I'm a Civil Servant working for the RPA (Rural Payments Agency), which is a subsidiary of DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), I don't hold a permanent position, but rather a yearly contract that is renewed based on budget and situation.
As part of the public sector, which in it's entirety is under fire, our agency has been scrutinized for it's rather seemingly flamboyant disregard in usage of taxpayers money; from an overly complex 'Single Payment Scheme' that has went tits up since implementation years ago and still isn't sorted out (good link explaining), to general staffing issues (questionable... imo) to the big wig bosses getting their enormous wages whilst failing to actually do their jobs etc etc
Our CEO, Tony Cooper, has his own little section on our government intranet that he regularly updates with mundane shit like '...tomorrow I will be visiting the Newcastle site, I look forward to meeting you all' and 'I've been on holiday for the past 2 weeks...' (a fair few of these actually), reading it feels like some kind of attempt at numbing us into thinking the big boss is just another regular Joe cog in the works, doing a REAL job like the rest of us. It's fucking infuriating to have this shit rubbed in my face. A big obnoxious message pops up stating 'Tony's Diary has been updated' with a link, I usually read a few lines into the git's blog before being pissed off by some patronizing statement of generic thanks, involving him getting his ass licked by his buddies for all our hard work and slogging. However, a few weeks ago I came across one that actually interested me. Tony and and Dame Helen Ghosh (Permanent Secretary of DEFRA) were due to attend a committee meeting in the house of commons, to discuss the aforementioned issues I have ranted about. In all honesty, my first impression was cynicism at the outcome of this meeting; mainly between them they'd have more buddies than you could shake a stick at, avoiding all tough questions and just generally giving them a pat on the back... how wrong I was.
I had a browse around the net and found the minutes taken from the meeting, or rather, the 'Uncorrected Evidence'. It seems like more or less a direct transcription of the meeting. To my utter surprise, rhe committee gave them a righteous fucking grilling ... I haven't found the time to study every last part in depth yet, but it was definitely interesting, especially because I work for this mismanaged Frankenstein of an organization and I've met Tony Cooper in person before. I've provided the link below and also some choice quotage to emphasize the immense misspending of tax payers money that goes on.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... 106402.htm
Purely on IT systems:
I can confirm the IT is pretty shoddy really. The main system I use feels facking ANCIENT, it looks like a black and white 'DOS Box' and you have to navigate using keys 1-10 without use of a mouse. Up until much needed maintenance last year, it ran slow as fook. However, I myself have personally suggested improvements and things they could implement to make the job easier and more efficient, only to have them denied due to budgeting. Interesting how my site alone spent a reputed 16k of budget on redecorating the reception area, including fancy sofas, hideous floor tiles (which then had to be recovered with carpet due to staff slipping) and a very large plasma TV that perpetually says "Welcome", when we don't even get any public visitors...Q39 Mr Curry: The total cost then for the computers from start to finish, the IT, where are we, £300 million now?
Mr Cooper: The total spend for all IT is, calculated slightly differently from the NAO Report, in the region of about £285 million, but that includes all of the IT that we buy from IBM and Steria. To date, in terms of the sum of money that we have paid for the system and for some support work that Accenture have done, it amounts to £148 million and that figure does not include VAT, which we recover.
Continued:
Q50 Chairman: What is the cost of the IT? Was it the figure you gave us of £285 million? Look at paragraph 5. What we see is that according to the NAO we spent £500 million on this. What is the cost of this?
Dame Helen Ghosh: The NAO Report - and, again, we are not challenging what the NAO Report says - made its estimate of £350 million, that is £130 million between 2007 and 2009, on the basis of percentage scaling up. They have just taken the overall costs and then assigned them to the SPS.
Q51 Chairman: Very, very expensive. There are only 106,000 farmers. I have already quoted you a figure of £200,000 per person and I am told that we have 100 Accenture staff on this and even the starting salary for a graduate is £17,000 a year. You are employing 100 of these people to process the claims of just 106,000 farmers - there is some argument about this - at a total cost of the best part of £500 million.
Dame Helen Ghosh: Tony quoted a different figure for Accenture.
Q52 Chairman: This is just an object lesson on what goes wrong in Whitehall. You develop the most expensive, the most complex scheme you can possibly find. You then pay the private sector oodles of taxpayers' cash to try to sort it out and it goes on. You really have to get a grip on this, do you not? You cannot go on employing 100 Accenture staff. We are not talking about the entire benefit system, huge complexity, millions of claims. We are talking about 106,000 farmers. We might just as well divide up the £84 million and send them all a cheque. It would be a lot cheaper and easier in the end.
Yeah, that's right... celebrate you and your big cheese fellating lover's not getting the axe because us, the people on the lowest payroll are grinding our assess off doing the real work sorting out your shitty management decisions... Oh? And what's this? Yeah, that's it, make us do all the work, take all the flak for your fuck ups, then sack us willy nilly, whilst you and your buddies who caused this mess are making in excess of £100,000 a year each. Great.Q55 Mr Touhig: It cannot be a happy experience for you coming here.
Dame Helen Ghosh: It certainly is not a happy experience to come here and to have to continue to discuss less than perfect service to farmers. On a number of occasions I have celebrated with Tony and in the Department the speeding up of payments which, for the majority of farmers, has been a big improvement in customer service from a very low base. I continue to be concerned, as Accounting Officer, for the value for money issues. I should say, as the Report makes clear, that the RPA is reducing its staff numbers and we are setting year by year efficiency improvements. Their budget has gone down and their staff number has consistently come down.
