
Army's £113M recruitment website 'was 52 months late' - tomgp
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46561779
======
buro9
The £113m was not for a website.

It was for a recruitment contract in totality for a decade (total £622m)
including all efforts to recruit for the UK army, including everything that
involves... of which a small part was the website but it was supposed to be
integrated into everything and included running the old legacy system in
parallel for a long while..

The details are in the report [https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2018/12/Investigat...](https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2018/12/Investigation-into-the-British-Army-Recruiting-
Partnering-Project.pdf)

But the headline is not the story.

~~~
pmyteh
The whole contract was actually £1.36bn over 10 years (NAO report, p.2), and
the £113m covered the new online recruitment system (including the costs of
running the old system longer than expected) and was triple the budget (p.6).

------
tonyedgecombe
These outsourcing companies seem to have reached the point where their core
competence is winning bids rather than delivering projects.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Capita's nick name is Crapita in the UK which tells you what you need to know.

I am sure my current (small) employer could have done better I could spec the
architecture for a the site (I have worked many large related sites ) recruit
a few extra good devs and bobs your uncle.

~~~
petepete
I'm a former Capita employee.

Internally, by the time your idea has been discussed across the thirteen
departments involved with implementing it and it's been OK'd by a committee,
its pros and cons weighed up between a pile of alternative vendors and the
delay of requisitioning some virtual machines for it to run on, you've already
solved it, thrown something live on AWS (or the server in the corner of your
IT dept's cupboard) and moved on with your project. It's just slow and painful
to the point where internally people avoid process.

Externally, they can't. They'll have used some massive heavyweight CMS to
write plugins to achieve what a small team of decent Django/Rails devs could
have written from scratch in a month.

~~~
arethuza
I had a quick look and it looks like a fairly vanilla ASP.Net MVC project?

------
sefrost
[https://apply.army.mod.uk/login](https://apply.army.mod.uk/login)

Is this the website?

The HTML is full of comments like:

    
    
      <!-- This was a temporary Single Sign on fix - I think it's no longer needed?  SVL -->
    
      
      <!-- This is being done since bundling is currently breaking css files!!!-->
    
    

I'm not calling out the developers, I'm sure they didn't get £113m, but where
did it go?

~~~
XCabbage
The two comments you've quoted are literally the only comments that indicate
hacks or broken things in the entire HTML source of the linked page. There are
other comments, but they are innocuous descriptive comments and not
indications of problems - things like:

    
    
        <!-- Adobe Analytics script (2 of 2) -->
    

Saying it is "full of" comments "like" the ones you've quoted is just plain
not true.

~~~
sefrost
The assets have many lines of commented out code and comments like the ones I
mentioned:

[https://apply.army.mod.uk/Content/Scripts/custom/RoleFinder....](https://apply.army.mod.uk/Content/Scripts/custom/RoleFinder.js)

I'm not calling out the developers, but I would suggest many people here would
not allow chunks of commented out code in the projects they work on. It
suggests poor use of source control, meaning the site won't be maintainable
and will have to be replaced. Of course it's likely this is because of
conditions placed on the developers by their managers, those are the people
I'm taking issue with here.

I'm just miffed off that as a UK taxpayer we're on the hook for this. Again.
If I'd paid for this site personally I'd be upset.

~~~
XCabbage
Eep. I agree that that's a bad look.

I also like the way that in one event handler in that file they check for the
existence of stopImmediatePropagation before calling it and if it's not there
they fall back `cancelBubble = true` to support old IE versions, but that in
another spot they happily call stopImmediatePropagation() without any check.
I'm not certain, but that certainly _looks_ wrong; it seems like they'd've
been better served by a polyfill.

------
XCabbage
It's impossible to judge from the information in the article whether this is
an absurd and unjustifiable waste of money or not. It doesn't tell us anything
about the requirements, only that the project was to build "a website".

[https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/) is a
website. Facebook is also a website. Spending £113m to build Motherfucking
Website is insane; spending £113m to build Facebook is a bargain.

As other commenters here noted, we can easily imagine extremely complicated
requirements. The backend requirements for a "recruitment website" for the
military might include all sorts of background checks, including pulling
criminal records and automatically trawling social media for content posted by
candidates and doing NLP analysis on it to detect warning signs of extremism.
There might be some sophisticated proprietary analytics portal for monitoring
the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. And while there might be a good
writeup elsewhere on the web on what exactly this project consisted of, and
I'd welcome relevant links, based purely on the content of the article we just
don't know.

Calling it a "website" without giving any hint of the requirements makes it
sound like the army paid £113m for the digital equivalent of a recruitment
brochure, yet I seriously doubt that's the real story here. I'd expect HN
commenters to be more skeptical of these kinds of portrayals, rather than
uncritically accepting the media narrative.

------
wsgeek
I think everyone here assumes that Capita actually tried to use the 113
million and so they are confused as to why the website is so poor. It’s much
more likely that about 10 million was spent on the website and the balance
lined the pockets of various people in government and at Capita.

