The UK's public spending watchdog is investigating the troubled transfer of the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS) to Capita. In a notice, the National Audit Office (NAO) said problems had persisted since the outsourcer took over administration in December 2025. The Cabinet Office awarded Capita the seven-year £239 million contract in November 2023, allowing two years to prepare for the transition. The scheme serves 1.5 million current and former public servants. "Key service levels have been repeatedly missed, leaving many members struggling to access the information they need to plan for their retirement," the NAO said. Capita promised AI and automation, but the takeover brought a glitchy online portal, while some members struggled to receive pension payments. Capita missed its deadline to restore normal service by the end of June. It subsequently told MPs that all but the most complex cases would return to normal service by September. Responding to the investigation, Capita said it "accepts that performance remains below the standards that scheme members and the Government rightly expect" and that fixing the problems was its top priority. Scheme members interviewed by the BBC last month described feeling upset, frustrated, and ignored, with some waiting months for payments. One woman had been waiting six months for her widow's pension after her husband died in March. Capita said it would cooperate with parliamentary and regulatory investigations, and continue to engage fully and transparently with the NAO, Cabinet Office, and relevant stakeholders. "Capita recognises the need for continued service improvement, and we are implementing further automation along with stronger governance including improved management information. This will continue to improve operational output and member experience," it said. ®

Palantir's newly appointed UK senior vice president Tom Watson has accused Labour MP Clive Lewis of making "incorrect claims" about the company – while repeating NHS performance figures that the statistics regulator has said require careful caveats. Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour Party, advised Palantir from 2024 before joining it full-time last month. He now works alongside Louis Mosley, the company's executive vice president for the UK and Europe. His letter to Lewis was reported by The Nerve after the MP discussed it at the Labour Party conference this week. Watson challenged Lewis's statements about Palantir's UK contracts in healthcare, policing, and defense. Lewis said the level of detail in the letter felt like a message that "we're watching you." Palantir's Gotham or Foundry software would not have been needed to compile the dossier: Watson cited statements made in Parliament, written questions, interviews, opinion pieces, and social media. Watson also described Palantir as a major UK investor and said its software had helped convict a gang stealing money from ATMs, support victims of domestic abuse, and improve the availability of Royal Navy vessels. In rebutting what he described as misinformation, Watson said the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) was live at 142 trusts and that "137 are already reporting benefits." The broad claim echoes figures promoted by NHS England, which the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) subsequently told to communicate the platform's purported benefits more carefully. Following complaints about NHS England's use of data to promote the FDP, the OSR noted that the health service had added a caveat to its published figures on June 6: "We cannot therefore draw conclusions about cause and effect as other variables have not been controlled for." NHS England also updated its methodology and agreed to identify before-and-after comparisons more clearly in public communications. The OSR asked to be kept informed of its progress. Watson's letter did not include that caveat. Data obtained by campaign group Foxglove illustrated why the qualification matters. NHS England said an Inpatient Care Co-ordination Solution based on the FDP was associated with 111,589 additional patients undergoing procedures in operating theatres. Of the 41 trusts using the tool, however, 13 reported carrying out fewer operations after its introduction. Other factors – including staffing, case complexity, and bed capacity – could have affected those results in either direction. Foxglove also found that Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust accounted for 84 percent of the reported fall in outpatient waiting lists across the 16 trusts using the relevant tool. Watson may therefore want to apply the same scrutiny to the figures he deploys when accusing others of misinformation. The Register asked Palantir to comment. ®

