Industry news

In the wake of PA Consulting's sacking from its Home Office contract (as discussed in my previous blog), it is worth looking at the Government's role in this. The consultancy has demonstrated that the loss of a data stick was down to one person's error, not some wholesale failure of policy.

Can the Government say the same? The machinery of government is woefully ill-prepared for the digital age, even as the policy-makers champion it and massively extend its use.

As data-loss scandals escalate (with the use of pocket-sized mass-storage, perhaps), there seem to have been few sackings in their wake – either at ministerial, civil service, or even basic admin levels.

Indeed – the sackings of Joan Ryan and Siobhain McDonagh for disloyalty aside – it's hard to remember anyone in government who has lost their job via incompetence or scandal. One person famously lost two jobs, but that hasn't prevented him holding sway over matters of European business.

And where is the real-world security policy for storage media now they govern our private and business relationships with Government – even our identities?

It's hard to see how more technology, more databases, and more private data stored on cards can be a solution to security problems. After all, most security problems seem to be caused by them.

In a world where call centre workers spout nonsense about the Data Protection Act when refusing to say why they're calling you, there is an emerging national crisis in data protection, because of a lack of understanding about what it is, and how and why you should do it.

Much of that blame lies with the Government – and with a handful of companies who realise that the public doesn't understand it either.

So why PA Consulting, and why now? Why not any of the dozens of larger outsourcing providers here and overseas, who have been involved with more serious scandals?

Why not any of the ministers or officials presiding over the loss of, say, 25 million child benefit records, or those lost and stolen MoD laptops and data files, or that DVLA data, or those national security reports left on Surrey-bound commuter trains?

Could it be that this particular contract – worth just £1.5 million – makes it an easy target?

The Government has let all the bigger fish off the hook – not to mention itself – because the digitisation of Government would grind to a halt if real action were ever taken. Perhaps it should grind to a halt: rethink it from the ground up.

Finding replacement contractors would be a challenge too, of course, given that even Government contracts are subject to constant tinkering and change. Ask ETS, Accenture, Fujitsu...

On the employer side, former NHS IT bigwig Richard Granger hated privacy campaigners – but lambasted suppliers as well. Not a recipe for the successful delivery of egovernment.

Nevertheless, this Home Secretary may have made a rod for her own back by sacking PA Consulting from this, even as Whitehall has with other contract collapses: the Tory press now wants to know why PA retains its larger deals – and will soon ask questions about the other big fish.

With scant understanding of digital data protection across all echelons of government, and with a policy vacuum at the top, then suppliers can only do their best. And when ministers make easy kills to avoid falling on their swords, then... well, I suppose it's just an average day in Whitehall, 2008.

ID cards, anyone?

Bristol-Myers Squibb, the global biopharmaceutical giant, has signed a ten year outsourcing deal with Accenture. The deal, worth US $550 million, will see the company provide a range of finance and accounting and application development and maintenance services.

The “bundled” services agreement extends a four-year outsourcing agreement the two companies signed in 2004 for application maintenance and accounts payable services and expands the scope to include additional application maintenance services, application development services and global financial support services.

Accenture will provide these services to Bristol-Myers Squibb in the Americas, Asia, and EMEA regions in 22 languages through Accenture’s Global Delivery Network, which includes more than 50 delivery centers across five continents.

The agreement provides dedicated global IT and financial support services to Bristol-Myers Squibb to help achieve operational cost savings and flexibility. The agreement is also designed to enable Bristol-Myers Squibb to more effectively manage its business, by providing a variable cost structure to address varying economic factors, such as patent lifecycles.

Paul von Autenried, VP and CIO at Bristol-Myers Squibb, said: “This agreement enables us to continue to leverage Accenture’s capabilities and integrate them with our Bristol-Myers Squibb employees, creating high performance teams to improve our productivity and support our strategic transformation to a next-generation BioPharma company. It gives us greater flexibility, thereby allowing the company to focus on what we do best – discover and develop medicines that will help patients prevail in their fight against serious disease.”

Saab has announced that it will partner with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to develop and establish its new Aerospace Design and Development Centre (ADDC) in India.

Through the deal the duo aims to address the global aeronautical market by creating a single source of design and development capabilities India. The centre is expected to aid the delivery of domestic and global defense and civil aeronautical applications.

The ADDC will offer a diverse number of services including design and development of structures and systems for new platforms, performance studies and virtual prototyping, aircraft sustenance engineering, manufacturing support, production and after market support, life extension / upgrade programs, avionics and mission critical software development.

