Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
OFFICE OF
GOVERNMENT COMMERCE
AND HM TREASURY
6 MARCH 2006
Q40 Mr Bacon: What does that tell
us about the ability of the Civil Service to measure its performance?
Mr Oughton: It tells us that,
when we initially started the recruitment, we had no reason to
think that we could not recruit someone from the Civil Service,
that is why we—
Q41 Mr Bacon: Out of these half a
million people, there was not one person who was suitable?
Mr Oughton: Not who applied for
the job. So we went to a wider competition, out into the private
sector and that took longer.
Q42 Mr Bacon: Did you think of doing
any head-hunting? It does not have to be them coming to you. I
understood the standard way of Civil Service promotion was "Now
come on Carruthers, you've done your two years here, it is time
for you to widen your experience" and half way through an
important project, you are whisked off and have to do something
else. How else does one account for the fact that so many programmes
have so many project managers within such a short period of time?
Should you not have looked internally and, as it were, identified,
even fingered somebody and said this is very important.
Mr Oughton: I wanted someone with
the right skills. I did not want someone who was simply moving
to broaden experience; I wanted someone who had done it and who
had that experience. As it turned out, we were proved wrong, we
could not find someone who was available within the Civil Service,
so we had to go to a wider recruitment and it took us longer.
Q43 Mr Bacon: In paragraph 2.43,
it says that the information demanded by the efficiency teams
put strains on working relationships. What are you doing to put
this right?
Mr Oughton: It is not surprising
there is a strain. Our role is twofold: it is to help, but it
is to monitor and challenge, so that does put a strain on the
relationship. What are we doing? We are changing the way we assess
departmental progress. We have a process, which again is described
in the Report, called "moderation panels". This is a
process of scrutiny and challenge which we conduct once every
six months with the departments; my team, plus support from the
Public Services Productivity Panel, the Chancellor's body of external
advisers who help with this process. That has been a pretty acrimonious
and a pretty challenging process up until now.
Q44 Mr Bacon: Would it have been
made more acrimonious by the fact that at each of these six-monthly
reviews there was a different relationship manager from your side
turning up?
Mr Oughton: That is not generally
true.
Q45 Mr Bacon: Let me just read you
from paragraph 2.45.
Mr Oughton: It has happened in
some cases. It happened particularly at the beginning of the programme.
Q46 Mr Bacon: May I just read from
paragraph 2.45? The National Audit Office Report says, and it
is citing this as a general comment, as an example of what was
a general problem, "One department's efficiency co-ordinator
expressed the general feeling amongst departments" plural
"when she observed, `At the beginning, it seemed they were
coming and going every month . . . It might just be a factor of
the way they work, but it would be really helpful to have somebody
with a consistent view of the old stories'". It goes on to
say "During 2005, as relationship managers have tended to
stay in their positions longer"—it is only March 2006
and I am wondering what constitutes a long period of stay—"the
management of relationships with departments has become more stable".
If during 2005 people have stayed longer and the NAO are already,
on your advice, forming that conclusion or reporting that, how
long does somebody have to stay before it constitutes a long-term
stable relationship?
Mr Oughton: The key words in what
you have read out are "at the beginning" because that
is absolutely true. At the beginning we had too many changes of
personnel as people, some of them short-term acquisitions from
Gershon's team, covered that job for short periods before we were
able to recruit for the longer term. Since the beginning of 2005,
15 months ago now, we have had much greater stability in the team
and that has improved the relationship. However, if I can make
one other brief point, what we are doing to change the process
of scrutiny and challenge with the departments is to get much
closer to them and agree the territory that we are going to cover
so that there are no surprises then in the conversation that we
have. It is done in a way that is designed to be helpful, very
much in the way the Prime Minister's delivery unit does their
moderation panel work, and it is not just an attempt to catch
people out.
Q47 Mr Bacon: That presumably means
having the same relationship manager in situ for a reasonably
long time.
Mr Oughton: Yes, it does.
Q48 Mr Bacon: How long would be your
optimum period?
Mr Oughton: They should do at
least a year or 18 months and some of them who are now in post
will stay until the end of the programme.
Q49 Mr Bacon: In the private sector
it is standard to see a programme through. When I talk to consultants
and to private sector managers, this is the single biggest difference.
People are appointed to a project, they see the project through.
