Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-90)
OFFICE OF
GOVERNMENT COMMERCE,
DEPARTMENT FOR
WORK AND
PENSIONS, HOME
OFFICE, HM PRISON
SERVICE, AND
DRIVER AND
VEHICLE LICENSING
AGENCY
WEDNESDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2004
Q80 Chairman: Actually,
you have had enough, I would have thought. Let your colleagues
have a go now. Mr Spurr wants to have a word.
Mr Spurr: The programme and project
management support unit in the Home Office, which we work closely
with and have been working closely with in terms of the OASys
project, has been in position now for some while. We think it
is beneficial, and it gives additional support in terms of skills
development that we can turn to.
Q81 Mr Jenkins: So your
centre of excellence is doing very well then?
Mr Spurr: I am very happy. In
terms of the links we have had from the OASys project, which is
what I can speak about because that is what I am SRO for, then,
yes, I have no complaint at all. I think it was helpful to have
that.
Ms Baker: I am happy to say that
I would say that my centre of excellence is doing a good job because
it is within my own directorate, but in fact I do not allow the
expression "centre of excellence" to be used, so we
do not call it that within the Agency.
Q82 Mr Jenkins: The Cabinet
said there were centres of excellence but you are not going to
use it.
Ms Baker: No. I am not saying
that at all. We provide all those functions that a centre of excellence
provides within my directorate; so we have a programme management
office with benefits management processes in place, we have project
programme assurance, we have responsibility for all the gate reviewers;
we have accredited gate reviewers: we have everything there. We
have the toolkit in place, but I do not call it a centre of excellence.
Mr Oughton: It is just a label.
Q83 Mr Jenkins: You have
a central team.
Ms Baker: It is within my directorate,
and it is made up of several teams, so it is a virtual centre
of excellencebut I just choose not to call it a centre
of excellence.
Q84 Mr Jenkins: Some people
have to be different!
Mr Bone: We have centres of excellence
throughout the department; there is one in each of the businesses.
They work very well with all the projects that are going on in
the businesses. There is also a central co-ordination point to
make sure we co-ordinate the activities of those centres of excellence
and take forward constant improvement processes.
Q85 Mr Jenkins: So yours
are excellent as well?
Mr Bone: Yes, they are, excellent.
Mr Calvard: I will be talking
about the same centre of excellence as Mr Spurr because I am also
a part of the Home Office. We use the centre of excellence to
do health checks on our projects, to decide jointly whether we
are ready to do Gateway reviews as well as discussing with OGC.
I would say there is more work to do on improving the centre of
excellence, and I think it behoves us in the units in the Home
Office to work with the centre of excellence to make improvements.
Q86 Mr Jenkins: Mr Oughton,
the Report says only 25% are good. How are we going to get the
rest? We have got the good ones here. The ones that are not here
must be those that are not good. How will you drive those up to
the standard?
Mr Oughton: I was going to say,
Chairman, that I have nothing to add to these excellent answers;
but you ask a different question, Mr Jenkins. The answer is, constantly
working with them. In the Report I sent to the Prime Minister
at the end of September I was able to say that there had been
a significant shift in the last six months. This was hard to get
started, and the Cabinet decided that centres of excellence should
be created. It was from a standing start. We had to define what
they were, what their role was going to be. It was very important
to establish their functions and how they were going to interact
both with the main management boards of departments and with the
individual projects. We have had to work through that. We have
also extended the scope, as again Figure 25 makes clear.
Q87 Mr Jenkins: I accept
that. It is progress I want.
Mr Oughton: All of that is happening.
What do we do next? We either change the nature of the relationship
we have with the centres of excellence, because I was very conscious
that the OGC role was too distant a role. We were turning up once
every couple of months to see how the centre of excellence was
doing. That rather leaves the centre of excellence to find its
own way. It is a responsibility of ours to help the centres of
excellence develop the capability more quickly. Therefore I invested
in a team of liaison managers. I now have 14 liaison managers
working within the Office of Government and Commerce, who are
there not just to pop in once a month to see what is happening;
but to spend serious time, between one and two days a week with
the centres of excellence, working on these best practice issues
and helping them develop capability. As that capability develops,
I can withdraw from that, and the centre of excellence will be
capable of flying solo in more cases. We are putting effort into
helping them now, in the hope that we can pull back in due course.
I have invested capacity in helping them.
Q88 Chairman: Mr Spurr,
why did your project team participate in the success of the delivery
skills programme?
Mr Spurr: When the project started
we had a range of skills. We worked with OGC and through OGC we
appointed a specific consultant supporter who advised the project
throughout. Through that individual and through her specific support,
we developed the skills that we needed. We bought in the additional
skills that we needed, and delivered a successful project.
Q89 Chairman: Mr Oughton,
you know all the work that this Committee has done over the years
on IT projects, and the disasters that we have had to look at.
Are you telling the Committee now that IT is going to seriously
contribute towards efficiency in government, and how will it do
so, do you think?
Mr Oughton: I think there have
been some very misleading reports, if I may say so.
Q90 Chairman: By us?
Mr Oughton: No, not at all, in
the published media about the role of IT in delivering efficiency.
As we take forward the implementation of the Government's efficiency
programme, I am looking at the areas where maximum benefit can
be secured most quickly. Frankly, they are not around the areas
where a lot of noise has been evident, or around the areas where
we have been offered lots of interesting ideas and suggestions
from people external to government. They are in areas where I
know we can make progress quickly around procurement, where we
expect to secure over £7 billion of the £21.5 billion
we expect to gain over this three-year period; around productive
time, changing the working practices to get maximum output in
front-line service of delivery in the Health Service, over £4
billion in education, over £2 billion in the police and other
parts of the wider public sector. The contribution towards the
£21.5 billion efficiency challenge that we have been set
that will come from modernising our corporate services, the back
office stuff that people talk about, is relatively modest, frankly;
it is something like £1 billion. The benefit that will come
from modernising our transactions channels in terms of pure cash
is relatively modestwe estimate about £1 billion.
The issues there are much more about effectiveness and not about
cost-cutting and efficiency. I am not betting my store on IT being
the solution to these problems. In a letter I wrote to the Guardian
Society three weeks ago I tried to put that clearly on the record,
in the face of some very misleading comments about the central
role of IT and delivering efficiency.
Chairman: On that hopeful note, we will
end it there. Thank you very much, Mr Oughton, and your colleagues,
for coming here today. I think you can expect our report to look
at, amongst other things, why Gateway reviews should not be published,
and particularly following on from Mr Bacon's excellent questions
and the campaign he has been wielding; and of course the excellent
questions from other colleaguesand also by giving more
teeth to your department. Thank you very much.
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