Scotland's Corporate Security System

When a computer system needs a budget of £20m, just for testing, its being built to fall over

The word 'simplicity' somehow escaped the founding principles of Social Security Scotland (SSS):  'dignity', 'fairness' and 'respect' are the deep letters boldly chiselled above its door. Here's hoping it can still afford to meet those fundamental truths after the bill for a new bloated bureaucracy arrives through the letterbox.

SSS is tasked with dispensing some existing and new welfare payments in Scotland. So far its done more to fill the pockets of the usual government contractors and quango hoppers than support the needy. When fully operational, the IT system alone will have cost more than the Scottish Welfare Fund has received over the last 10 years.

In November 2020, Jackie Baillie MSP asked what direct funding the Scottish Government provides to food banks. If she ever receives an answer, I suspect its zero. A few days later the same government blew £9.1m on specialist “low code” software from a Portuguese provider. Which is odd because 780 full time developers are still “coding” away on the delayed system.

It's worth contrasting the cost of the Scottish NHS Covid Application (a modest £700,000) with the SSS IT system (an incredible £250m). They are not readily comparable but nor is one 357x more complex than the other to build.

Here's the difference…

The Covid App had a defined specification that was outsourced to a specialist private company to deliver on a fixed price contract. The SSS system is a moving target being delivered by a Civil Service famed for botched projects but brilliant at serving itself.

At £180m the Scottish Government's Single Farm Payment System became the world's most expensive spreadsheet. I fear SSS has ambitions to deliver the most expensive application form.  When a computer system needs a budget of £20m, just for testing, its being built to fall over.

Like the fated Clydebank Ferry, the SSS system is missing key features like a payment processing module. The Scottish system will piggyback off the UK benefits system but how that works after independence is anyone's guess. As with energy, this SNP Government is creating more dependencies on the UK state not fewer.

Here's what needs to change…

Unless the Scottish Government can dramatically reduce the running costs of SSS then it will undermine genuine efforts to make a difference with enhanced Child Payments. Moving more towards a universal income and away from micromanaged benefits would greatly reduce complexity.

The Expert Ferry Group brought industry advice and experience directly into the Scottish Government, changing the approach to procurement. The same is needed with IT to challenge outdated thinking and outrageous costs. There is also a crying need to push more risk onto the contractors who are charging merrily for bums on seats, regardless of delivery.

Last year, Cabinet Minister Ivan McKee promised (and failed) to make all new code, produced by the government, "open and published".  Perhaps with more public eyes on the systems we might learn why the budgets are heading north and the timelines are stretching out. We could also track change and costs back to ministerial decisions. It’s time to make all software, paid for by the public, open to the public.

An additional 3,600 workers will be needed to run the SSS digital beast, sucking £300m from the economy every year. Scotland can afford independence but only if our government abides by the KISS principle- Keep it Simple Stupid. Building a little-Britain, blindly copying all its vested interests and inefficiencies, will drag us all down.