Anzac Day

Today’s article is dedicated to Anzac Day. Complimentary to this piece are this weeks Quotes, Lines and Snippets column. ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ written in 1972 by Eric Bogle. The song has been recorded by a number of artists but my favourite version remains the one performed by Tommy Makem & The Clancy Brothers. It tells the story of an Australian lad sent to fight in Gallipoli in 1915. The song is a little inaccurate as it describes an amphibious assault by Australian troops at Suvla Bay, where in fact the landing at Suvla was carried out entirely by British soldiers. Given the huge casualties suffered by the British at the Somme it is possible to forget the allied casualties at Gallipoli, where around 140,000 servicemen lost their lives, 60,000 of those being Australians.. Equally it is worth remembering that 250,000 Turkish men died in those 8 months too.

Anzac day is of great importance to Australians and New Zealanders with a watershed on the 16th May 2002 when the last Australian survivor of Gallipoli, Alec Campbell (pictured below left), died aged 103 and became the last and final entry in the roll of honour for Gallipoli. Such was the feeling for Alec Campbell, and indeed all the Anzac's he represented, that flags flew at half-mast, major newspapers devoted their front pages to the event, and the Prime Minister cut short a visit to China in order to attend Mr. Campbell's state funeral at St. David's Anglican Cathedral in Hobart, Tasmania.

Initially dedicated to the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps that fought in Gallipoli, Anzac day has grown to embrace Australian and New Zealand losses in all conflicts.

At the time of the Gallipoli campaign Australia had only been a Federal Commonwealth for 14 years and the campaign announced their arrival as a global force in their own right. Whilst Australia Day is the nation’s official national day many have chosen Anzac Day as the true national day because it was then that a large part of the national identity was forged.

If anything Anzac day is growing in popularity. Despite the threat of terrorist attacks some 15,000 Australians made the pilgrimage to Turkey to commemorate the fallen ANZAC troops.

Our thoughts go out to the peoples of Australasia on this Anzac day, as well as to anyone else touched by the Gallipoli campaign.

We trust that your Knights of Gallipoli rest in peace.

Ask us to ask the boss.

Members have noted a recent change to Ask The Boss. It has now without warning or indeed any explanatory reason been made mandatory for the individual to identify themselves for their question to be accepted for answer.

Some members have questioned whether this means that individuals could be threatened with disciplinary or some other subtle career limiting action for asking a question that the boss might deem awkward or in some way off-message! We have no way of knowing if that could or would happen, however, in an effort to discern the intention of the recent change, your branch secretary has put the question (below) to Ask The Boss for clarification.

In the meantime, the BEC has today agreed that any members wishing to ask a suitable question and who feels uncomfortable to do so under the new mandatory system may ask the secretary to place it for them. If that is you, please send your question to my Gsi email address (Ian Melvin SPVA) , or to VA(NB)PCS Branch Secretary, room 6117 Norcross, or if you wish to remain anonymous simply leave a question in the form of comment to this post or any other on the blog.

The question put to the Boss by your branch secretary on 22 April is:

“I note with some concern the recent change to Ask The Boss. Previously, the system would allow individuals to Ask The Boss a question with complete anonymity. Now suddenly and without warning it has become mandatory for individuals to identify their names, locations, emails and phone numbers. Could we be told what the collection of this information is to be used for, and by whom?

“Furthermore, can we be assured that the use of any data collected in this way would fully comply with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998, which is for the regulation of the processing of information relating to individuals, including the obtaining, holding, use or disclosure of such information?”

In the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts Eighth Report of Session 2007–08 (Tax Credits and PAYE) (Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 28 January 2008) there are some interesting facts surrounding HMRC’s involvement with EDS. Most of us will be aware that the computer system developed and installed was a disaster, fewer of us will be aware that a ‘fine’ of £71.25m was levied against EDS for these failures.

It is also worth noting that the failures of the system didn’t just cost the taxpayer, in many instances it caused serious problems for persons in receipt of Tax Credits.

Below is an excerpt taken directly from the report, which I am at pains to point out is within the public domain and available to all.

4 The Department’s settlement with EDS

22. Serious problems with the introduction of the computer systems used to support tax credits delayed the processing of claims and led to incorrect payments being made. In November 2005 the Department announced it had settled its claim for compensation with EDS for £71.25 million. The settlement
includes cash payments by EDS and the off setting of certain amounts which would have otherwise been due from HMRC to EDS. Of this sum, staged payments of up to £26.5 million are contingent on EDS winning new business
with the United Kingdom Government. Final settlement of the dispute is contingent on EDS paying the full amount of £71.25 million and the Department has reserved the right to reopen court proceedings if the full amount is not received.

23. In practice, the flow of payments from EDS has been extremely slow because EDS has been less successful in winning government contracts than the Department expected.22 It is highly unlikely that new business for EDS will generate the full payment by the end of 2008 that the Department envisaged. The Department acknowledged that it would take a long time to receive the full amount at the present rate of payment.

24. The Department has held meetings with EDS. It is determined to ensure that it obtains the full settlement even if the new business for EDS is not enough to generate the full payment. The Department is taking steps with EDS that it believes will accelerate the rate of payments from January 2008 and will return to litigation if the full amount of the settlement does not look to be forthcoming within the envisaged period. The Department has discussed with its lawyers a process for bringing the matter back to the courts if the acceleration of payments during 2008 does not meet its expectations.

Whilst we are glad that EDS is being held financially accountable for its mistakes I find it rather curious that they say a proportion of the fine will only be paid on receipt of further government contracts. I would have thought that the opposite should be the case where further government contracts would only be awarded once the fines had been paid in full.