The National Probation Service implementation system strategy
famously had seven project managers in seven years. The national
programme for IT in the Health Service, which is the largest civilian
IT programme in the world, has now had four senior responsible
owners in three years. This is a core problem in the public sector.
What are you doing to put it right? Putting people in for 12 and
18 months is not necessarily addressing the problem, is it?
Mr Oughton: For this task in the
three-year programme we have got it right because we now have
relationship managers who will see this through. On the wider
issue of projects being run in Government, which is not covered
in this Report, then I talk to senior responsible owners about
their role and the duration. I talk to Permanent Secretaries about
that. More importantly, since you cited Connecting for Health,
the NHS IT programme, the important stability there is actually
around the project director who is undertaking the procurement.
He stayed in post throughout from day one.
Q50 Mr Bacon: Are you talking about
Mr Granger?
Mr Oughton: Indeed.
Q51 Mr Bacon: Do you have people
in OGC whose job it is permanently to scrutinise and worry about
Connecting for Health?
Mr Oughton: Yes, I do. I have
someone who sits on the programme board.
Q52 Mr Bacon: Multi-national companies
have some of the same problems that you do as a large organisation:
very big numbers of people, very big numbers of staff, very big
numbers in terms of money and their approach, broadly speaking,
not universally but broadly speaking, is better. I was interested
to hear you say that you have talked to private sector companies.
What more do you think you could do?
Mr Oughton: The terms of appointment
are already laid down as being four years, that is the presumption,
but we should be insisting that four years is stuck to or closer
to four years than is the case in some respects now. We could
do more around that, which is why part of what I do when I talk
to departments is to assess their capability to deliver. Remember
that the Cabinet Secretary has now instituted a process of capability
reviews which are again referred to in the NAO's Report, which
will be designed to look at all aspects of departmental capability
including their ability to deliver a major project.
Q53 Mr Bacon: Instead of picking
a period of time like four years out of the ether, why is it not
driven by the project? Why can it not be two and three quarter
years or three and a half years and then when the project is done,
that should be the criterion for moving on rather than basing
it round a chunk of time?
Mr Oughton: Sometimes it is. It
depends on the nature of the project. If you take the Ministry
of Defence for example, they put down an upper limit on length
of appointment in procurement of five years for the simple reason
that they wish to ensure that there is complete propriety over
the nature of the relationship which builds up between the departmental
project and the supplier. That is a perfectly reasonable safeguard
to put in place. In some other non-procurement projects, people
can stay longer or shorter depending.
Q54 Mr Bacon: One more question.
On page 50 there is a chart in figure 29 which shows that at least
one department must have been assessed as "Highly problematic—requires
urgent and decisive action". Which department was that?
Mr Oughton: I report progress
by department to the Chancellor and the Prime Minister, but I
am not able to talk about individual departments here.
Q55 Mr Bacon: Not to me? Was it more
than one department or was it just one?
Mr Oughton: I am not able to talk
about individual departments this afternoon.
Q56 Chairman: Why are you not able
to?
Mr Oughton: Because I have given
advice to the Prime Minister and Chancellor on performance, department
by department. What is reported in the NAO Report is performance
by work stream and by major contributor, but not by colour rating.
Q57 Mr Williams: On a point of order,
the witness is allowed to withhold policy advice not factual delivery
information. That should be available to this Committee.
Mr Oughton: My report is to the
Prime Minister and the Chancellor.
Q58 Mr Williams: It does not matter
to whom you report, the report is a factual report, not a policy
recommendation, not giving advice. We are not asking for the advice,
we are asking for the actual thorough information. Are you seriously
saying you are going to refuse to give it to this Committee?
Mr Oughton: You can take it Mr
Williams that what I provide to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor
is advice on what to do about everything that I find in the efficiency
programme.
Mr Williams: We are not asking for the
advice on what to do. We realise you do not have to give us information
on policy and it is absolutely correct that you should not, but
you were not asked, you were asked for factual information.
Q59 Mr Bacon: My question is: which
department is highly problematic?
Mr Oughton: I cannot answer that
question.
Mr Williams: I am sorry, but that is
not good enough.
Chairman: I think we are going to ask
the Clerk's advice on this. Surely the case is that we are not
allowed to ask the civil servant for policy advice to the Prime
Minister, but we are allowed to ask for factual information given
to the Prime Minister.
Mr Williams: That is right.
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