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LPF Portal
LPF Portal
Item 19 of the Updated Schedule of Loss
DBS claims £15,213 which it paid TCS in order to change the functionality of the LPF Portal in order to attach documents.
The functionality requirement was stated broadly:
At paragraph 2.23.6 of Schedule 2-2 to the Agreement:
‘The Solution shall enable the AUTHORITY to issue a request to obtain local police information from its sources where there are indications that further information exists.’
At Schedule 3 to the Agreement:
‘Local Police Forces interface, which will allow to capture Police intelligence in a standardised way for both Disclosure and Barring purposes through the web portal (see section 1.2.1). Police Forces and the Authority will be able to interact in order to share and discuss information through a dedicated space on the web portal. The routing of information will be governed by Business Rules.’
Mr Britton’s evidence was that both parties accepted RFC 591 as a change, and DBS had not picked this issue up in UAT. Dr Hunt agreed that RFC was accepted as a change, and that this was because DBS did not request a change to the text field size but the ability to attach a document, which was an approach that was documented as not required. Dr Hunt considered that there appeared to have been no opportunity for DBS to comment on the screen layout during the design process, and that if the design process had made use of prototypes prior to development as it should have done then the need either for a larger text field or for attachments could have been identified much earlier. Dr Hunt agreed with Mr Britton that DBS could also have raised this during UAT and did not.
It is clear from an email exchange in August 2017, that DBS initially wanted an enlargement to the text box, but also indicated that it wanted the text within the box to be formatted so that it could be cut and pasted out of the box by the DBS users. Mr Kaushik of TCS then advised:
‘After looking into the examples and the requirement from Barbara i.e. to show the text formatted on the Portal Notification, I would suggest this to be an attachment solution as compared to enlarging the existing “Requested Information” box. As just enlarging the box might give us more space to write the information, but it will not keep the format when presented back on Portal.’
It is clear that the origin of this RFC lay in the fact that the text box had a character limit which proved inadequate to deal with some sorts of information exchange. The basic functionality existed, and no specified requirement (e.g. minimum size or the ability to attach documents) was breached. Whilst it may well be that the involvement of DBS review at the design stage, as promoted by Dr Hunt, may have identified this issue, it may well not have done: in the same way that the issue was not picked up by DBS at UAT, it may not have been picked up at any earlier stage. Moreover, the ability to cut and paste out of the text box appeared (which was not a specified requirement, and the absence of which has not been alleged by DBS to be a design failure) appears to have been the real driver to add the ability to attach documents as a functionality change.
DBS did not see this functionality change as consequent upon a design failure by TCS at the time, given that DBS (after what is clear from the RFC tracker was a lengthy commercial verification process) agreed that the new functionality should be paid for pursuant to the RFC process. I form the same view. Moreover, having agreed to pay for the new functionality (which may have had very different cost implications to merely increasing the character limit within the text box) without reservation, DBS do not identify the basis upon which it is entitled to the return of the sums DBS agreed to pay at the time.
The Counterclaim at item 19 in the Updated Schedule of Loss in respect of RFC 591 fails.
The other RFC claims (514, 640, 673, and 682) were not pursued by DBS in its Closing Submissions (or cross-referenced within its Spigelman Schedule).
- Heading
- CONTENTS
- IntroductiON
- The Factual Witnesses
- Expert Evidence
- Programming Experts
- Forensic Accounts
- The Parties Submissions
- Principles Applicable to Issues of Construction
- The Defendant’s Obligations and Responsibilities
- Clause 15
- Clause 9.5 which states
- Clause 14.5 of Schedule 2-6 which states
- The Delay and Notice Provisions
- Clause 7
- Conditions Precedent: Clauses 5 and 6
- Conditions Precedent: the authorities
- Clause 5.6
- Clause 6
- Clause 8
- Limitations of Liability
- A single or multiple caps?
- The Delay Damages cap under Clause 52.2.5
- Is TCS’s claim for loss of anticipated costs savings excluded by Clause 52?
- Compliance with Clause 5.3, Agreement and Estoppel Introduction
- Express Agreement
- Estoppel
- Introduction
- R1 B&B Delays
- Mr Britton’s First Analysis
- Mr Britton’s Second Analysis
- Conclusion on Mr Britton’s Analyses
- TCS’s submission based upon Mr Jardine’s analysis
- Responsibilities for Delay on the ‘Infrastructure’ Critical Path
- R1-D
- Compliance with Notice Provisions
- Analysis of Delays
- Up to August 2017
- From August 2017 to 19 September 2018
- Analysis
- Failed to confirm its desired functional scope of R1 Disclosure in relation to the Customer-to-Business portal and Accountable Officer’s Update Service functionality. Such confirmation was a prerequis
- Failed to make available an end-to-end test environment for the Interactive Voice Response system
- Failed to agree upon a data migration approach, without which the Claimant could not complete the build of a data migration environment so that anonymised data could be made available for testing
- Failed to ensure that relevant external stakeholders were available to participate in Final Systems Integration Testing
- Partial Termination
- TCS’s Claims
- Non-Manpower Costs
- Anticipated Cost Savings
- Summary of TCS’s Delay Claim Recovery
- DBS’s Claims
- Delay Payments
- R1-B&B Delay
- Disclosure Scotland Extension Costs – Item 1 of the Updated Schedule of Loss
- Loss of Anticipated Savings – Item 3 of the Updated Schedule of Loss
- R1-D Delay
- R0 Licence Costs – Item 4 of the Updated Schedule of Loss
- R0 Hosting and Infrastructure Costs - Item 5 of the Updated Schedule of Loss
- R0 Technology Refresh – Item 6 of the Updated Schedule of Loss
- R0 N-1 Sustainment Costs – Item 7 of the Updated Schedule of Loss
- R0 Maintenance Costs – Item 8 of the Updated Schedule of Loss
- Savings
- Introduction
- Quality-related Obligations
- Good Industry Practice and Defects
- Digital by Default Standards
- Section 71
- The Basics Portal
- Section 73
- The Barring Portal
- Section 75
- Section 76
- Barring Portal: Loss of productivity - Item 11 of the Updated Schedule of Loss
- LPF Portal
- Siebel Useability Issues
- Redaction
- Document naming, bundle creation and performance
- Adobe Licence (Item 20)
- Document Storage (Item 21)
- Other B1 Barring Quality Issues
- Scan on Demand
- Special Characters
- Letters
- Item 24 : Loss of Efficiency Claims arising out of R1 Barring Quality/Useability Issues
- N-1 Sustainment Costs
- Causation and Loss
- Exit/Service Transfer
- Identification of all services (3.2.2)
- Knowledge Transfer (3.2.6 and 3.2.7)
- Section 95
- Providing all documentation to a replacement contractor (3.2.1 and 3.2.10)
- The identification of all leases, maintenance agreement and support agreements in connection with the provision of the services (3.2.3)
- Providing any other information or assistance reasonably required by a replacement contractor (3.2.14)
- Causation and Loss
- The Security Incidents
- The Charges Variation Dispute Introduction
- Issue 1: How the amount of an ‘over-recovery of the Forecast Revenue’ (Clause 2.8.4) or ‘under-recovery of the Forecast Revenue’ (Clause 2.8.5) is to be measured
- Section 104
- Issue 4: How Clause 2.8.5 of Schedule 2-3 applied to Volume Based Service Charges in Service Year 5
- Issue 2: Whether the Predicted Volumes for Basics in Service Year 4 were 1,000,000 (TCS’s case) or 320,374 (DBS’s case)
- Conclusion on Volume Based Service Charge
- Conclusions