What a 24 hours it has been. The Farmers Weekly team has been immersed in a massive story driven by a leak from whistleblowers working within the Rural Payments Agency. The full details are here:
http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2009/10/29/118497/EXCLUSIVE-RPA-loses-farmers39-bank-details.htm
Hilary Benn has today accepted full responsibility for the fact that 39 tapes carrying confidential farmer information went missing for sometime and no one was informed. The tapes had details about farmer names, addresses, bank accounts, passwords and single farm payment entitlements.
Most of the tapes were recovered, but not all of them. There is confusion as to what happened to them and who knew what when. It seems that DEFRA and the IT consultancy IBM that manages the data centre knew about the lost tapes in May 2009 but the RPA did not know about it until September 2009 when it conducted its own audit.
At no time had farmers or the public been told until Farmers Weekly released the story this morning. Questions have already been asked in the House of Commons today and the BBC and the Telegraph have now also covered the story.
This is a massive breach of security and puts the RPA and DEFRA on the back foot once again. DEFRA must be wondering what on earth to do next about the RPA. It is still squandering millions on an agency that is at the point of collapse. A review of the RPA is underway and it seems unlikely DEFRA will do anything drastic until that process is complete despite the seriousness of this latest debacle.
More information will be breaking on this story today on www.fwi.co.uk. We are digging hard on behalf of farmers and taxpayers.
Here is the leader that will appear in FW magazine this week giving our perspective on the latest RPA fiasco. Your views and feedback are always appreciated.
Whistleblowers call
time on the RPA
It’s appropriate this week as Farmers Weekly celebrates its 75th birthday to ask what makes a great magazine? I’ve always thought there are four key traits of a truly great publication and they are: integrity, accuracy, responsibility and leadership.
In our exclusive investigation (pages 6-7) of the shambles that continues to be the Rural Payments Agency, readers can judge for themselves as to whether Farmers Weekly still lives up to these attributes after three quarters of a century offering an information service as the farmers critical friend.
Since the formation of the RPA, our reporting of the beleaguered agency has been challenging but we’ve always set vigorous standards of fair-play. We’ve been diligent in reporting the truth, guarding against distortion and have tried to offer constructive solutions to the RPA’s many problems not just criticism.
Taking the emotion out of it has not been easy. Year after year thousands of furious farmers have bombarded us with stories about late and wrong single farm payments, inaccurate maps, flawed and unstable IT systems, incompetent managers and complaints about the futile waste of public money as the RPA stumbles from one crisis to another.
It pleases no one to have to expose one more massive failure. The serious leak we received this week about missing tapes carrying confidential information about farmers is yet another nail in the RPA’s coffin. Farmers are not at risk because critical data has now been recovered but that will be small consolation for those flabbergasted by the RPA’s continued incompetence. This latest revelation highlights sloppiness and a system breakdown of a scale never seen before. Even more worrying, it is RPA’s own employees who are spilling the beans about the bad shape it is in.
As the Public Accounts Committee hearing emphasised on Monday, there is no confidence in the system or the people that run it. Even the person in charge, Tony Cooper, now looks like a man lacking the conviction and belief that it can be rescued.
Fundamental questions still cannot be answered. Why does it cost the RPA £350m to pay £1.6bn out to 100,000 farmers? Any multinational organisation facing admin costs like that would not be in business for long.
Why has the RPA had four chief operating officers in just three years and why have they all left with massive golden handshakes having achieved no turnaround in the RPAs performance?
How was it that those briefing Accenture to deliver the original IT system failed to explain a fundamental that the technology had to cope with annual changes in key information? Why is it still necessary for the RPA to employ 100 fulltime Accenture contractors on monopoly money with still no prospect of improvements in service?
Sadly the RPA was broken almost before it even began. DEFRA chose the most complex payment system it could find and layered on to it a completely useless IT programme. The reputation of this agency is now so bad that it would seem inconceivable that it could survive the review that is currently underway. Farmers and taxpayers deserve so much better.