Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
OFFICE OF
GOVERNMENT COMMERCE,
DEPARTMENT FOR
WORK AND
PENSIONS, HOME
OFFICE, HM PRISON
SERVICE, AND
DRIVER AND
VEHICLE LICENSING
AGENCY
WEDNESDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2004
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon
and welcome to the Committee of Public Accounts where today we
are looking at the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report on
Improving IT Procurement: the Impact of the Office of Government
Commerce's Initiatives on Departments and Suppliers in the Delivery
of Major IT-Enabled Projects. We welcome back to our Committee
John Oughton, who is Chief Executive of the OGC, Kevin Bone from
the Department for Work and Pensions, Michael Spurr from the Prison
Service, Stephen Calvard from the Home Office's Immigration and
Nationality Directorate, and Sharon Baker from the Driver and
Vehicle Licensing Agency. You are all very welcome, and we also
welcome the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who is sitting
on my left, who is of course a member of this Committee, but under
recent convention he has only turned up occasionally. We are also
very honoured to be joined by the Honourable William Alexander
Scott. You are all very welcome and thank you for coming to our
Committee. Mr Oughton, could I please address one or two questions
to you. Could you please turn to paragraph 2.15 in the Report
which you can find on page 28 and you will see there that, "Analysis
of the common issues raised in Gateway Reviews has remained the
same since their introduction." In other words, not a lot
apparently has changed. What major difference have Gateway Reviews
made in the delivery of IT projects?
Mr Oughton: Well,
Chairman, I am not surprised that the main issues have not changed
because the delivery of major IT projects, whether in the public
or private sector, is a very challenging thing to do, so the major
issues are likely to stay the same. What I think the Gateway Reviews
have done is, first of all, allowed us to identify the major issues
earlier than we would have done in the past, and I think the Gateway
Reviews have allowed both the project teams and the senior responsible
owners to be more frank about the difficulties because of course
the Gateway Review process is conducted in what I would call "safe
space", so a conversation can take place and it identifies
the problems, and I think it also allows us to identify some of
the generic issues that run across all of the IT projects and
allows us then to tackle those for government as a whole rather
than having to find solutions bespoke, project by project.
Q2 Chairman: All right,
you say that, but let's look at what has happened to these projects
once they go through the Reviews. If you look at paragraph 2.12,
which is on page 26, you will see there that one-fifth of all
projects which have undertaken more than one Gateway Review have
actually got worse as they moved through the process. How is this
possible?
Mr Oughton: I think it is possible
because challenges change over time and the rigour of the process
has developed over time. By contrast of course, for those projects
that have got worse, very many have stayed the same and very many
have improved, 43% of projects have improved, many of them red
to amber, and 11 in fact, many from amber to green.
Q3 Chairman: And one-fifth
have actually got worse. Was not the whole point of this that
with good project management you should foresee some of these
problems, should you not?
Mr Oughton: Yes, and my contention
is that we see those issues sooner than we would otherwise have
done.
Q4 Chairman: All right.
So let's now take a look at how departments use your services.
Would you please look at page 42 and paragraph 3.39. You will
see there extraordinarily, and this did receive some publicity
at the time of the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report when
some newspaper journalists picked up on this, that both the Home
Office and DWP discourage their staff, they actually discourage
their staff, from accessing OGC guidance directly. What does this
say about the usability of your guidance?
Mr Oughton: I think that the usability
of the guidance needs to be improved, and I acknowledge that,
and that is why at the beginning of this year I asked Jonathan
Tamblyn to conduct a review on the effectiveness with which our
guidance was being used in departments. Jonathan Tamblyn is the
representative of Intellect, the trade body, and there is a reference
to his work in paragraph 2.25 of the Report. What he found was
that we did need to improve our ability to switch from just generating
pieces of guidance into helping departments embed the improvements
that are implied in that guidance, so what you will see happening
in the Office of Government Commerce is a shift of activity and
emphasis on our part towards getting more closely alongside departments
to help them interpret the guidance and then effectively to use
it.
Q5 Chairman: But would
this not suggest that perhaps there is some confusion on behalf
of the OGC of how to target your initiatives at departments?
Mr Oughton: No, I do not think
so. When the Office of Government Commerce was first created,
Sir Peter Gershon identified two major areas where help was required
and development was required. One was around the whole issue of
better procurement and negotiating better deals on behalf of government
as a whole, and we have, I think, a very strong track record of
achievement in that area. The other was around the development
of better skills in departments in programme and project management
techniques, and there is a collection of initiatives which are
described in the Report which we have been pushing forward.
Q6 Chairman: Okay, well
let's look at one of these programmes, shall we, just to take
us to an example. If you look at page 43, paragraph 3.48, that
deals with the Successful Delivery Skills Programme. It says that
it experienced low levels of take-up and that none of the five
case study projects represented here have participated in it.
What is wrong with it? What does this say about your programme
generally?
Mr Oughton: Well, I will let the
projects answer for themselves as they may have their own ways
in which they can improve skills. I think the issue around the
Successful Delivery Skills Programme is that we attempted to develop
a number of different products. Some of those products, I think,
were duplicating activity that was already under way in departments,
some of those products have been used successfully and registration
on the project and programme management specialism is very high,
and the use of the skills audit and the skills passport is very
strong, so people do use some of these techniques. What I have
done since my arrival in April is to institute a single programme
approach to the delivery of products and services so that we can
tailor those much more to the needs of departments. Trying to
push the same products and services at every department when the
circumstances may differ from department to department does not,
in my view, seem to be an effective way of achieving it.