Sopra Steria has expanded its legal challenge to a major UK government contract award after obtaining an unredacted copy of the agreement between Capita and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The company alleges that previously undisclosed terms gave Capita preferential treatment, reduced the outsourcer's exposure to risk, and left the DWP carrying more of it. One clause could allow the department to fund technology needed to compensate for deficiencies in Capita's tender, Sopra Steria claims. Capita values the deal at £370 million, although government documents put its potential value as high as £873.4 million. Sopra Steria has been challenging the award since March, alleging that the DWP accepted an "abnormally low" bid based on staffing numbers "significantly below the current levels." The dispute concerns a contract to provide finance, payroll, HR, procurement, and other shared services across four government departments. Capita, which is also responsible for the troubled transfer of the Civil Service Pension Scheme, beat incumbent provider Shared Services Connected Ltd (SSCL), a former joint venture with the UK government that is now wholly owned by French-headquartered systems integrator Sopra Steria. At the time of the award, Capita said it had participated in a robust procurement process and was ready to deliver value for money. The DWP maintained that it had conducted a fair competition and that the deal represented value for the public. The DWP leads the Synergy shared services program, which is intended to put the DWP, Ministry of Justice, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Home Office onto a common SaaS ERP and HR platform with shared business processes. All four departments are defendants in the case. Oracle and IBM previously secured a £711 million deal covering the ERP software and systems integration. Synergy forms part of a wider program to move central government departments and arm's-length bodies onto cloud-based shared services, creating contracts worth about £1.7 billion for technology suppliers. Sopra Steria said the DWP agreed to a Project Change Clause allowing the department to amend the contract to "expand Capita's technology base and/or otherwise compensate for the deficiencies in Capita's tender." Sopra Steria alleged that the provision reduced Capita's exposure, cutting "the contingency that Capita may otherwise have needed to price into its tender" and providing "a means for Capita to boost its margin despite its abnormally low tendered price." It further alleged that responsibilities assumed by the DWP allowed Capita to bid on the basis of a contract that "has a materially reduced level of risk borne by Capita but a materially greater level of risk borne by the [DWP]." Sopra Steria argued that, across a number of the responsibilities accepted by the DWP in the contract, the same or equivalent terms were not offered to Sopra Steria. The DWP denied treating the bidders differently. It said each received equal time and opportunity to negotiate, and that when they raised the same question or request, both were given the same response. General clarifications were shared with both bidders, the department said, while concessions secured through negotiation were disclosed only to the bidder that requested them. Any differences therefore related to the particular points raised by Capita rather than unequal treatment, it argued. A DWP spokesperson said: "We don't comment on live legal proceedings." A spokesperson at Capita told The Register: "We took part in a robust procurement process and stand ready to work with the DUP to ensure a smooth transition of service. Our priority remains to ensure value for money for the public." The filings also highlight competing descriptions of the contract's value. In March, Capita said the deal was worth £370 million over ten years, including all extension periods. That figure was its IFRS 15 transaction price, or order-book value, and excluded change and expansion services expected during the contract. The DWP said it had no record of approving Capita's announcement and denied Sopra Steria's allegation that the agreed price remained unclear. According to the department's filing, the estimated undiscounted value is £606.6 million over the initial seven-year term and £873.4 million over the maximum ten years, including estimated projects and optional services. It stressed that Capita has no automatic entitlement to that additional work. ®

Singapore’s digital transformation agency, GovTech, is piloting a dating app. GovTech says the app came about after discussions among its staff, who apparently “shared an interest in exploring some of the challenges people can face when meeting someone new.” “They wondered whether a different approach that places greater emphasis on compatibility through values and preferences, and offers fewer matches at a time, could give users more space to consider each introduction and decide whether they would like to take the next step.” The staffers took those ideas to GovTech’s annual hackathon, and the result was “FirstDate,” billed as “An initiative to support singles aged 21-35 in their dating journey.” The app asks users to complete a questionnaire that GovTech says “covers users' interests, habits, values and preferences to curate matches based on compatibility.” “Once completed, leave the matching to us,” the agency urges. That’s not strictly true because the app applies the Gale-Shapley Stable Matching algorithm, a method that imagines a group of people hoping to pair off in some way. In the 1962 paper [PDF] that proposes the algorithm, the authors offer the following scenario: “A certain community consists of n men and n women. Each person ranks those of the opposite sex in accordance with his or her preferences for a marriage partner. We seek a satisfactory way of marrying off all members of the community … if under it there are a man and a woman who are not married to each other but prefer each other to their actual mates.” The algorithm aims to produce stable relationships by sifting all participants’ preferences to find viable couples. It’s not perfect, by any means, but is widely used in economics. Readers who imagine that algorithmic matching can’t replace the mysteries of romance may wish to note that the OECD ranks Singaporean high school students as the world’s second-most proficient at mathematics. GovTech, however, allows that the algorithm can’t “guarantee chemistry or a match leading to a relationship.” The app operates on a 72-hour cycle, during which users will see info about one person the algorithm suggests they might find interesting. If both participants agree, the app reveals contact details. “Take it from there, reach out and get chatting!” GovTech urges. “If you do meet up, try our Date Quests to break the ice.” Date Quests are suggested activities for a first date. For now, the app is only available to single members of Singapore’s civil service. There’s no word on when or if Singapore might decide on wider release and take on Tinder. GovTech’s most famous app before FirstDate was probably TraceTogether, which used smartphones’ Bluetooth radios to track people during the COVID-19 pandemic in the hope of identifying people who had been exposed to the virus. Singaporean authorities used the app to contact those at risk of infection, and requred them to enter isolation to slow the spread of the virus. TraceTogether, and similar apps deployed around the world, mostly flopped. It’s unclear why Singapore has decided to test this app however one of the island nation’s five shared values is “Family as the basic unit of society.” That’s more than a platitude: a program called Made for Families offers grants to purchase housing, funding for pre-natal care, and tax rebates for parents. Those incentives haven’t prevented Singapore’s birth rate from falling to record lows. Singapore is not the first jurisdiction to try this sort of thing: the City of Tokyo did likewise in 2024. ®