Åke Svensson, Saab’s CEO, commented: “This co-operation is not limited to any specific product but is aimed towards building a joint capability to leverage collective strengths across the globe.”

Infosys BPO Ltd, the BPO subsidiary of Infosys Technologies, has inaugurated its second BPO campus at Mahindra World City, the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Jaipur, Rajasthan.

Speaking on the occasion, Kris Gopalakrishnan Infosys’ CEO and MD, said: “Jaipur is becoming an exciting destination for the IT-ITES industry. The Honourable Chief Minister, Smt. Vasundhara Raje has proactively put in place progressive policies and has invested in infrastructure to ensure rapid growth. Our investment in the second campus firmly establishes Jaipur as a significant centre for Infosys. We are extremely happy to be in Jaipur and acknowledge the support and encouragement of the state government.”

Infosys BPO works with universities in Rajasthan through ‘Project Genesis’, a program to enhance skill-sets in students and make them industry-ready. Since October 2005, the company has worked with 229 lecturers in 110 colleges and imparted training to 3,250 students in industry-relevant skills including language, presentation, and analytical skills.

Infosys’ Campus Connect Program has partnered with 32 engineering colleges in Rajasthan. This program is aimed at enhancing the employability of the talent pool. As a part of this program, Infosys has trained 120 faculty members and 1914 students in Rajasthan.

The new campus at the SEZ at Mahindra World City, Jaipur, will be spread over 42 acres creating a built-up area of 3,69,100 sq. ft and a capacity for 3,200 students.

Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) has bought a new 30,000 square foot office and call center facility in Reynosa, Mexico creating 500 new jobs. The facility is Reynosa’s first call center and is expected to expand economic opportunities for local residents when it opens in November.

In addition to the facility’s customer care capabilities, ACS will be able to expand this facility by custom fitting a separate portion in order to offer customers the ability to handle mailroom needs, scanning, and data capture.

The facility can be expanded to create an additional 30,000 square feet of office or call center space and employ an additional 600 individuals. ACS currently employs approximately 4,600 people in five locations in Mexico.

Chris Tranquill, Managing Director of ACS, commented: “We believe this location is ideal because it offers employment opportunities to an area that is rich in talent with an educated workforce. Our customers have been looking for an opportunity like this. We can meet their needs by investing in this community which will create jobs and opportunities.”

Reynosa is home to four universities, one technical institute and six technical training centers with two new universities under construction in the region. There are also a variety of English language institutes to support the demand for English speaking workers. Every year about 5,000 college students enter the workforce in Reynosa.

North Wales Police has signed an outsourcing agreement with Unisys Corporation to upgrade, manage and maintain its email infrastructure over the next three years. The email system is a mission-critical service that the 2,500-member force relies on as one of its primary communication methods across the NWP area.

Under the first stage of the engagement, Unisys will design a new infrastructure to support a migration from the current to the new platform. The new system will be replicated in a remote location in order to prevent any data loss and to ensure business continuity during the transition.

Once the migration is complete, Unisys will host a managed email service from its facility in Reston, Virginia, which supports secure business operations for public and private sector organizations worldwide. More than 2,500 email accounts will be migrated and managed remotely. The force currently has 1,600 police officers and 900 support staff.

Investing in a managed email service from Unisys means the IT department at North Wales Police will no longer be required to perform time-consuming daily tasks such as inbox management and email infrastructure maintenance. This will free up time for the IT department to develop and test new technologies to further improve productivity and efficiency for front-line police officers.

Geoff Bradley, IM Director at North Wales Police, commented: “The force prides itself on responsiveness, effectiveness and efficiency, so the need for a reliable and robust email infrastructure was a key part of our choice of Unisys as an outsourcing partner. Our officers are increasingly using BlackBerry devices to access line-of-business applications and email in the field, so we need to know we can rely on an effective and fully operational system around the clock. We knew we could trust Unisys to manage the Exchange migration and deliver the ongoing support we need moving forward.”

Another day and another outsourcing provider at the leading edge of public services has been telling the Government what went wrong.

ETS Europe bosses have been grilled by MPs today about the root causes of this year's SATS exam marking fiasco in England, which saw delays and other errors, such as children who took the tests being marked as absent. A small number of pupils' results have still not been provided.

Philip Tabbiner of ETS rightly told the Commons Schools Committee that the company was very sorry for the mistakes, which he blamed on “technical and operational problems”.

Now, this is where the story gets interesting: Dr. Tabbiner said these problems were mainly caused by changes to ETS' contract with the National Assessment Agency (NAA), which handles test results for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA).

