Three Year Managers For Ten Year Projects - Dearnley's Binary Revolution

My thanks to the loyal reader who penned this most excellent analysis about Dearnley and the "binary revolution" in HMRC:

"Dearnley is a probably being economical with the actualité like so many members of HMRC’s Ex Com.

The constant shouting of the word 'Digital' to describe their IT strategy should immediately ring alarm bells since by their very nature all the Departments computers have been digital (ie using binary compiled code) since the date the Inland Revenue bought their very first LEO machine second hand from Joe Lyons in the 1960s. As a consequence the Revenue could claim to have digitised most of its work decades ago. It would be nice to see such obvious bullshit occasionally challenged at places like PAC.

More seriously, while Dearnley frequently likes to boast about his speedy roll out of Windows 7 to all HMRC desktops he negelects to mention that in the process it has broken loads of applications, created many problems and generated thousands of lost man hours of work

With regard to the problem of 'legacy' systems Dearnley seems to fail to understand or deliberately ignores the basic issue that all IT applications fall into that category the moment they hit the live metal and start running in anger. It does not matter whether they are 5 minutes old or 5 years old they all have to be maintained and they all face the issue that the software and hardware on which they were designed and run is sooner or later out of date. Moreover, political events and changes to legislation will mean the functionality is going to have to be constantly updated and enhanced.

It is certainly true that HMRC over the years has wound up with a huge IT estate running a wide range of different platforms, operating systems and applications. However, the people largely responsible for that situation are not the Revenues IT suppliers but the Board of HMRC itself, including individual like Dearnley and Pavitt who have constantly changed the core IT strategy. For example, a few years ago the mantra coming out of Ex Com was that HMRC was to buy not build its software so they invested massively in various proprietary COTS packages, many of which were costly and often incompatible with the Revenues needs so had to be expensively customised. Now the pendulum has swung completely the opposite way and HMRC now are betting the whole shooting match on Open Source systems and bespoke applications written in house. That punt may come off but it is a very high risk strategy particularly as much of the software being used is largely untried and unproven for running major government systems and the in house HMRC 'Digital' Teams in Newcastle and elsewhere have no experience of delivering and supporting systems on that scale. In addition, there is the very real worry that Dearnley appears to be funding his ambitions by stripping out investment in maintaining and supporting the existing legacy estate which still runs 99% of HMRC systems. If his grand schemes come to nothing then the Revenue could end up with the worst of all worlds with new systems not fit for purpose and old applications needing costly large scale upgrades to keep them running.

The suspicion is that Dearnley who spent a mere three years at Vodafone before cutting and running to HMRC in 2013 will do exactly the same thing to the Revenue when his contract expires in 2016. Unfortunately, by then HMRC may find its IT has been well and truly scuppered."

Ironically Accountancy Age, on the very same day as my article about Dearnley, wrote about outsourced tax credit Concentrix staff in Belfast being paid millions (approx £72M) to do nothing for three months as a result of a systemic HMRC IT failure.

Let us trust that Dearnley (if he is actually competent) doesn't regard this as merely a two/three year stepping stone role on his career path.

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

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To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



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Mark Dearnley Lives In The Past

Mark Dearnley, CIO of HMRC, recently gave an interview to CIO which was rather revealing.

He joined from Vodafone (there's irony for you) in 2013, and described his role as "nothing short of transforming a centuries-old organisation into a digital, modern, real time business".

Errmmm, HMRC is not centuries old; it was formed by Broon in 2005!

Anyhoo, that little snafu aside, Dearnley acknowledges the challenge presented by legacy systems, a long-standing issue for HMRC IT chiefs. He says he would like to consolidate tax systems from over 100 to "one or two".

Yet he regards the platforms used by HMRC as being fine, and rejects the idea they are somehow "bad platforms".

"This nation has survived and brought in trillions of pounds worth of tax on these platforms."

Yes, but just because something once worked it may no longer be fit for purpose now; given that people's working patterns have changed (eg multiple sources of income).

In fact he appears to be enamoured with batch processing:

"Is real-time brilliant and batch terrible? 

That's the wrong question. 

There are things for which batch is fine. 

There are other things where you need real-time updates."

He intends to cobble together old and new:

"Some of that will use things that are new. Some of that will take advantage of some of the great things that have been developed over the years.

There's no 'oh it's not new so it must be bad' - there's actually 'if it's ideal for the role let's build on it'.

He is also of the view that he has more than other Whitehall departments:

"Most people underestimate how much talent we have within HMRC.

