The more the G4S Olympics scandal unfolds, the more it seems to resonate with One Barnet.
One of the criticims from APSE, the Association of Public Service Excellence, in their report into One Barnet is that you won't know that a contract is going wrong until it's too late, and that as part of the commissioning model, the contractor is responsible for monitoring, and it's against their commercial and public relations interest to publicise where things are going wrong. So what you end up with is failure that's unexpected, because you don't know how performance has really been. We already know that real scrutiny of the contract will be hampered because of commercial confidentiality meaning that we won't have access to all the information we might need in committees.
If I may, I would aslo like to say that APSE has had a lot of nonsense said about it being a "leftwing" organisation. That's rubbish. They work with over 300 local authorities of all political hues and denigrating their integrity is a sideshow to the issues they raise. And even if they were a leftwing organisation, would that make the criticism less valid? If you don't agree with them, respond to them. If you really believe in what you are doing, then speak up for it on it's own terms.
Update: Apologies on first publication it referred to "G4E" rather than G4S.
