Tuesday 18 December 2012

Capita Week - Translators database "dogged" with problems

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. 

Installment two in todays tales of woe from Capita concerns the Court Translators database.

The Telegraph reports that this was so inaccurate that even someones pet dog appeared on it

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9742685/Total-chaos-after-pet-dog-counted-on-translators-database.html

Cases were delayed, hundreds of translators failed to turn up, and many more refused to work for Applied Language Solutions (ALS), which was taken over by Capita at the end of last year, the Commons Committee of Public Accounts said.
But Capita has only been fined a “risible” £2,200, sending the message that the ministry allows private firms “to get away with over promising and underdelivering”, the report warned.

Margaret Hodge, the committee’s chairwoman, said the project was an “object-lesson in how not to contract out a public service” as “almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong”.

“We heard that some names were fictitious and one person had even successfully registered their pet dog,” Mrs Hodge said.

Whilst Hendon is famous for it's MP Matthew Offord, who famously stood up for "human rights for dogs", we are sure even Matthew would find it a bit strange that a dog could be registered as a Court Translator.

As Capita week progresses, we'll bring you more tales of woe.

1 comment:

Dave-ros said...

You might also be interested in this story at smug techie site's The Register, specifically its Channel subsite, and which links to other stories they've published about everyone's favourite bumbling outsourcing company...