3 The Cabinet Office has made a positive and productive start to implementing the Strategy. The Cabinet Office has established new roles to lead and deliver the Strategy. Many senior ICT professionals have worked together on the actions due in this period and most have been delivered on time.
4 All parts of central government agree the principles of the Strategy, but the Cabinet Office needs to do more work to achieve full engagement with departments' plans. Meeting targets for cost and staff reduction in ICT is challenging, but central government cannot reduce costs sustainably if departments and agencies work alone. Government must use simplified and shared ICT infrastructure, reuse ICT solutions and deliver better performance in technology-led change. The Strategy offers some solutions to these issues.
5 The Government is implementing the Strategy differently than previous strategies and there is a greater chance that the actions will be embedded into the largest departments. In particular:
• The Cabinet Office has brought together a broader set of skills and delivery experience. The chief information officers (CIOs) and senior directors from the six largest spending departments are supported by ICT and procurement professionals from the Cabinet Office. This mix of staff from across government are making sure that Strategy solutions are aligned with the business needs of departments.
• The Cabinet Office has created a new CIO Delivery Board (the Board) to lead implementation. Led by the Government CIO, the Board has fewer members and is more focused on decision-making. It meets monthly and is in contrast to previous arrangements for strategy delivery where the Cabinet Office consulted quarterly across all departments. This enables the Board to make faster progress.
• Members of the Board are directly responsible to the Government CIO and the Minister for the Cabinet Office for implementing the strategy across government. Their personal objectives have been changed to reflect this accountability. They are also accountable to their own ministers for delivering ICT services.
• The Cabinet Office is applying mechanisms that make sure departments comply with the Strategy. The Major Projects Authority operates the ICT spending controls on projects over £5 million in value and provides assurance on around 200 central government major projects. The Authority will be checking that new business cases involving ICT comply with the Strategy as new common infrastructure, methods and standards are approved.
• The Cabinet Office is introducing stronger programme and portfolio management. The Strategy contains a complex set of interrelated actions. The Cabinet Office has grouped these actions into 19 technical delivery areas in the Government ICT Strategy - Strategic Implementation Plan (the Plan) published on 21 October 2011. The senior responsible owners of the projects have started to map dependencies between the various technical solutions that they are required to deliver. The Board is developing a 'dashboard' to monitor overall progress on implementation.
6 Although the Board has made progress in implementing new technical solutions, we have identified areas where progress has not advanced sufficiently in the first six months. This does not imply a lack of attention on the part of those involved, but reflects the ambition the Government has for the pace of change. Progress needs to be made on a number of parallel fronts:
• The Cabinet Office has not yet developed a system to measure sustained change arising from implementing the Strategy across central government.The Board has explained how individual actions will progress and included benefit forecasts and output metrics for some of the delivery areas in the Plan. The Cabinet Office has not yet defined how reform and improved efficiency in public services will be measured across central government, as business outcomes against an agreed baseline.
• The Board has been managing and planning the resources to deliver the Strategy informally, but without a clear resource plan, short-term capacity and capability gaps may start to hinder progress. The Government has always intended to implement the Strategy using existing resources. We have estimated that at least 70 people (full-time equivalents) from the public sector have worked on planning and implementing the Strategy in the first six months. As of October 2011, based on forecasts from the Board members, we estimate that these resources will need to more than double over the next 18 months. At least another 78 staff or contractors (full-time equivalents) are needed. Many will need to have specific technical and business skills to meet the requirements of the work. However, there is no evidence that the Board is undertaking resource planning to move 19 technical delivery areas into a major cross-government business change programme.
• The Board has not yet done sufficient planning about when and how central government bodies will adopt the Strategy solutions. The Board does not have an implementation schedule by department for all the delivery areas.