Q7 Chairman: Do any of
our other witnesses want to comment or are they happy with the
take-up of the programme?
Ms Baker: I am quite happy to
comment. Within the DVLA we found that the initial Delivery Skills
Programme was a useful framework, but it was not actually implementable
as it was, so what we did was we worked with the actual Department
for Transport with an OGC representative as well and created a
project there to create a whole programme and project management
network, and all DfT agencies must launch that network by the
end of this year. We launched ours at the beginning of this week
and are looking to roll that out right across the Agency. We have
already signed up to the PPMS, which is the Programme and Project
Management Specialism, within the OGC, but we are already taking
it up through our own network within the Department for Transport.
Q8 Chairman: That is a
bit worrying, Mr Oughton, that this programme was not capable
of being implemented.
Mr Oughton: I do not agree with
that. If I look at the comments—
Q9 Chairman: Well, the
other witness has just told you she did not think it was. She
knows exactly what is going on.
Mr Oughton: No, I do not think
that is what the other witness did say.
Q10 Chairman: She said
that it was not implementable.
Mr Oughton: The other witness
regarded this as a useful framework from which to develop solutions—
Q11 Chairman: She said
it was not implementable.
Ms Baker: As it was.
Mr Oughton: In its original form,
and, as I tried to explain, Mr Chairman, at the outset, the whole
point about our initiatives is that we need to tailor them to
the circumstances of the departments and that is why we are moving
now, again as the Report acknowledges, to a position where we
have a different sort of engagement with our customers in departments.
We are creating customer engagement teams that will get closer
to departments, will understand their needs, and we will offer
our products and services and allow the departments to choose
what is most useful and valuable to them so that they can pull
the solutions they need rather than us pushing particular solutions
on everybody.
Q12 Chairman: Okay, thank
you very much, Mr Oughton. Mr Bone, could you please look at Figure
23 which you will find on page 30. It talks there of your nine
centres of excellence. You lost your CSA Chief Executive this
morning, did you not?
Mr Bone: So I understand, yes.
Q13 Chairman: Why did
you lose him?
Mr Bone: I have no idea.
Q14 Chairman: You lost
him because of the chaotic way in which the computer system had
been put in place, which has put some of the most vulnerable members
of society in severe difficulties. What were your nine centres
of excellence doing?
Mr Bone: Well, as I understand
it, when that project commenced, those centres of excellence were
not in place. They have only been in place for a limited time.
Q15 Chairman: So if they
had been in place, this disaster, the resignation this morning,
would not have happened, would it?
Mr Bone: I think they could have
gone a long way to helping the project.
Q16 Chairman: In what
way?
Mr Bone: I cannot comment specifically
on that project because it is outwith my remit, but just in promoting
the best practice of project management, which is what they doing
across the other agencies in the Department.
Mr Oughton: Perhaps I could help
you, Chairman, because the timing is quite important here. The
Child Support Agency Modernisation Programme undertook two Gateway
Reviews very early in the life of the Gateway process, in April
of 2001 and in January of 2002, both before we introduced the
red-amber-green status. The Centres of Excellence Initiative was
established as a result of a Cabinet IT Action Plan which was
agreed in December 2002 and centres of excellence were created
by June 2003, so Mr Bone is absolutely right in saying that the
centres of excellence were not available to assist with the Child
Support Agency programme during its formative phase.
Q17 Chairman: Now, if
we look at paragraph 3.80 on page 51, we can see it actually tells
us there in that paragraph that the benefits of OGC's engagement
with the IT industry and particularly with Intellect have not
yet filtered down to project teams. This specifically is relevant
to my last question and I find it extraordinary. Then we see,
if we look again at page 46, paragraph 3.65, that none of the
case study project teams was aware of the creation of the senior
responsible industry executive, which is your equivalent to the
private sector's senior responsible owner. Now, this seems to
point to me, Mr Oughton, to a state of affairs where whatever
good advice you are responsible for, it is clearly not being implemented
by the project teams on the ground. Now, the Government say that
they are in favour of joined-up government, so would one way to
cut through all of this, this disaster we have had in the CSA,
be not just you being in a position where you issue guidance which
is clearly being ignored, but where you are responsible yourself
and your department for bringing in these IT projects?
Mr Oughton: Well, I am afraid
I am going to have to disagree with you again, Mr Chairman, because
in every case in every project, I think if you ask the witnesses,
you will find it is absolutely clear that on the industry side
of the relationship, there is a clear nominated individual who
plays the role of the senior responsible industry executive. They
may not carry that label, but they fulfil that task and the whole
point about the relationship we have developed with Intellect,
the code of conduct that Intellect published in December of 2003,
is that it is about establishing a closer relationship with government
departments and with individual projects, and I think if you were
to ask the projects, you would find that is what has been happening.
Q18 Chairman: Thank you.
I can only repeat what is in the Report, that they were not aware
of the creation of senior responsible industry executives.
Mr Oughton: Expressed in those
terms, but, as I say, if you were—
Q19 Chairman: Well, in
this Report, which you agreed to, Mr Oughton—
Mr Oughton: I have absolutely
agreed to the Report and my point is a very simple one, that if
you ask the witnesses whether there was an individual, a clearly
responsible official in the industry, in the project team with
whom they related, fulfilling the role that is described as the
senior responsible industry executive, I think you will find the
answer is yes. They may not have been labelled in that way and
that is why I agreed to the statement in the Report.
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