Outsourcing Toolkit

Government revamps IT-project delivery

Tags:
Assessment,
Gateway,
Departments,
Public Sector

Kable

Published: 31 Oct 2008 12:43 GMT

The Office of Government Commerce is introducing measures which could significantly influence the execution of large IT projects.

The move, outlined in the Office of Government Commerce's (OGC's) newly published annual report, is part of an effort to help the government generate big financial savings.

Among the measures is the introduction of the Gateway Delivery Confidence Assessment as part of the Gateway Review process. This will involve ensuring that the action plans for projects address any acknowledged problems, reducing the risk of them arising later in the project. The OGC is currently working on a pilot to develop this approach.

The OGC also plans to introduce a new assurance tool named 'Starting Gate', to help departments identify delivery issues and risks before a project is initiated. This is currently being developed for appraisal and, if deemed to add value, it will be made available for all high-risk projects from next year.

The OGC said it will also intervene in projects from time to time.

The OGC is aiming to strengthen its support for government procurement with a new Procurement Policy and Standards Framework, filling gaps in policy and working with departments to ensure the framework meets their needs. It will also develop guidance on procuring specific categories of goods and services, and is developing an assessment framework on how to use procurement as a lever on policy issues.

The report also states the OGC's aim to produce, through its various initiatives, cumulative savings for the government of £2.6bn by 2011. It says the annual savings should rise to £1bn by the end of the 2008-11 Comprehensive Spending Review period.

In this financial year, the OGC hopes to have an influence on £5.2bn of government spending, producing cashable savings of £544m and net savings of £725m.

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Nigel Smith, the OGC's chief executive, said: "The scale of procurement in the public sector is huge, in terms of spend and also of the potential impact and benefits to the whole of the UK."

"The current economic climate and the targets set out in the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 mean the public sector has to work even harder and within a tighter spending regime to deliver world-class public services. And this is where the work of departments and a dynamic and more focused OGC can help to deliver on the government's agenda," said Smith.

As part of its strategy, the OGC is also looking to work more with the wider public sector, including local authorities and public-service-delivery bodies.

The OGC also said that it will measure its success through a number of factors, including: cashable efficiency gains from collaborative procurement; the extent to which top contracts are compliant with the best-value-for-money criteria; the number of departments that have improved spend data management and are moving towards common e-standards; and the timeliness and quality of data provided for the Public Sector Spend Survey.