2.29 Insufficient emphasis on the career development of government commercial staff has limited not just recruitment but, more broadly, the development of commercial skills across government. Frequent movement of civil servants may result in experience and expertise being lost to project teams. Our focus group of SROs reported the lack of career development support for commercial staff in departments as a key weakness.
2.30 The OGC found that the average duration for SROs on major government projects was only 18 months, while the length of projects varied between three and ten years.23 The OGC also highlighted one high risk project, the Home Office's Schengen Information System II, that had five different SROs between June 2005 and August 2007, a period of reorganisation at the Home Office. Similarly, our 2008 report on the Future Nuclear Deterrent Capability24 found that the project had three SROs in its first 18 months. Private sector contractors and advisers said they are frequently frustrated by the short length of time that their public sector counterparts spend on project teams before they move to a different job within the same department.
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23 Lessons Learned: the SRO role in Major Government Programmes, OGC (September 2009).
24 Ministry of Defence: The United Kingdom's Future Nuclear Deterrent Capability, NAO (HC 1115, 2007-8).