11:10am Friday 30th July 2010
No-one that has been exposed to Harrow Council’s IT service can be in any doubt that it is in dire need of improvement (‘Labour to privatise council’s IT’, Harrow Times, July 22, page 6).
Whether its poor performance was due to being understaffed, underskilled or underfunded would not be known to an outsider, but it would have been reasonable to assume it was all three.
Ironically, despite the reported “chronic lack of investment” under the Conservatives, IT performance actually improved during the last administration.
Labour now claims that 95 per cent of Harrow’s IT equipment (ie practically all of it) needs replacing, in order to avoid the risk of catastrophic failure.
This would suggest that true heroes of IT have been employed to keep the ailing infrastructure functioning.
Yet, by way of thanks for this extraordinary performance, they are to be jettisoned.
The system was unreliable under the previous Labour administration, which did nothing about it.
The new administration at least recognises that the creaking will eventually lead to collapse, but appears to have dropped the contract straight into the laps of Capita executives, simply because they were standing around.
Capita already runs the council’s customer contact centre which is the subject of widespread dissatisfaction and derision – hardly an example of exemplary performance or great value. Remarkably this major decision, about a crucial element of council operations, has been taken only five minutes after Labour came to power, giving no indication that it has been properly evaluated.
This would have been one occasion when independent consultants would have been essential.
Whatever happened to informed decision taking? And whatever happened to competitive tendering?
The council has a duty to provide best value and this makes a tendering process essential. But there does not appear to have been one. This process needs to be explained.
Mike Robinson, Hide Road, Harrow
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