1  The importance of consulting with potential users of the service at the earliest opportunity to gain a clear understanding of how they are most likely to access the service, and responding promptly and effectively to such feedback.

2  When working within the Modernising Government agenda, Departments need to recognise within their plans the possibility that the public and users may not be supportive of or appropriately equipped to achieve the Government's ultimate aim of non-paper based transactions. Departments may need to develop a strategy to achieve that aim therefore,  for example by considering the use of incentives and other mechanisms over a period of time to encourage interactions to be in the preferred form, if this form provides the best value for money overall in efficiency and effectiveness terms.

3  In assessing the utility of systems and processes, Departments should test operational staff productivity, and systems and processes' adaptability, to circumstances which challenge normal operating conditions; for example, one off events such as assumed priorities suddenly being changed.

4  Departments should use early Gateway Reviews to question assumptions rigorously, and plan the achievement of policy objectives prior to starting implementation. (This system had not been put in place by the Office of Government Commerce when the Criminal Records Bureau's implementation programme was started).  The recent introduction by the Home Office of a Strategic Delivery Board, chaired at Permanent Secretary level, with an in-house challenge role of this kind is a welcome development.

5  Good risk management may require potentially courageous decisions to defer the introduction of a new service so that fully tested processes and systems, operated by well trained staff whose operational productivity has been fully established, are in place at service commencement. The problems and costs arising from delays, and the damage to reputational risk, may be less in practice than those which may arise from going live with a system not fully fit for purpose.  Departments need to consider carefully the relative risks of each alternative in deciding the way forward.