ETS had wanted the contract terminated in June – which would have presented the NAA with an even worse headache, you might imagine – but the NAA had instead insisted on a raft of late changes to the contracted terms.

Does this sound familiar? Cast your mind back to the summer (what a week that was!) and you might remember Fujitsu making a similar complaint to the Public Accounts Committee as it joined the lengthening queue of companies, Trusts and people exiting the NHS IT programme.

This is a Government, it seems, fond of moving the goalposts and increasing responsibilities at the last minute while piling greater and greater pressure on its outsourcing providers as deadlines loom.

Prudence, or merely tinkering? Tinkering with the patience of its private sector partners, on whom it is so fond of relying, I mean. That is not how you manage contracts.

ETS has several other Home Office Contracts, which will now be reviewed.

Throw in a year of embarrassing security lapses, and burgeoning problems elsewhere within the NHS National Programme for IT and you have a recipe for a winter of discontent in public sector outsourcing contracts.

PA Consulting's loss of a data stick of sensitive Home Office records has damaged its reputation as it, too, leaves a public sector contract in high dudgeon.

However, while PA Consulting has obviously been at fault, the Home Office's own record of data protection of late has been laughable at best – along with that of several other Government departments and agencies.

Public sector outsourcing was once a market to get into. One wonders to what extent outsourcing providers will now want to risk their professional reputations working for a Whitehall whose contractual meddling and micromanagement seems out of control, and whose own policies regarding data security and privacy seem frighteningly antiquated – even as it seeks to brand itself as modern, pragmatic and progressive.

To the NOA party tonight: all the gossip here, no doubt, later this week!

Traditional Western business models could be under threat by ‘ambitious internationalism’ emanating from the emerging BRIC economies, a new study has found.

The report conducted by Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) on behalf of Capgemini, investigates the role of emerging multinationals in global trade. The report highlights the threat to western business growth from a new breed of companies that are rapidly moving onto the global stage. These companies have ambitious internationalisation strategies, pursued increasingly through mergers and acquisitions, some of which have targeted well-known western companies

The report investigates the growth profiles of a cross-section of manufacturing organisations within the key emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC nations) and reports some interesting trends:

• The process of globalisation within emerging economies is driving the growth of domestic companies into emerging multinationals (EMs), which are challenging the traditional model of western business.

• Expansion approaches for these companies include international investment in Green-field operations, Joint Ventures and Mergers and Acquisitions, with the latter an increasingly popular strategy.

• Companies from the BRIC nations can grow by entering markets with offerings in products and services which would be unattractive for western businesses because of low prices, but these may be a bridgehead to growth into more profitable segments.

The growth of these EMs was studied by the Cambridge’s researchers in the context of historical, political and economic factors with particular reference to outward foreign direct investment (FDI). The four countries studied have very diverse economic backgrounds and these factors have created similarly individual contexts for growth and development. Nonetheless, each is exhibiting strong growth and acceleration in outward FDI which reflects the internationalisation of its EMs.

Westminster Council has introduced ‘pay by phone’ parking across its borough that it hopes will save over £6million per annum. The Council has developed the system with Verrus technology and contact centre support from Converso who are jointly responsible for handling up to 80,000 transactions per week.

Alastair Gilchrist, Director of Parking at Westminster, commented on the system: “We were looking for a convenient method of payment for the general public that would not only eradicate the high level of crime and would also give us vital statistics on the usage of particular parking areas. The pay by phone service is a perfect example of how you can use a balanced mix of technology and human interaction to provide a convenient, fast, popular and extremely cost-effective method for high volume, small value payments. We felt that the whole process could not be completely automated because people still want the comfort and re-assurance of speaking to a live person for their first interaction. By using the blend of technology from Verrus with the customer service skills of Converso is the perfect solution to introducing a service that is being readily adopted by the general public.”

International IT services provider, Steria, has selected recruitment outsourcing specialist, Ochre House, to manage all permanent recruitment for its divisions and companies within the UK.

Under the three year contract, Ochre House will be responsible for sourcing around 300 roles per annum in a wide range of professional services areas from SAP consultants, project managers and practice heads to technical architects and analysts to legal and finance staff and new graduates. Ochre House will also provide consultancy services aimed at maximising the effectiveness of all Steria’s ‘talent management’ processes.

When Steria acquired the UK technology company, Xansa, in October 2007 the two established recruitment processes needed to be combined into one. “The new combined UK business at Steria had legacy suppliers which had been in place for some time” says Jean Hopkins HR Director for Steria in the UK. “It was a great opportunity to look carefully at what processes and strategies we needed to implement in order to attract and employ the best talent for our businesses.”