A key government IT project will be delivered using traditional, not agile, techniques following the departure from the work by the Government Digital Service (GDS).
Agile is the preferred development method within UK central government, with backers like GDS saying it delivers usable systems quicker than traditional software engineering ‘waterfall’ approaches, so the fact it’s been ditched in this instance is of note to all public sector IT professionals.
The news comes out of a progress report by the National Audit Office on the Common Agricultural Policy Delivery Programme, which is also being regularly scrutinised by the Public Accounts Committee.
That is an application that’s meant to automate and speed up EU farming subsidies – but which has been dogged by problems. The system ran into such trouble that delayed payments to farmers caused great financial hardship, with as many as 16% of all applicants not getting the money they’d been promised by the end of March this year.
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The NAO check up focuses primarily on the 2015 Basic Payment Scheme payments to English farmers and landowners and improvements to the process for the 2016 and future years in the troubled scheme, and it’s found that a “traditional deployment and release cycle” is now the favoured development approach of the part of government trying to fix the scheme, the Rural Payments Agency (RPA).
The NAO reports says RPA has continued developing the IT environment without “significant” GDS involvement – claiming, indeed, that GDS’ withdrawal from the project had “enabled a change in the implementation approach, including reverting to a more traditional deployment and release cycle rather than the continuous deployment approach that GDS had previously advocated”.
RPA is said to be further developing the system, including extensions to functionality like the ability to map hedges in England and for users – British farmers – to apply online for the Countryside Stewardship Scheme.
RPA’s also trying to get the software to the stage where it will to allow farmers to change data and mapping for any claims so to further reduce the need for manual forms and processes, NAO says it was told.