Q77 Mr Bacon: May I start with Mr Cooper? Like Mr Curry, I have been looking at the Rural Payments Agency Annual Report and I was struck by the number of changes of staff. Can you just confirm that you started, according to your CV, as interim chief executive of the RPA in May 2006? You have been in the RPA steadily since then, have you not?
Mr Cooper: I have.
Q78 Mr Bacon: When did you become permanent rather than interim?
Mr Cooper: June last year; June 2008.
Q79 Mr Bacon: So in essence you have been acting as chief executive since May 2006.
Mr Cooper: I have.
Q80 Mr Bacon: So three and a half years, give or take. Mr Johnston McNeill, who was suspended and eventually sacked, was paid a salary of £113,850 plus a bonus which he got in 2006. Can you just tell the Committee what your salary is?
Mr Cooper: My current salary is £134,000.
Q81 Mr Bacon: In the annual report it refers to salary and allowances for you of £140,000 to £145,000 so am I to take it that there is a bonus on top of the £134,000?
Mr Cooper: That is correct.
Q82 Mr Bacon: That is what? Eleven thousand pounds?
Mr Cooper: Yes, eleven or twelve.
Q83 Mr Bacon: So £134,000 is your basic salary and a bonus of £11,000. Has that bonus been paid?
Mr Cooper: Yes, it was paid for last year.
Q84 Mr Bacon: It was paid for the last financial year. Calendar year or financial year?
Mr Cooper: Financial year.
Q85 Mr Bacon: You have been in the post for three and a half years, which is long enough to get a grip; you are the chief executive and it is your job to marshal all the resources and build the management team around you to do it. It is in the light of the fact that you have been there three and a half years that I think this page of the number of staff who have come and gone, the four chief operating officers and so on, is so interesting. Andrew Good was an HR professional. Is that correct?
Mr Cooper: That is correct.
Q86 Mr Bacon: In the notes to the accounts it says that the cost to the Rural Payments Agency, because he was hired through a recruitment agency, was £195,900 in one year and in the preceding year £263,000. Presumably the discrepancy is because in one case it was for a full year and in the other it was not. Is that right?
Mr Cooper: That is right.
Q87 Mr Bacon: So the total cost of him was £459,799. Robert Kendall was the finance director on an interim basis. Is that right?
Mr Cooper: That is correct.
Q88 Mr Bacon: You paid him £103,106 and in the preceding year £249,000, a total of £352,757. That is correct, is it not?
Mr Cooper: That is correct.
Q89 Mr Bacon: So those two alone, the HR function and the finance function, paid for on an interim basis, cost your Agency £812,000 for two years and then they went. If you add on Mr Burton, who cost £148,000 for what looks like five months and 12 days, you get to £40,000 short of £1 million. Mr Burton started on 19 May and he finished on 31 October. That is correct, is it not?
Mr Cooper: That is correct.
Q90 Mr Bacon: You now have this chap, Mr Pearce, and it says that he is paid directly through a company, which he presumably owns; payments were made directly to his company. It says that he was paid £255,000 to £260,000. Do you know the exact amount?
Mr Cooper: No, I do not.
A bonus of twelve grand, for largely being a failure, on top of an already huge salary eh? I got a poxy bonus of a hundred quid for exceeding my contracted targets at an average of about 108%. Lovely.
Also, the person BELOW the 'last boss' get's basically double the wage?
Q103 Mr Bacon: You are paid £134,000 a year, you are getting this chap for £260,000 a year, a lot more than you, but you are the boss, you are the chief executive, you must be able to run this thing and you are having to get in somebody else, a chief operating officer, to do the running because you do not seem able to. That is what it looks like.
Also, despite the seriousness of the issues, there's some really fucking funny English sarcasm and cynicism scattered around the report from the panel. I quote, for instance:
Haha... not really hillarious or anything, but just sarcy little digs like this make me think our style rocksQ40 Mr Curry: There is a little outpost of your empire called the Rural Land Registry, is there not?
Q157 Mr Bacon: Finally, and this is the note I really want to see, the one about madness and nightmare. It is my belief that the senior official in Defra said that going down the dynamic hybrid route would be madness and that the senior official in the Rural Payments Agency, Bill Duncan, said that it would be a nightmare to go down the dynamic hybrid route, but I may have got it the wrong way round. If you could write a note explaining which one said which, I would be very grateful.
Dame Helen Ghosh: I will do that and I will also put it in context.
Chairman: What does it matter whether it is madness or a nightmare?
Mr Bacon: I just want to be clear in my own mind the attribution of who said which.
That Bacon hard-on bearer is pretty funny, putting them in their place throughout.AND FINALLY... the greatest end to any official meeting I've read.
Chairman: Thank you. To sum up, the Rural Payments Agency's administration of the Single Payment Scheme for paying EU grants to farmers has been a master-class of misadministration. The £304 million additional staff costs, £280 million set aside to pay the European Commission and £38 million overpayments - a massive £622 million in total - are unlikely to be recovered and all fall to the taxpayer to pay. And we have still ended up with a clunky patched together IT system. Initially farmers, many of whom rely on the payments, were paid the wrong amounts late; the Agency then had to claw back the millions of pounds which had been overpaid. Because of its shoddy bookkeeping, it does not actually know the extent of these overpayments which could be somewhere between £55 million and £90 million. Thank you very much.
