Management consultants (FOI)

Request

I would like to see the number of management consultants hired by Mr Parker to streamline the Government of Jersey since his coming into office on 1 January 2018.

Summary of the package given to each Management Consultant viz daily rate paid as well as details of accommodation, meals, drinks and flights paid for or reimbursed.

Additionally I would like full details of the three year contracts with Ernst and Young and also with TDP, the culture change specialists, which I understand will involve separate payments of £3.5m to each over the three years.

Response

The question has been interpreted to refer to interim staff hired since the Chief Executive Officer, Mr Parker, took up his post on 8 January, 2018.

The Chief Executive Officer as part of a programme of due diligence and initiating transformation, secured a transition team, the costs of which have been disclosed in a response to a previous Freedom of Information (FOI) request which can be found at the following link:

Cost of UK Interims supporting the Chief Executive Officer (FOI)

The Chief Executive Officer has not secured management consultants or interims subsequent to the above response, although a range of such staff have been appointed by the government in order to deliver change, and to fill roles on a temporary basis.

The roles of interim staff on a FTE salary of over 100k from 1 October 2017 to 30 November 2018 have been released in a response to a previous FOI request available at the following link:

Cost of interim senior roles (FOI)

Information in relation to day rate range, and number of interim staff recorded, as at 18 June 2019, is available within the following:

Written question to SEB by Deputy Le Hegarat (WQ.251/2019)

Further information on daily rate paid is considered to be commercially sensitive and therefore Article 33 (Commercial Interests) of the Law has been applied to the exact amounts paid.

Details of the cost of flights and accommodation have been released in a response to a previous FOI request available at the following link:

Interims flight and accommodation costs (FOI)

Details of all other sundry costs cannot be collated within 12.5 hours and Article 16 of the Law has been applied to this part of the request.

The table below shows the costs of the Finance Transformation contract with Ernst & Young:

The contract allowed for extensions or modifications to the contract where additional capacity was required. A small number of variations have been agreed based on the requirements of the programme.

The table below shows the costs of the Team Jersey programme contract with TDP:

Expense claims for Consultants are in accordance with the States of Jersey policy for Travel & Expenditure for work related travel. Suitable caps are applied to expenses and claims for alcohol are not permitted.

Articles applied

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

Article 33 Commercial interests

Information is qualified exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes a trade secret; or

(b) its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of a person (including the scheduled public authority holding the information).

Prejudice / public interest test

Article 33 (b) allows an authority to refuse a request for information where its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of a person (including the scheduled public authority holding the information). Whilst it is accepted that the public may have an interest in the value of contracts between the Government of Jersey and third parties, it is believed the contract values are commercially sensitive as they are the outcome of negotiations between parties and that the release of this data could affect the negotiation of future contracts.