ESN delivery ‘appears unachievable’

And in her third annual report published earlier this month, Meg Hillier said that the same was true of the Home Office’s other major project – the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) modernisation programme – which looks likely to be almost £230 million over budget 

Ms Hillier said “a culture of denial continues” with repeated failures in which “optimism overrode common sense and good procurement”. 

“Management of contracts and commissioning risks is still not good enough,” she added. “All too often we see a lack of connection between a contract being let and the end user, or the citizen. Common sense and a proper understanding of how people will behave should be fundamentals of project planning but very often these are key ingredients missing from the mix. 

“The Home Office has had responsibility for two projects that have caused major concern to the committee recently – the DBS and the new ESN.  

“Both projects are inexcusably late, have allowed costs to spiral out of control and have seen poor contract and project management.” 

The ESN is being provided by EE utilising its 4G LTE (long-term evolution) national network and will give ‘next generation’ broadband voice and data services to all UK emergency services. 

A White Paper – A vision for digital transformation in the emergency services – from technology and network services company telent, says the ESN “has the potential to provide police, fire and rescue, and ambulance with a cheaper, faster and more sophisticated communications system”. 

But work to deliver the ESN has been given a ‘red’ rating in the annual report from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), meaning that “successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable”. 

The IPA rating highlights “major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable. The project may need re-scoping and/or its overall viability reassessed”.  

Ms Hillier said the ESN programme to replace the existing communications system Airwave was “over-ambitious in trying to establish an emergency service network more advanced than any other in the world”. 

“It has run into endless complications which finds the project at least 15 months behind schedule, with some sources reporting that it may be delayed for five to ten years,” she added in her report. 

“We have challenged the Home Office on ESN five times and on each occasion, have heard of further complications and possible delays to the programme.” 

Ms Hillier said the PAC had identified early on that the programme was “extremely high risk” and the Home Office has been shown to have “been complacent about these risks”. 

“One particular risk, which still remains, is how it will work on underground transport networks,” she added. 

“The timescale for delivery of the ESN remains unclear, as does the final cost. All this uncertainty does not convince local emergency services of the benefits of signing up and we have heard of some sourcing their own interim solutions.” 

The DBS “shares many of the hallmarks which have shown the ESN programme to be so problematic” said Ms Hillier, adding: “This is the service for employers to vet potential employees whose work will bring them into contact with children and vulnerable adults. 

“The project is expected to be almost £230 million over budget, is already over four years late and has failed to see the levels of take up originally predicted. 

“The upgrade aimed to move from paper systems to digital, but did not take into account the reality for the organisations that access it, many of which still rely on paper vetting certificates. It is still not yet clear when the modernisation programme will be completed.” 

She said the Permanent Secretary was now undertaking a review of the ESN. 

“He acknowledged that the Home Office has faced challenges in managing contracts effectively, as well as acknowledging the similarities in the failures of the ESN and the DBS,” said Ms Hillier. 

“The Permanent Secretary further told us that he accepted that there has been an underestimation of the complexity of the projects and that not enough work had been done at the planning stages.” 

Stephen Webb, the senior responsible owner for the Government’s Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme, told a PAC hearing earlier this year that the Home Office was considering the idea of “incremental capability” whereby emergency services users who felt able to could start to use ESN capability, while others could wait. 

However, Ms Hillier has said that this alternative approach “will involve a substantial amount of work with suppliers and emergency services and amounts to a reset of the entire approach for delivering the ESN programme”. 

Ms Hillier’s annual report also highlighted “concerns” about the Ministry of Justice, in particular the tagging and electronic monitoring of offenders. 

It concluded that replacing the contracts for electronic tags was made “overly ambitious, overly complicated and has been poorly delivered”. 

“The programme aimed to develop a new world-leading tag, employing GPS (Global Positioning System) technology, at the same time as reducing costs,” said Ms Hillier. “When we questioned officials from the ministry they admitted that they were ‘startled and stunned’ by the over-optimism of the original project. 

“The new tags are now due to be rolled out from early 2019, more than five years late. The ministry has so far spent over £60 million on the programme, including £7.7 million of losses that cannot be recovered. Despite the spend on, and ambition for, the programme, it relies on the same form of tagging technology that was commercially available when the programme first started.”