Morton's Fork

http://www.factfixx.com/2011/10/09/dilemmas-mortons-fork/

Back office and customer service project moves up a gear

Tuesday, 06 March 2012 15:35 Schroder, Johnathan

The council’s largest project taking place under the One Barnet transformation programme, the New Support and Customer Service Organisation (NSCSO), moved a step closer to fruition last week as the number of companies bidding to take over the services was cut to two. (This is already old news)

BT and Capita will now go head to head over the next six months or so for the second stage of ‘competitive dialogue’ after Tuesday’s Cabinet Resources Committee confirmed the shortlisting.

Staff ‘in scope’ for the project – working in HR, IS, Revenues and Benefits, Customer Services, Estates, Procurement, Finance, Corporate Programmes and Schools ICT – were informed about the shortlisting via a series of face to face briefings on the project last week. From the free dictionary - "scope" - First meant "target for shooting," from Greek skopos, "target." Oh dear.

They will have a further opportunity to find out more about their potential future employers at one of four (JS must have read the blog where his earlier error of saying 2 days was pointed out) ‘Meet the Bidder’ days taking place at the end of March.

Kari Manovitch, the Service Lead for the NSCSO project, said: “To get to this point has taken a lot of work by a lot of people, not least during the evaluation of the four outline solutions, where we had a large team of staff from across the council reading and scoring on a range of criteria before the project board could take the decision to short list two.

“We believe that one of these two companies will provide the best deal for the council and through investing in people, process and technology enable us to become more customer-centric and efficient.” Actually you have got this completely wrong. The council does not exist for its own ends. What matters is the best deal for the council tax payer and they have not been consulted on outsourcing.

The final ‘preferred bidder’ will take over the services in early 2013. To find out more about the NSCSO project and the rest of the One Barnet programme, look out for next week’s First Team One Barnet special edition, which will also include a timeline of key events over the all-important next 12 months. 

Which faceless multinational do you prefer, BT or Crapita? That is an example of a choice which fits into the concept of Morton's Fork. Any idea which one the council tax payers of Barnet would prefer? No one knows as they have not been consulted about One Barnet.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard