Guernsey has spent £21million on an IT transformation programme that delivered nothing beneficial to the island.
The MyGov programme might have delivered “tenous” benefits worth just £1.3m, but those outcomes had nothing to do with the intended aims of the original project.
The man tasked with finding out what went wrong has now described the MyGov situation as “an absolute disaster”.
The States’ Chief Executive and Head of the Public Service has written a report – which he takes full ownership of – that outlines exactly how bad the MyGov situation is, and what can be done to rectify the situation now, and to prevent it happening again.
Boley Smillie was only appointed to the top job in the civil service and government last January and he quickly discovered the extent of the known problems with the MyGov project.
He set out to find out the true extent of the problems and his report published today details how he intends to ensure the costly mistakes aren’t repeated.
MyGov outlined
The user friendly ‘MyGov’ title simplifies what was an ambitious programme of public sector reform that was always going to cost the island millions of pounds.
‘MyGov’ was never just about upgrading IT systems – the name covers “a group of projects intended to deliver customer and workforce improvements as part of public service reform”.
With an £18m budget, the ‘MyGov’ project was launched in January 2020 – shortly after the States had signed a contract with Agilisys, intended to reform government and public sector IT usage.
Under the banner of SMART Guernsey, the States told us then that “a range of technologies, including cloud computing, data science, robotics and the latest IT software” would be used “to improve how services are delivered”.
The plan was for the MyGov platform to be a central space where people could log-on to access a wide variety of services provided by the States.
The States said through this project it was aiming to be the best public service of any small jurisdiction.
In reality, the ‘MyGov’ project went massively over budget and didn’t deliver any benefits and the plug should have been pulled on it much earlier as problems became apparent.
“The benefits were virtually non-existent”
Boley Smillie’s verdict on the MyGov project is damning.
It cost £21m and delivered “virtually” no benefits to the island.
He conceded there were limited benefits with tenuous links to the original project, but overall he was clear – this has been an “absolute disaster” for Guernsey.
“We know now the project consumed about £21 million, just over, of public funds. The benefits associated with that at the end of the project were calculated about £1.3m, however, my assessment of those benefits is that some of them bore a very tenuous link to the program itself, and even more so, to the scale of investment.
“I think it’s fairly safe to say that the benefits were virtually non existent.”
If you think that language is stark – Mr Smillie spoke even more plainly as he continued to outline the mistakes made.
“It is as bad as I have set out”
“I’d like to say that this report, which is entirely my words and my findings, it does define the MyGov experience, so it is as bad as I have set out.
“There is some common themes across other transformational programs, which haven’t delivered to the timescales and benefits that were intended, but what it doesn’t do is define the civil service as a whole.”
Mr Smillie was as clear to stress that just because the MyGov project has been such a disaster, it doesn’t mean that everyone working in the civil service is accountable.
“I work with some excellent people,” he said. “The civil service does an amazing job, however, we have to face up to these kind of transformational exercises that don’t come up. For us to really build trust and confidence, we really have to own the things that have gone really badly. And whilst this was five years ago, nevertheless it needs to be spoken about, and we need to make sure that we take actions going forward. Those actions are my actions, and I should be wholly accountable for making sure that something like this never happens again.”
Mr Smillie was clear though – despite the good work that is being done, the MyGov project has been an “absolute disaster”.
“We’ve got over 5000 people in the public sector, and I would argue it is a public sector comparable with the very best. There really are some excellent people, and specifically within the civil service. Whilst this might not be the common view within the community, the same the same is true, we have got some excellently talented officers who do a really good job under difficult circumstances.
“That, however, does not distract us from the point that the MyGov experience was an absolute disaster.”
“Completely ineffective governance”
While Mr Smillie acknowledges that no one involved in the MyGov project intended for it to go so badly wrong, it did. Mr Smillie also stresses that the civil and public service sectors are staffed by good hard working people.
The people who made the decisions that allowed the MyGov project to run out of control have not been named, and it’s not clear what has happened to them, but Mr Smillie says their mistakes won’t be repeated.
“There are a load of actions that I need to now take,” he explained. “One of them is around the kind of governance structures within the States of Guernsey, and particularly around transformational projects like MyGov.
