House of Commons - Public Accounts - Twenty-Seventh Report

Select Committee on Public Accounts Twenty-Seventh Report

2 Setting standards for capacity and competence

13. To achieve successful delivery, departments need to be clear about the priority of the different change programmes in their portfolio and about their capacity and capability to deliver them. Prudential UK, for example, delivered its 1000-day transformation programme by managing the portfolio as a whole rather than as individual projects, which allowed the board to trade-off between projects in the best interests of the overall programme.[32]

14. The Chief Information Officer Council is promoting a common approach to portfolio management designed to enable departments to plan better how to timetable and prioritise their programmes and projects and to keep Accounting Officers and boards informed of risks to delivery. A common approach to portfolio management will also provide a clearer overview of the totality of the Government's mission critical programmes and projects and hence the capacity and capability needed by both departments and suppliers to deliver them.[33]

15. A key element in the 24 case studies of IT-enabled change identified in the C&AG's Report, was their recognition of the need to build the capability and capacity to deliver major programmes and projects.[34] Within central government, despite moves to improve capacity and capability, the skills and resources needed to deliver large IT-enabled business change remain a matter of concern for Gateway Reviewers (Figure 4), and for Heads of Centres of Excellence, more than 70% of whom remain concerned about a lack of programme and project management skills within departments.[35]

Figure 4: Between the periods July 2003 to February 2004 and March 2004 to March 2006 the percentage of "Red" issues raised in Gateway Reviews of IT-enabled programmes and projects fell in three of the top five categories, but concerns about skills and resources rose.

16. Senior civil servants are relatively inexperienced in running mission critical and high risk programmes and projects.[36] Around half (53%) of Senior Responsible Owners are in their first "SRO" role and the time they spend on the role is limited. Most spend only a minority of their time on their Senior Responsible Owner duties and for nearly half (45%) the role accounts for less than a fifth of their time.[37] The Delivery and Transformation Group acknowledges that departments' skills in managing large IT-enabled change are weak and is seeking to re-build capacity.[38]

17. For commercial organisations, IT-enabled change can be crucial to the success or failure of the business and, reflecting this importance, incentives and performance management regimes are geared to motivate those responsible to succeed.[39] Currently, Senior Responsible Owners are not rewarded for staying the course to delivery of their programme or project, or for taking ownership of risks.[40] Lack of experience combined with a regular turnover of Senior Responsible Owners, creates discontinuity and adds unnecessary risk to the management of IT-enabled business change.[41]

18. As programmes and projects make the transition from initial planning through to implementation and post-implementation, departments need to undertake careful succession planning to ensure that successful teams are deployed to best effect in order to consolidate their skills over a series of major IT-enabled programmes and to build up capability across government.[42]

19. Successful client-supplier relationships are characterised by open and honest dealings between departments and suppliers, where outcomes are defined clearly and risks are shared.[43] Here, valuable lessons can be learned from major programmes and projects in longer-established sectors such as construction, for example Heathrow Terminal 5.[44]

20. Departments manage their suppliers better when they specify clearly what they want delivered.[45] Allocating time up front to ensure that change is well thought through was important for the Northern Irish Criminal Justice Directorate's Causeway Programme. The Directorate achieved clarity about what the business change should achieve by spending eight months on mapping the business processes involved in the Programme.[46] Similarly, OGCbuying.solutions spent time drawing on the experience of customers to help design an e-sourcing service that met their needs.[47]

21. Major IT-enabled business change frequently involves the use of third party consultants to supplement the client's capacity. Britannia Building Society used third party consultants to validate at significant milestones whether the conditions for success were in place.[48] The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency used consultants to work with its front line staff who were experienced users of the existing system to help design the new process.[49] Consultants' input can also include assisting departments to manage suppliers, providing independent quality assurance of suppliers' work, and at the procurement stage helping departments shape their requirements and testing the quality of bidders' proposals.[50]

22. Departments can derive maximum benefit from such arrangements by adopting a model similar to that of the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, whereby in order to build up longer term capability its consultants were contracted to transfer knowledge and skills to the Agency's staff throughout the programme. The importance of skills transfer in building departments' capability was also noted in the C&AG's Report on central government's use of consultants; alongside a more general need for government departments to act as intelligent clients and use consultants effectively and sparingly.[51]

32 C&AG's Report, para 9; Q 1; Case Study Volume, page 76, para 5 Back

33 Ibid, para 9; Q 1 Back

34 Ibid, para 9; Q 4 Back

35 Q 21; C&AG's Report, para 3.21 Back

36 Qq 13, 19 Back

37 C&AG's Report, paras 2.12, 2.14 Back

38 Qq 19, 20, 46-47 Back

39 C&AG's Report, para 9; Q 3 Back

40 Q 72 Back

41 Qq 54, 67-76 Back

42 Q 68 Back

43 Qq 40-41, 95-97 Back