------
martijn_himself
These projects are incredibly complex that fail for a variety of reasons, most
of them to do with politics, conflicting requirements, too many stakeholders
and decision makers, and too many people with little to no interest in or
grasp of the technology involved.

First and foremost the lesson should be that the army should have its own
dedicated IT department.

Also, any company peddling 'digital transformation' should be a red flag to
start with.

~~~
arethuza
"army should have its own dedicated IT department"

I'm sure they did at one point - I remember hearing a talk at a conference
from someone who handled their salary side of things maybe 5/6 years ago. He
was talking about the difficulties they had in managing master data (e.g. how
many people actually work for them) and came across rather well.

~~~
martijn_himself
That sound really interesting, I'm sure there are lots of subtleties to
working for the armed forces that wouldn't become apparent to an outside
contractor that would come in even if it was for multiple years.

Also these big contractors would usually customize existing (CRM) products to
deliver these projects, many of them may not be a good fit.

------
pjc50
"Outsourcing giant Capita was awarded the £495m contract for Army recruitment
in 2012 - but has failed to hit soldier recruitment targets every year since."

There's your problem, you gave it to Capita.

The whole PFI model relies on the pipedream of being able to just hand a piece
of paper over from the Minister's desk detailing what they want, as if they
were sending the intern out to buy milk, and magically getting the right thing
back. In practice it requires all sorts of complexity and control; the project
management is actually _harder_ than just straightforwardly doing it inhouse,
agility is impossible, and the opportunities for cost inflation are huge.

There is no real penalty for failure, and no real competitive market since the
tendering process is so complex and expensive, and in any case the relevant
small number of firms already have the Minister on speed-dial. Besides, the
outsourcing inevitably ends up "too big to fail", in that when a bankruptcy
_does_ happen like Carillion the state has to take over the cost of sorting it
out anyway.

~~~
arethuza
Interserve is also in a lot of trouble:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46505688](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46505688)

------
kerrsclyde
We're all familiar with over-exaggerated claims of being able to build them
something in a weekend, but £113m for a recruitment web site?!

~~~
timthorn
It's worth reading the full report: [https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2018/12/Investigat...](https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2018/12/Investigation-into-the-British-Army-Recruiting-
Partnering-Project.pdf)

~~~
arethuza
The MoD paid all that money and doesn't even get ownership of the code!

------
chiefalchemist
> "Army ads 'won't appeal to new soldiers'"

> "Capita has consistently missed the Army's recruitment targets, with the
> total shortfall ranging from 21% to 45%, the NAO said."

Not to get off topic but...Did Capita miss the targets, or have the proles
simply become wise to the ways of the powerful ruling elites? A pitch of
"serve your country" certainly doesn't have the truth / appeal that it once
had.

> "The Commons Defence Committee was told in October that the Army currently
> has 77,000 fully trained troops, compared with a target of 82,500."

Now drilling down a bit...5,500 short? That's not even 10%. The raw number
looks large-ish, but as a percentage (while short) doesn't feel unreasonable
(in a real world sense).

~~~
pjc50
Alternatively, it's a whole brigade short, and only slightly less than the
total number of troops deployed overseas. It's not a great situation to be in
given all the talk about civil contingencies planning or Ukraine-Russia
incidents.

Difficult to say how effective the nationalism is. I see a lot _more_ "support
our troops" than I used to, but it's been effectively monopolised by the
right. I suspect the problem is the Army wants trained specialists a lot more
than cannon fodder, and is unable to make competitive offers here.

------
myspy
"Capita admitted it had "underestimated the complexity" of the project."

Classic :D

~~~
lbriner
Read that as, 'Capita didn't care too much to manage requirements and sanitize
them but instead realised that they would get some sweet dough by stringing it
out'

They should have capped the price up-front.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
This, I don't get about government procurement. Why not set a fixed price;
with reductions for overruns.

Sure, with small companies they could go broke, but Capita has been given half
of the UK at this point.

~~~
lordnacho
If you set a fixed price you might get nothing. Half finished bridges and
railways, that kind of thing.

This is of course why you end up paying 113M for something that should cost a
tiny dragon of that. You're held to ransom by the contractor.

The thing to do might have been to recruit (!) some in house devs.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Well you get a half finished bridge and your money back, or as much money as
the company has assets and then you have one less company trying to rip us
off. Probably, you need a clause on C-suite assets being secured against the
project.