It would appear we actually have more than some other parts of government. 

I have thousands of civil servants. We already run all of the platforms that collect 40% of the UK's tax. And I've managed to create what I think is quite a fantastic leadership team."

He waxed lyrical about the new team in Newcastle, which has moved tax credits renewals online in just eight weeks in start to finish Dearnley claims.

"We set up a Scrum team and said: 'Go and see what you can do, you've got eight weeks'. They built a complete tax credits renewals service in eight weeks from start to finish, and we integrated it in real time to all the back-end systems.

That went live in eight weeks. We thought if it went really well, maybe 80,000 people would use it during renewals – 410,000 people used it. I think we had about a 94% customer satisfaction rate, which is absolutely phenomenal."

Hmm, what say you loyal readers?

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Failure Is Key To HMRC Strategy - Pimping Out Its Front End

Phil Pavitt, former CIO of HMRC, has put his head above the parapet and claimed that many government departments (including HMRC) are likely to fail in their quest to be truly digital because they are still reliant on legacy systems.

Pavitt, now CIO of Specsavers, was speaking at Nimbus Ninety's Ignite conference.

He is quoted by Computing:

"Where the UK government has played it wrong in many of its departments, is that it has pimped out its front-end, but it has not changed its legacy engines - that is not truly digital.

That will fundamentally catch them out as it has caught out many companies in the UK and Europe already.

People think digital is having an app - that's why people are getting it wrong and I know because I've worked for government for so many years, and for so many years they thought that the app was the front bit, but actually it's the whole experience."

Interesting, if you read carefully what he says, he is basically saying that despite working for government for so many years he was not able to influence the incorrect mindset of the government.

A sad legacy indeed!

Pavitt then went on to talk specifically about HMRC:

"It's one of the largest government bodies that's online anywhere in the world, but you try to do your taxes online - it's not the easiest thing is it?"

Adding that failure was a key part of any digital strategy - something he emphasised in his first presentation at HMRC:

"I said ‘we are going to make so many mistakes it is going to be painful, we are going to be on a Daily Mail front headline and indeed we were several times."

Warming to his theme he then had a well deserved pop at consultants:

"The consultants that sell that to you are lying to you, they are selling their goods. It's about the ease of the user, and the subtlety is small but significant.

Most organisations say that you have to spend a whole pile of money to do this, and I've personally never had that experience; I believe it's a fundamental lie from the IT supplier industry in that space.  

Digital is something that has to come from the legacy engine to the very front end and if your digital stack doesn't do that or you're told you can only do it with a huge investment, that's not true."

In a nut shell:

- HMRC has wasted a large amount of money

- HMRC will fail, because its legacy systems are crap

- Pavitt was ignored when he worked for HMRC

Hindsight is wonderful when you have left for the private sector!

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Hall Outlines HMRC's Challenges Ahead

Mark Hall, HMRC's outgoing Chief Information Officer (CIO) has given his incoming replacement (Mark Dearnley) some advice about the major challenges facing HMRC for when he arrives in October from Vodafone.

HMRC is currently working on systems consolidation that will reduce the number of systems serving the former Customs & Excise side of the organisation by 300. Hall states in Computing that part of the aim of the consolidation programmes has been to clear the way to put more taxes online, in a more integrated manner as HMRC aims for the "cloud".

Hall is quoted:

"We already have 200 online services. These are primarily targeted at business 'customers'. They are things like VAT, for example, or they are targeting things like self-assessment. Our ambition is to consolidate them even further and start to look at individual and personal taxpayers in the next wave of digitisation." 

HMRC hopes that the digitisation process will cut the number of paper filings and phone calls taxpayers have to make to HMRC and, therefore, will eventually save some £50M annually in administrative costs.

As per Hall:

"Going forward, we will be targeting our personal tax customers more. We have four key exemplar projects we are running in this area. The first one is PAYE [pay as you earn] online, which will ultimately deliver an online service to 39 million individual taxpayers.

You could go online to inform us that you have got a new company car, for example, so the service is targeted at providing the information you already get on paper, but in an online experience, and giving people a simple route to log simple changes and changes of circumstances.

The second one is called 'My Tax for Business', which will provide an online portal for business so that they can see all of their taxes in one place - a bit like online banking... If you're a business, you will be able to go into one place and administer all your taxes from one place.

The third one is paperless self-assessment. Self-assessment is already online, but you still receive a piece of paper asking you to file.

