We spotted this excellent question in ‘Ask the Boss’ and decided that it deserved a wider audience. To be honest we could have posted it without any further comment as we really couldn’t have made it look any worse if we’d tried.Question
Is the way that the Agency decides to waive or enforce the Service Level Failure Charge on EDS the same as other Government bodies/organisations that have similar partnership arrangements with private sector companies?
Answer
Thank you for your question.
Due to contractual confidentiality I am not able to provide you with details of the specific arrangements but can assure you that all aspects of the SPVA agreement with EDS were subject to MOD’s normal approvals process and SPVA’s application of the terms of the agreement are scrutinised on a regular basis by the appropriate bodies.
Conveniently whilst I was writing this piece one of our readers pointed me towards this article on ‘The Register’ in 2006
EDS keeps MOD schtum over settlement
Corporate America clouds British transparency
By Mark Ballard
Published Monday 21st August 2006 13:20 GMT
The details of a financial settlement given to EDS by the Ministry of Defence have been withheld from British taxpayers because corporate America likes to keep its cards close to its chest.
EDS said in March it was seeking "adjustments" to compensate for the "financial impact" of changes made by the Ministry of Defence to its requirements for its £2.3bn Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) project.
Neither EDS nor the MOD would provide details after they reached an agreement over the contract change in May. But EDS said its second quarter results, released this month, would.
However, when the results were published on 1 August, they failed to mention how much the MOD had paid EDS.
Continued here;
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/21/eds_mod_secrecy/
Clearly there was a serious issue of transparency in 2006, and, going by the ‘Ask the Boss’ question is still a problem now.
What is obvious to all is that the government continues to award large projects to EDS despite a number of high profile failures. And whilst it does so it refuses to be entirely open about how much it (or in truth we, the taxpayer) is paying EDS. It seems to be a rather disproportionate relationship where an American corporation can dictate to the British Government about what it can or cannot say to its own electorate about how it spends that electorate’s money.
Closer to home various sections of senior SPVA management seem intent on handing over parts of the agency to EDS, presumably for efficiency reasons. But given the EDS requirement for secrecy it’s impossible to judge whether they could do the job any cheaper than us. What is certain is that SPVA management are content to give EDS a veto that keeps staff representatives out of Agency Management Group meetings, as well as, it has to be said, any former Veterans Agency managers! Furthermore, management have disbanded a very efficient and respected in-house staff survey team and outsourced the Employee Survey, without proper consultation with the TUS it should be noted; and the reason for this? Because EDS would not like it’s staff being questioned by civil servants! We wonder what they have to hide.
At this point it’s probably worth pointing out that the EDS developed MoD DII was due to deliver savings of £170m in its first three years. This sounds like excellent sense but given that the DII project is at least £2000m overspent those savings would seem to have been swallowed up somewhat.
Is the way that the Agency decides to waive or enforce the Service Level Failure Charge on EDS the same as other Government bodies/organisations that have similar partnership arrangements with private sector companies?
Answer
Thank you for your question.
Due to contractual confidentiality I am not able to provide you with details of the specific arrangements but can assure you that all aspects of the SPVA agreement with EDS were subject to MOD’s normal approvals process and SPVA’s application of the terms of the agreement are scrutinised on a regular basis by the appropriate bodies.
Conveniently whilst I was writing this piece one of our readers pointed me towards this article on ‘The Register’ in 2006
EDS keeps MOD schtum over settlement
Corporate America clouds British transparency
By Mark Ballard
Published Monday 21st August 2006 13:20 GMT
The details of a financial settlement given to EDS by the Ministry of Defence have been withheld from British taxpayers because corporate America likes to keep its cards close to its chest.
EDS said in March it was seeking "adjustments" to compensate for the "financial impact" of changes made by the Ministry of Defence to its requirements for its £2.3bn Defence Information Infrastructure (DII) project.
Neither EDS nor the MOD would provide details after they reached an agreement over the contract change in May. But EDS said its second quarter results, released this month, would.
However, when the results were published on 1 August, they failed to mention how much the MOD had paid EDS.
Continued here;
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/21/eds_mod_secrecy/
Clearly there was a serious issue of transparency in 2006, and, going by the ‘Ask the Boss’ question is still a problem now.
What is obvious to all is that the government continues to award large projects to EDS despite a number of high profile failures. And whilst it does so it refuses to be entirely open about how much it (or in truth we, the taxpayer) is paying EDS. It seems to be a rather disproportionate relationship where an American corporation can dictate to the British Government about what it can or cannot say to its own electorate about how it spends that electorate’s money.
Closer to home various sections of senior SPVA management seem intent on handing over parts of the agency to EDS, presumably for efficiency reasons. But given the EDS requirement for secrecy it’s impossible to judge whether they could do the job any cheaper than us. What is certain is that SPVA management are content to give EDS a veto that keeps staff representatives out of Agency Management Group meetings, as well as, it has to be said, any former Veterans Agency managers! Furthermore, management have disbanded a very efficient and respected in-house staff survey team and outsourced the Employee Survey, without proper consultation with the TUS it should be noted; and the reason for this? Because EDS would not like it’s staff being questioned by civil servants! We wonder what they have to hide.
At this point it’s probably worth pointing out that the EDS developed MoD DII was due to deliver savings of £170m in its first three years. This sounds like excellent sense but given that the DII project is at least £2000m overspent those savings would seem to have been swallowed up somewhat.
