This week is “CAPITA WEEK” in the London Borough of
Barnet. Following the decision of the cabinet of Barnet Council to award CAPITA
a £750 million outsourcing contract, which will destroy 300 jobs in the
Borough, the local blogs are spending a week investigating the record of Capita
at other local authorites.
As well as reporting the stories on our blogs, we
will be sending a daily email of the stories to all 63 Barnet Councillors,
asking them whether they were aware of the issues raised by the experiences of
other local authorities and what they have personally done to mitigate the
risk.
Councillors are paid a five figure sum for the
privelige of representing us. The least they should do is make sure they are
aware of all of the issues and risks of decisions made on their watch. The
reason we are emailing the councillors is twofold. One is to make sure they
have access to the information necessary to make an informed decisions about
the One Barnet program. The second is so that they can be held to account. If
in two years time, there are problems, no councillor will be able to say “I
wasn’t told about the risks, don’t blame me”. If they do say that, then we will
know that they did not even bother to read their emails.
Every day this week we will investigate a specific
area of Capita outsourcing and its implications. Today we start with
performance. The first Council we will investigate is Birmingham.
Service
Birmingham is a “joint venture” (JV) between Birmingham Council and Capita. It
was set up in 2006 and extended in February 2011 until 2021, was intended to
provide "world-class ICT services" as well as manage the council's
revenue service and contact centre. It is also required to deploy various other
large and small-scale IT-enabled solutions to the council.
It is failing to perform as expected, says a new
review of the long-term operation by consultancy Best Practice Group.
According to a news report, the review concludes
that Service Birmingham, as the JV is called, needs "serious
improvement" if it is to meet its targets.
Have Barnet Council spoken to Birmingham Council to
see what the problems are and why they have
happened? Have lessons been learned?
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