"But no one will do that" I expect is the response. Must be some honest
companies prepared to do a job for 100 times the cost?

~~~
lmm
> Well you get a half finished bridge and your money back, or as much money as
> the company has assets and then you have one less company trying to rip us
> off.

Setting up a new company costs a lot less than you make on a project like
this.

> Must be some honest companies prepared to do a job for 100 times the cost?

Sure. But government procurement is often required to go with the low bidder
(because of anti-favouritism rules) even when they obviously can't deliver.

------
Traster
I'd love to hear anyone involved in this process answer the question: "Why
wasn't any of the thousands of COTS solutions chosen instead?"

------
fabricexpert
The most interesting (IMO) part from the full report
[https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2018/12/Investigat...](https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2018/12/Investigation-into-the-British-Army-Recruiting-
Partnering-Project.pdf) Looks like it's not entirely the fault of Capita, but
the Army's overall approach was flawed:

The Army initially attempted to develop the IT infrastructure

The Department approved the Programme on the basis that the Army would use its
existing IT infrastructure to host the online system. In 2012, the Department
was therefore responsible for developing the IT infrastructure to achieve
this. Capita was responsible for developing the new online system. As we
reported in 2014, the Department encountered problems with the delivery of the
IT infrastructure, and deadlines were repeatedly missed.

The main problems were that the Department: • Had to manage a relationship
between two providers who had no contractual relationship with each other; •
Underestimated the complexity of what it was trying to achieve and,
consequently, the resources required to manage the risks; and • Had an Army
project management team that was inexperienced and under-resourced.

The Army originally intended to introduce the new online recruitment system by
July 2013. In December 2013, it accepted that its approach had not worked and
passed responsibility for implementing the whole approach – the hosting
infrastructure and the online recruitment system – to Capita. The Department’s
Accounting Officer accepted that the failure to manage the dependencies
between the Atlas and Capita contracts was ‘unacceptable’.

Capita took responsibility for developing the online system.

Capita initially intended to use an ‘off-the-shelf’ commercial system but
underestimated the complexity of the Army’s requirements. It found the level
of customisation needed to support the three Armed Services’ recruitment
processes meant that an off-the-shelf system was not a viable technical
solution. In February 2015, it therefore began to develop a new bespoke
system.

Capita then encountered problems developing the new application and missed
launch deadlines in July 2015, April 2016 and April 2017. The main problems
involved the scale of the three Armed Services’ processes and requirements,
and the number of interfaces with other IT systems. For example, the Armed
Forces have over 250 job roles, each with its own eligibility criteria and
rules, which means a new Army candidate can have 27 possible pathways through
the recruitment process. Capita told us that these requirements made system
development more complex than standard online recruitment systems.

------
known
Sometime back I proposed Agile methodology for Govt officials. They laughed at
it :(

~~~
robjan
The UK government developed a project management methodology called Prince 2.
Which has a lot of similarities to, and is compatible with, agile. The rights
to the methodology are jointly owned by the UK government and Capita, the
contractor involved in this screw up.

------
zxcv2
1yr was wasted trying to convert an online web application the US use for
recruitment to work for the UK. I heard it was doomed in numerous ways,
especially being cloud based (not a good idea to have all the personal data on
new recruits hosted offsite). How it was ever chosen defies belief.

The next year was spent building a bespoke app using a RAD (Rapid Application
Development) tool. Failed and abandoned after 12mths. How it was ever chosen
defies belief.

The next 18mths was spent building a bespoke app with a different RAD tool
(K2) supposedly that would enable catching up on the previous lost 2yrs by
cutting lots of corners and doing 3 yrs work in 9mths. It was the wrong tool
for the job and was never going to work. Management were told many times, and
why, but they would just ignore it and tell us to carry on. They hired every
K2 developer available on the market in the UK, but they seemed to be only
used to building small apps in one or two person teams, whereas many of us
were used to working in large teams building large complex systems. The K2
devs were considered the 'gurus' and everytime we raised the issues management
would go and ask the K2 guys, and of course, they would dismiss our issues
(often quite arrogantly) to protect their product. After 18mths it became
clear, we were proven right and K2 was abandoned.

In all this time, the entire management was completely replaced 3 times. None
seemed to have any experience in how to build a software application or
website. They would make the most astounding statements that concerned many of
us that they had no idea how to build not just a complex system like this, but
any software application at all. We were told we werent allowed to talk to the
project 'architects', and we later found out they were told not to talk to us
(an instant recipe for failure by itself). When we did get to talk to them
(unofficially) we soon realised why, they were also clueless. Next they tried
bringing in external management, but they were just as clueless and didnt seem
to know what to do either.

Of course the application was going to be large and complex, but was quite
achievable if people who knew what they were doing were in charge. In my
opinion the root problem is the same as in many other companies that develop
software systems (and often the root cause of the many data hacks we see on
the news): management who have no technical background choose the wrong tools
for the job, hire incompetent numpties who dont understand software technology
to do the work, and constantly try and cut corners you shouldn't cut to save
time and/or money.

Even when a project is behind you should be able to say how much you have
actually have completed, 10%, 20%, something (especially with 400+ people on
it), but it always seemed nothing was ever considered 'complete'. We often
said 3 x 10 person teams who knew what they were doing, with the correct
architecture and development tools, could have built a working system in
12-18mths.

Reading the report, I find it repulsive the financial penalties have been
reduced to keep Capita 'motivated'. Our armed forces deserve better. With all
the cost cutting they endure, they need to recruit quickly and efficiently and
fill 100% of positions they have to maintain an effective defence of our
country.

------
corkscrew
Prime example of crony capitalism
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism)