“It’s acknowledged that we always should have good governance, what this was an example of was completely ineffective governance. There was something like over 20 boards associated with the oversight of this program. We just need to move to a model, and I apologise for making this sound overly simplistic, but we just need single accountable officers to political committees that are able to discharge their responsibilities in a way that isn’t just about explaining things when go wrong, we need to change this culture to one that is defined around success.
“We all need people to achieve success on the projects that we’re trying to deliver. It’s in the absolute best interests of Guernsey, and I’m convinced we can do that if we empower people, make it really clear what it is they’re expected to achieve, and to some degree, let them get on with it.
“20 boards overseeing a project or program even of this size and scale is never going to deliver a result that we could be proud of.”
Mr Smillie also explained that the launch of the MyGov project was quickly followed by the covid pandemic, which derailed a lot of the work.
“The global pandemic consumed all of the resources that we had at the time, and the problem with the collective leadership at that time is that we should have paused, we should have stopped, or we should have really slowed the expenditure, reflecting the other challenges we were facing.”
Offline conversations
While the pandemic was taking up a lot of government time, decisions were being made that changed the scope and cost of the MyGov project.
With more than 20 boards involved in decision making around it, conversations were taken offline said Mr Smillie.
He’s also found out that “decisions were not properly recorded and not properly aired in the environment that they needed to be”.
Mr Smillie is confident these issues can be learned from and that the MyGov mistakes won’t happen again.
“I think it’s also important to point out that MyGov happened about five years ago, so before I came along the organisation was already dealing with a number of the issues that that we’ve experienced today. So there’s an element of progress that’s been made, regardless of this.
“What I would say, though, as a general comment, is that we need to go much harder and faster in terms of the actions that we are taking.
“The one single biggest impact on trust and confidence in the public service, and the civil service in particular, is our performance on these big, transformational programs, and we absolutely need to deliver better results so as we can show the rest of the civil service to the public, which I would argue is performing extremely well in difficult circumstances.”
Agilisys
The contract with Agilisys, the third party contractor which was supplying IT services to the States as part of the MyGov transformation programme through the SMART Guernsey project, ended last summer.
It had been a £200 million, 10-year agreement – but the States called time on it early– with the government instead appointing different businesses to deliver and service its IT needs through a multi-vendor approach.
Mr Smillie said that approach is working.
“I’ve concluded in these findings that if there was any doubt, and by the way, there was none, that ending the Agilisis contract was exactly the right thing to do.
“This report only underpins that since last year, the digital technology team have been doing a really good job trying to regain control of our IT infrastructure and systems.
“There is so much work that needs to be done in this area to get us into a position where we can feel content.
“But I’m very happy with the progress, and very much looking forward to the very positive relationships that we’re building with other suppliers, developing even further in the coming months and years.”
What next?
In response to his findings that the MyGov project was an “absolute disaster” and delivered “virtually no benefits” for Guernsey, at a cost of £21m, Mr Smillie has already started work to implement a “wide‑ranging programme of reforms”.
This includes, but is not limited to:
- leadership changes
- strengthening the Board which oversees the delivery of all major projects, with independent expertise
- publishing a new annual report with transparent updates on major programmes
- introducing Chief Officers aligned to Principal Committees to ensure clear accountability
- rebuilding internal control of technology following the decision to end the Agilisys contract.
- simplifying governance; streamlining exercise done by end of year
- reducing reliance on external contractors
- strengthening accountability at senior leadership level
More details on each of the action points is available in Mr Smillie’s report HERE.
Having only joined the States 15 months ago, Mr Smillie has said he is now hoping to start looking forward instead of looking back at what went so badly wrong.
“I did come into the role not expecting to look back on issues as much as I have done, and my personal big change for this year is making sure that we’re making changes and looking looking forward. So I don’t intend, unless directed, to look at any other kind of transformational programs like this. It is all about making sure that we are fit for purpose moving forward.”
LISTEN:
A report into the MyGov project has found it was an “absolute disaster”.
Boley Smillie – the States’ Chief Executive and Head of the Public Service – told Laura Clayton what went wrong and what he is now doing to ensure the same mistakes can’t happen again.
