Delivering public sector projects involves aligning the, often conflicting, aspirations and interests of a wide variety of groups including politicians, senior management, users, citizens and commercial providers. Failure to understand the end customers' needs may result in missed opportunities,7 while a lack of buy-in from staff can be detrimental to the smooth implementation of the project.8
In order to avoid unrealistically high expectations, departments need to improve their strategies for reconciling these conflicting perspectives and manage expectations about what is achievable. Seeking to achieve "gold-plated" outcomes drives up cost and increases project risk. Illustratively, scaling back on the aspiration of a project by 20 per cent can reduce cost and risk exposure by 80 per cent. From our experience, the unwillingness of the various parties with an interest in the project to accept this 80:20 philosophy is at the heart of many of the difficulties on which we have reported.9
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7 Helping over-indebted consumers (HC 292, 2009-10).
8 Crown Prosecution Service: the introduction of the Streamlined Process (HC 1584, 2010-12).
9 The Cost-Effective Delivery of an Armoured Vehicle Capability (HC 1029, 2010-12).