value of the supply is approximately £400k per annum, which is £6m over the life of the contract.

Some of the risks identified in the report include:

• The Council pays for PCs that have not actually been replaced.
• Focus is on delivery of KPIs and other contract obligations are not met by the Partner 
• The Council does not know if the overall required level of service is being delivered. 
• The Council pays for services that are not received.

Now overall this report suggests there are problems on both sides. What worries me is that in a contract of the size One Barnet, unless the Council are all over Capita, we may see exactly the same problems arise. That fact that the Internal Audit found that Southampton and Blackburn had experienced similar problems in contract management and service delivery as Swindon suggests that Barnet may also experience those problems. Given that Barnet are operating to the "thin client" model where monitoring resources are very limited if I were a betting man I would say it looks odds on that these problems will occur.

Experience leads me to have no confidence in Barnet's ability to monitor this contract successfully and therefore I suspect that role will yet again fall to the concerned residents rather than the senior officers or councillors who are rewarded handsomely for this role. We will all need to be all over Capita and the Councillors to ensure that residents get the services we need rather than what we are served up.

Capita Week - Day Three - Staff Morale

With so many Barnet staff being transferred over to Capita  (along with 200+ being made redundant) I thought I would look and see what staff say about Capita. Some staff seem happy enough but many staff seem deeply dissatisfied.

This link is to a website of reviews by Capita staff. Some of the comments are good but many are not and include the following:

• "Frustrating inability to deliver tools to do job"
• "A living nightmare, apart from some good co workers"
• "Under values employees, vast pay inequalities"
• "Frustrating"
• "Soulless business only interested in the number"
• "Shambolic Management"
• "Capita needs to be employee centric and not management centric"
• "Good work/life balance however they pay extremely poor salaries"
• "Good!! I spent 7 years with Capita & it is an experience I will remember for the rest of my life" (employee in Mumbai)
• "Excellent place to work"

 In August this year Capita's IT services staff voted to go on strike after they were notified of redundancies as jobs are moved to India. At present there are no plans to move Barnet jobs overseas, but will that promise still hold when cost savings are under pressure?

Capita is a FTSE 100 PLC. It has shareholders to keep happy and as a result it will do what is right for them. However, that may conflict with the objectives of a local authority and it may offer a completely different culture for staff. I hope that Capita can deliver on the promises in their bid but I suspect that many of the comments above may be echoed around NLBP once Capita take over. Happy and motivated staff are best placed to deliver great service. If staff are unhappy it will be much harder for residents to receive the service they deserve. Maybe that is why there is a major focus on replacing people with technology.