From April 2002, the College is to become part of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. The Academy will therefore need to take note of our recommendations for the College and apply these more widely across the other organisations for which it will take responsibility.
1 The College should build on its current plans for improving how it measures its performance and develop a more comprehensive performance regime which covers both its inputs and its training outputs and outcomes.
a) On inputs, the College should calculate financial performance indicators for each course and compare performance year on year. It should also explore the scope for using these indicators in its development of international benchmarking.
b) On training outputs and outcomes, the College should develop its existing plans for the long term tracking of its graduates' performance to include:
■ Collecting more qualitative data on students' perceptions and motivation, using methods such as focus groups in addition to questionnaires;
■ Gathering feedback from a wider range of key stakeholders; and
■ Making greater use of the performance information generated by the single Services' personnel systems to identify more objective measures of training effectiveness.
These improvements to its evaluation of training should ensure that the College is better able to assess its own performance and the impact of its training on individual and Service performance. This will require action from the College's customers to support implementation. Other public sector training organisations should take note of the College's evaluation practices and our suggested improvements to these.
2 The Department should ensure that military teaching staff are posted to the College for a sufficient period for them to become fully effective.
3 The College should continue its efforts to resolve outstanding contract management issues, building on the partnering approach underpinning its performance regime to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.
4 There are wider lessons for other departments on the management of the PFI:
a) The Department has built flexibility into the contract. For example it can vary its use of the college in future years.
b) Poor contractor performance has been rectified without recourse to financial penalties to the advantage of the relationship between the Department and the contractor.
c) The College has identified that it needs to increase its resources for managing the contract.
d) The College is seeking greater control of utilities and other items purchased on its behalf by the contractor.
e) Departments need to show leadership and, where possible, maintain continuity within the project team.