However, in the conclusions and recommendations section of the document the committee says;

The Department’s settlement with EDS

8. In settling its claim against its contractor EDS for the problems encountered in implementing the tax credit system, the Department agreed that £26.5 million of the settlement could be paid in instalments reflecting new government business won by EDS. The Department has recovered little of the £26.5 million and may not obtain payment of full settlement by the end of 2008. We have previously criticised the invidious arrangement that requires the Government to commission further work from the contractor in order to recover compensation for underperformance.

The Department needs to work with EDS to accelerate the rate of payments, and should consider litigation if the full amount of the settlement is not forthcoming in
2008.

What strikes me with this whole issue is the imbalance between contractor and department. Can you imagine a situation in your personal lives were something similar would be OK? Imagine HMRC’s reaction if you decided not to pay your taxes, or decided not to return your overpayments. I think we all know what would happen. Furthermore it must be remembered that EDS is and enormous global corporation. We’re not talking about a local business that really does need to receive payment for its last job before it can buy materials for its’ next job.

In Feb/March 08 edition of @SPVA the CE says ‘Our partnering arrangement with EDS attracts a high degree of scrutiny and in some quarters, cynicism.’

In some ways I suppose that he is correct, but I think that he would have been more accurate had he said ‘…and in some quarters concern, particularly its impact on civil service jobs and cost to the taxpayer.’

By means of and example of how wonderful EDS are the CE tells us how marvellous EDS were in dealing with the loss of 600,000 personal details held on an RN laptop. Given that the details were also held on EDS servers I should jolly well hope that they’d be able to find them. Had it been possible for civil servants to have access to this data (which is our data, on servers that we pay for) then I’m sure they could have done the job equally well.

Given the fines imposed by HMRC on EDS we would be most interested to know if SPVA will be imposing fines on EDS for failures in the JPA Sadly questions to the CE concerning this have been rebuffed with the old ‘commercial in confidence’ line. We would have thought that given that he says that JPA is ‘performing well’ he could simply have said ‘no’. Readers will be please to hear that we are pursing this particular issue via other routes.

Major Agreement on Job Security

The National Union have announced that we now have a formal agreement with the Cabinet Office which sets out in detail the steps that departments will have to take when there is a risk of redundancy. Unions will have a clear right to be informed and consulted through the process.

These steps should ensure that any member who is declared to be surplus but still wishes to work in the Civil Service or associated areas will be made an alternative job offer.* Those under threat of losing their jobs in one department will take priority in applying for vacancies in other departments.

The Agreement is not an absolute guarantee of job security. But it will provide strong protection from compulsory redundancy.

PCS remains opposed to any compulsory redundancies and the NEC has restated its intention to reconvene and decide on further industrial action should any compulsory redundancy notices be issued.

*The Branch wonders how this making of an offer sits with our department’s redeployment pool – a scheme that, we feel, was designed to dodge such bullets by forcing the responsibility onto the individual rather than taking corporate responsibility. We shall be contacting the GEC for their thoughts regarding this.

Public Services… Not Private Profit

Yesterday the Branch Chair and Branch Secretary attended a meeting with Janice Godrich – PCS National President – on this very topic.

If anyone wonders about our EDS stance on this blog, a stance backed by the membership decisions and feelings communicated at the AGM, then we say that we took one very clear message back from yesterdays meeting. The last three words of the campaign name – “NOT PRIVATE PROFIT” – must not be forgotten, it must be our banner and our clarion call.

It is our considered opinion that EDS are only in the SPVA Contract for one reason – private profit. We consider that EDS (corporately) do not believe in supporting serving personnel, they do not believe in supporting Veterans – we consider that they only believe in profit.

To the poster on the intranet who had the courage to speak, who had the courage to say that EDS are not a good employer and that a large number of those privatised, who do not want to be made redundant, wish to be back in the MoD, we say this…

We are abhorred at the suggestion that you are unprofessional – each person must be allowed to hold and express their own opinion and should not be attacked because their opinion is at variance with the employer(s).

We are amused that it was deemed inappropriate for that forum* and yet was posted by the moderator and answered anyway. How an organisation can offer a facility to ask questions and offer perspective and then deem a legitimate opinion and question as inappropriate befuddles the mind.

We support you, we wish to see you brought back into a fully nationalised Agency; we wish you to be a member of our staff rather than a member of staff with a private contractor; we wish to see you covered by legislation that, as you are not a crown employee (thus do not work for an emanation of the State), passes you by: such as the Human Rights Act and its tenant of Freedom of Expression.

This Branch commits to speak where others dare not and we have a phrase upon our collective lips “Public Services… Not Private Profit”.

*Incidentally we were sent two questions, originally for Ask the Boss, which were posed by a Crown Employee – from ex-AFPAA – that were deemed inappropriate but were not posted by the moderator or answered by the boss. We post them here, raw and without comment, and you can make your own minds up about them…

For each year of the AFPAA/EDS Contract can you tell me what the Service Delivery Failure Charges and Waivers have been?

Have any Ex-MOD authority staff at AD or Director level been employed by EDS since leaving MOD employment?

***STOP PRESS part 2***STOP PRESS part 2***

The Heathrow T5 fiasco may not have been EDS' fault but has their mark been left elsewhere?

We have had sight of the Agency Management Group's document of March 2008 'Key Messages' . We posted one paragraph and we were advised that we were not allowed to do this. Whilst we check on the validity of this we have taken the paragraph off. However we can say that it essentially said that key target 1 is likely to fail. This key target surrounds service pay delivery and its accuracy. What our original version of the post did not say is that inaccuracies in serving personnels' pay has been widely reported in the press already.

In the meantime we will strive to discover just what we can reveal, our understanding was always that the trade union had a right to publicly release anything we felt was in our members interests. We are being told that this isn't the case, we will check. Stay tuned for the full excert being reposted once it has been proved that we were right all along.