Will veil of secrecy be lifted from Borders CGI contract?

SPECIAL REPORT by OUR BUSINESS STAFF

The progress and problems which flow from the largest single contract in the history of Scottish Borders local government - the outsourcing of IT services to technology giants CGI (UK) Ltd.- have been kept well hidden from public scrutiny ever since the original multi-million pound deal was signed in 2016.

Council taxpayers were not told of the unprecedented £99 million contract extension to the year 2040 until the papers were signed last September by Scottish Borders Council and CGI executives. Details were only made public following Freedom of Information requests for copies of documents and private minutes.

And over the last 12 months alone members of the council's so-called Major Contracts Governance Group have spent an estimated 110 minutes considering 144 pages of 'Not For Publication' briefings and updates on CGI's performance. Another such briefing is scheduled to take place behind closed doors at a Group meeting next week.

Council officers did admit there had been issues and difficulties in the early stages of the relationship with CGI, attributed to the sheer scale of the transition of information technology services.

But even now, five years into the deal, it is claimed that progress has been limited in some areas while a pledge by CGI to create 200 highly skilled jobs in the Borders during the three years from 2016 was not delivered.

A recent full council meeting heard (in public) that the full jobs count now promised by the IT contractors was not now expected for a further six years.

Opposition leader Councillor Stuart Bell (SNP) had asked for an update on the delivery of new jobs and the development of a CGI service centre in a new-build facility at Tweedbank.

On the jobs issue, Executive member Councillor Mark Rowley (Con) told Mr Bell: "The Contract between the Council and CGI was revised with the agreement of Council in 2020 and as part of this change the timescales for completion of the delivery of the jobs commitment was revised to 2027.

"The original contractual commitment for CGI to deliver 147 jobs with a further 10 Modern apprenticeships, with a non-contractually binding stretch target of 250 jobs, was not amended by the 2020 agreement and remains in place. Currently CGI has 71 members of staff working on the SBC contract, including nine Borders based graduates who joined the company during the month of August."

And so far as the service centre was concerned, Mr Rowley said: "The new office which will house the CGI Borders Service Centre at Tweedbank is now due to be completed for occupation in December 2021. The project was delayed by COVID 19 and this provided the rationale for revising the job creation timescale. The new facility at Tweedbank should drive a step change in CGI’s staffing complement in the Borders.

As Not Just Sheep & Rugby discovered earlier this year the current number of jobs 'created' by the contract includes the headcount of 49 posts transferred from SBC's IT department back in 2016.

Commenting on the information received as a result of his question, Councillor Bell told us: "I think the Borders public will share my astonishment that the original commitment by CGI to provide 100 new jobs by 2021, whilst still regarded as a ‘contractual commitment’, has been extended to 2027. 

“I have thought for some time that the Council’s Administration have not been exercising effective oversight of the agreements with their IT contractor.  The original contract in 2016 stipulated member oversight and when that has eventually been implemented most of the elected councillors' oversight - including oversight of the (non) realisation of new jobs - has been conducted in private."

Councillor Bell's group is now pushing for much more of the deliberations on the CGI contract to be conducted in public for the first time.

He said: "I welcome the new commitment given by Councillor Rowley that he will discuss with officers how to take more of the content of the quarterly scrutiny of the CGI contract out of private business."

A source who contacted Not Just Sheep & Rugby challenged the claims that Covid had been to blame for delays in setting up the new Tweedbank centre and the failure to meet promised jobs growth.

The contact told us: "It is nonsense to say that the late building completion was the rationale why the job numbers date was extended. CGI have only ever occupied a fraction of the space at Council HQ - essentially free of charge - and with Covid everyone has been home working so the new building is irrelevant in that context."

Our source believed that up to now the CGI contract had "delivered nothing of significance", including the much praised Inspire Learning iPad roll out as that was "all Apple systems which are plug and play". 

And so far as the number of posts delivered by CGI was concerned: "Jobs are a myth with lots of smoke and mirrors to keep the [elected] members warm. 

"The transformation programme to save tens of millions is also way behind schedule. All change but no change. New titles slightly different areas of responsibility but actually business as usual".

According to the individual elements of the early phases of the transformation programme were still not working satisfactorily.

Early on there were significant issues with the delivery of the so-called Business World programme for SBC. And in 2017 a council spokesman confirmed that following delays with the installation of Digital Customer Access (DCA) a sub-contractor of CGI had been fired.

According to the local authority at that time: "The council has requested that its IT partner CGI terminates its contract with Agilisys, a third party supplier, following Agilisys’ failure to meet key milestones in the Digital Customer Access project to develop new and improved digital services for customers. The council will work with CGI to identify a new solution to achieve the project objectives."

Alongside the massive deal with CGI, SBC has awarded several contracts to IT consultancies since 2016.

For instance, in April this year a £151,500 council contract was awarded to Glasgow-based Hennessy IT Consultancy "to provide professional consultancy and support for the council's legacy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system Unit 4".

A £186 million outsourced IT contract between City of Edinburgh Council and CGI, signed in 2015, is very similar to the Borders model, according to technology experts.

Reports in the IT trade press from 2015 said CGI planned to automate and integrate back office processes for City of Edinburgh with a new Enterprise Resource Planning system called the Unit 4 ERP project.

The task was to replace and consolidate several council functions including human resources and payroll.

According to the media coverage CGI and the Edinburgh local authority opted for Unit 4's Business World, formerly known as Agresso. Agilisys Ltd. was sub-contracted to provide the Unit 4 solution.

But by 2016 the project had slipped behind schedule due to "technical and resource challenges". These issues had not been resolved by 2017, and later reports considered by Edinburgh councillors revealed the ERP project had been 'reset' in June 2018. However, the reset no longer included Unit 4.

The fraught relationship between CGI and Agilisys Ltd. resulted in legal action with claim and counter claim by each party ending up in the Court of Session.

In a 226-page judgment the judge Lord Bannatyne commented that many of CGI's witnesses were unreliable. Only one of the 15 witnesses CGI called, provided evidence which the judge was "prepared to accept in its entirety". In contrast, the judge found Agilisys' witnesses were "satisfactory", whose evidence was credible and reliable.

Legal proceedings are on-going.