The final one is for agents and intermediaries, to enable them to act and support their customers in a similar way. As their customers have moved online, we need to move agents online as well - enabling the agents to do the same thing as their clients."

These projects are very ambitious, especially given that HMRC are still in the process of rolling out RTI. In Hall's opinion RTI is:

"absolutely on track".

So there we are, the new CIO has quite a task ahead of him; it is therefore very kind of Hall to help guide Dearnley in this manner.

My question to the staff members of HMRC, how are the above projects going thus far?

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Poacher Turned Gamekeeper

My thanks to a loyal reader who pointed me to a press release that HMRC issued yesterday, concerning the appointment of a new HMRC Chief Information Office (CIO), Mark Dearnley.

Dearnley comes from the private sector from a company that loyal readers may well have heard of........Vodafone....cough!

Sadly I see he refers to HMRC as having a "customer base", oh dear!

Anyhoo, Dearnley has quite a task ahead of him as CIO's within HMRC don't seem to last the course. Phil Pavitt moved from the role in October 2012, then left HMRC in November and his acting replacement, Mark Hall, evidently didn't cut the mustard.

Does anyone know what has happened to Mark Hall, ie is he still in HMRC?

I ask because rumours abound that he was not best pleased at being snubbed.

HMRC won't say why Hall had been denied the promotion to CIO, as per Computer Weekly:

“The CIO recruitment process was subject to fair and open competition overseen by a civil service commissioner. Following a rigorous and transparent selection process, an external candidate was chosen. We do not comment on individuals who may have been on the interview panel. Mark’s replacement as CIO will be announced in due course,”

It also appears that the role of CIO is being downgraded across Whitehall.

Interesting times ahead methinks!

Anyhoo, here is the press release from HMRC:

"HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has announced the appointment of one of the country’s leading IT chiefs as the department’s new Chief Digital and Information Officer.

Mark Dearnley, who is currently the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Vodafone UK, is joining HMRC in October. He will take control of a £500 million-a-year IT operation that serves 45 million individuals, 4.8 million businesses and 65,000 HMRC employees. He will be responsible for implementing HMRC’s £200 million digitisation programme and accelerating the planned delivery of online services for all taxpayers. He will also lead HMRC’s physical, personnel and information security.

Mr Dearnley has been CIO at Vodafone UK since 2010 with responsibility for IT supporting 19 million customers. He led a programme to overhaul Vodafone’s business-critical information systems and was named Oracle Global Business Unit CIO of the Year in 2012 for this achievement. Mr Dearnley also restructured Vodafone’s IT operating model and introduced Cloud-based technologies into the mobile operator. 

David Gauke, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, said:
“It is an indication of the scale and seriousness of the Government’s digital ambition that one of the UK’s most experienced CIOs is leaving the private sector to take on this major role. Mark Dearnley’s appointment to HMRC is evidence that Government has the cutting-edge challenges that can attract the very best leaders in IT to public service.”

HMRC Chief Executive, Lin Homer, added:
“Mark is an exceptionally experienced CIO, with strong leadership and change management skills as well as an accomplished technical background across a spectrum of IT disciplines. HMRC has already embarked on an ambitious programme of digitisation to provide taxpayers with modern online services and Mark is the right person to deliver that for the UK.”

Mark Dearnley said: 
“I have spent my entire career in the private sector, mostly in customer-facing businesses. But no private business in the UK can match the customer base, scale or complexity of HMRC, which makes this role irresistible. I am thrilled to have been appointed and can’t wait to get started.”

Notes for editors:

1. Mr Dearnley was recruited through a fair and open competition under the Government’s business appointment procedures for senior civil servants. The recruitment process was overseen by the Civil Service Commissioner, who led a panel that included two Permanent Secretaries and a Non-Executive Director. The UK Government Chief Operating Officer was consulted throughout the process. The appointment was approved by the Prime Minister.
2. The annual salary for this Director General role is £180,000, which is at the Senior Civil Service (SCS) 3 pay band.
3. Mr Dearnley is CIO of Vodafone UK, where his primary focus is using IT to improve the customer experience. He has worked internationally in the telecoms industry over the last decade.
4. Prior to Vodafone, Mr Dearnley spent six years at Cable and Wireless, as CIO and in other senior IT roles. He also spent three years at Boots the Chemists, first as Chief Operating Officer for the start-up of Boots.com and latterly as Programme Director.
5. He has a degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Brunel University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology and British Computer Society."

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"