How the SSCL contract debacle shows government departments aren't pulling in the same direction

Met Police signs a £216m deal with SSCL while BIS terminates its contract with the same service provider because of costs - something doesn't add up

Shared Services Connected Limited (SSCL) is probably not everyone's favourite company. The organisation, which is a joint venture between the Cabinet Office and Sopra Steria, has won government contracts left, right and centre, but this success has left many civil service workers without jobs.

Government departments are, of course, under pressure to cut costs and one of the ways of doing that is to outsource the likes of HR, finance and payroll, and reduce headcount. But is SSCL the best organisation to be trusted to do that?

There has been more scrutiny placed on SSCL in the past few weeks. The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) signed a £216m 10-year deal with SSCL to outsource three of the MPS's back-office departments - a deal that goes against what many in government have been advocating in recent years, namely short, flexible contracts that avoid vendor lock-in. The Met Police contract ticks none of those boxes. And, as I mentioned last week, it bears a resemblance to past IT catastrophes in the public sector, which Computing documented last month.

What makes this even worse is that SSCL's reputation isn't exactly at an all-time high; the Major Projects Authority has flagged the "project" – the privatisation of shared services – as problematic, and, to top it off, the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) has terminated its contract with SSCL.

A contract had been established between SSCL and BIS back in 2013. It would have required UK Shared Business Services (SBS) to transfer approximately 15 per cent of transactional volumes, specific to HR, payroll and finance to SSCL from April 2015. The deal formed part of the government's Next Generation Shared Services Strategy, which aims to save taxpayers up to £500m a year by sharing corporate services between departments.

But embarrassingly, BIS then said that the contract was "no longer viable", because of, among other things, the costs relating to the contract.

"A number of factors changed since the placing of the contract, and based on costs, service and level of risk, it was no longer a viable option and an agreement, endorsed by Cabinet Office, was reached to terminate the contract," a BIS spokesperson said.

So I tried to investigate further. What had changed since the contract was agreed, and shouldn't BIS be in talks with the MPS and MoJ along with all of the other government departments that have SSCL as a provider?

I asked the MPS whether this is what it would seek to do.

It said that it did not comment on contractual issues.

"We are aware of the BIS contract, BIS did not access services through the ‘framework' and its services continue to be provided by UK SBS," a MPS spokesperson told me.

Well, it's good that MPS is "aware" that BIS had a contract, I suppose, and could shed some light on it.

It was more aware than the MoJ, for example, whose spokesperson suggested I would need to check with BIS about what sort of agreement it had, as it may have been different to the one that MoJ has.

The spokesperson also suggested that I should talk to the Cabinet Office, as it has an overview of the shared government contract.

So I asked the Cabinet Office the following questions:

1. When BIS terminated the contract, it said this was "endorsed by the Cabinet Office" - what exactly did that mean?

2. Is the BIS contract similar to/the same as those that the Met Police/MoJ have in place?

3. Why did it take so long for BIS to realise that SSCL wasn't the right choice for the department?

4. Wouldn't the same fears that BIS had affect the Met Police/MoJ?

5. Can and will the Cabinet Office or BIS communicate these fears to the Met Police or MoJ?

6. Does SSCL hold an unfair advantage over other companies as it is 25% owned by the Cabinet Office?

The response I got from the Cabinet Office? Yes, that's right... this wasn't one for it to comment on. Instead, the Cabinet Office said I should go to BIS.

So, with everyone asking for me to go to the BIS with all of the questions I had, I did.

All I got in response - aside from the same statement sent to me previously - was that BIS's requirements had evolved and the circumstances made other alternatives "more appropriate".

"Therefore BIS decided that the best course of action was to not access the services and terminate the contract," the spokesperson said.

What all of this shows is - aside from passing the buck onto each other to respond to my questions - is that government departments still do not communicate with each other when it comes to important, multi-million pound deals.

How can one contract for BIS be deemed not worth it, and one for MPS be worth £216m over 10 years? Yes, different businesses have different requirements, but the wording BIS used suggested that not only was SSCL overcharging BIS, but it wouldn't be able to provide the level of service required, and it would also be placing an increased level of risk onto the organisation.

Surely those are three significant factors that all government departments should be taking into account when looking at existing contracts and whether or not they are still viable?

But this isn't exactly something new. Remember when the MoJ wrote off a £56m shared services programme dubbed Shared Service Programme (SSP)? Well it was because it discovered in 2012 that the Cabinet Office was planning to implement a similar scheme... called SSCL. What makes this even worse is that one of the three firms who won the SSP contract back in 2011 was Steria. So not only do government departments not talk to each other - but neither do the people at Steria, supposedly.