Q61 Meg Hillier: That is an issue for your resources, if more people start asking.
David Pitchford: It is an issue for resourcing, but I will be open about this. One of the ways to build this collaboration is to actually help when someone needs help. So we try to do that, but we are quite strong about the priority aspect. You might think that we have not got enough resources, but what I am resourcing overall is the collaboration. Without that, we are not going to get this done, because the number of resources means that we need to work with Departments to get it done. Doing this sort of stuff also gives us good outcomes in terms of departmental collaboration.
Chair: Austin next and then we will deal with the Treasury relationships, which we have not dealt with sufficiently.
Q62 Austin Mitchell: I still think you are under-resourced. With 40% fewer staff, 25% less money and more projects to do, you are under-resourced. After this testimonial from the National Audit Office, and the demand that you say is coming from other Departments, you are surely in a position, when your contract is renewed in January, to go and demand more resources to do the job, aren't you?
Amyas Morse: Career advice.
David Pitchford: I can see why you would think that, Mr Mitchell. The reality of it is that we all know that in the realm within which we have to dwell, I am not going to be able to ask for, nor be allocated, a whole bunch more resources, so we just have to get smarter and better. I know that you have heard that before, but that is simply the way that it has to be.
Q63 Austin Mitchell: No amount of smart and better-extra smart and better-will enable you to grapple with a thing as big, as complex and as risky as the Universal Credit. I cannot see how, with 38 people, you can possibly cope with a project of that size with those risks.
David Pitchford: I guess one of the things we do is spread the load a bit. I talked to you in the private session about how I prioritise my time, and I certainly dwell at that end-I do a lot of dwelling, don't I? I certainly concentrate on those very difficult, high risk ones. I have a great team and they work harder than any team that I have ever had in the world. I guess that is a function of the demand.
Sharon White: The Universal Credit is a good example of how outside expertise being brought to bear was really important. The person who did the assessment and review-Faith Boardman-had been at the Treasury and she had worked in DWP. We had our chief micro-economist and labour market specialist on the panel. We had David, but we also brought in Martin Read, who has done very big ICT projects. The core team was obviously very important, but in terms of those who provided expert scrutiny, it is largely outside David's core team.
Amyas Morse: You are making them fire-fight a lot, I think. That is a concern. The core team is over-trading.
Q64 Austin Mitchell: I am glad to hear that. I remember that it took Richard Bacon 10 years to kill the national health computer system. Should Departments not be required to send staff to you, to provide staff to act as assessors? You say that you are educating them, but why can't you have the power to draw on departmental staff as part of the assessment programme?
David Pitchford: We have trialled this with great success, and that is one of the reasons why we are looking at this part-time interventionist role; I do not mean three hours a day, but for a period, to use them to come in and do a task for us for maybe two or three months. Plus we have used the commercial exchange programme, where we have brought someone in, for example from Serco, for six months, to give us additional skill and insight. That worked terrifically well, so we are going to try and expand that, but in terms of wholesale resources, the Government are just not in a position to provide them so we need to make do with what we have got.
Q65 Austin Mitchell: May we just move back to the Treasury? Is the Treasury sulking or something?
Sharon White: If there is no money around, I think we are probably all sulking.
Q66 Austin Mitchell: The Treasury's public spending group attended only two of the six authority board meetings between April and December 2011. Why are you not providing more help to this under-resourced project?
Sharon White: Maybe I can elaborate. The Treasury was at every MPA board meeting. I think it is just a question of what constitutes the Treasury public spending group. I have a number of Directors and at least one of those directors was at every MPA board meeting. In some cases that was a chap called James Richardson who runs the spending review, and in some cases it was Geoffrey Spence who runs Infrastructure UK and is an integral person on the MPRG-he is sufficiently more exalted than I am, and he reports directly to Nicholas Macpherson. We take this extraordinarily seriously because, as I mentioned, it is the biggest lever we have to reduce the risk of things going badly wrong in the current spending review.
Q67 Austin Mitchell: You could refuse to fund a project that does not comply with the assurance requirements.
Sharon White: We could certainly put in advice to the Chief Secretary to that effect, or to re-scope, to re-phase or-
Q68 Chair: Sharon, you said that you were on a journey, which I find difficult words. What I think the Committee would like some assurance is that, in taking funding decisions, where the MPA has done an assurance project, can you give us the assurance that you will consult the MPA before taking the decision on funding?
Sharon White: Yes, but I would put it in a different way.
Chair: Yes?
Sharon White: Yes, because the advice from the MPA is not a Cabinet Office process but a joint process; I write with recommendations coming out of the MPA to the relevant Permanent Secretary, signed off by David and by my Treasury spending team. I do not see this as two processes.
Q69 Chair: May I ask you three questions that flow from that? In the Report, on page 27, paragraph 2.29, it says that Treasury and Cabinet Office have "separate" controls and authorisations on ICT projects. Are you sorting that out, so it is all part of the same system?
Sharon White: Yes. We are not completely there-
Q70 Chair: When will you be there?
Sharon White: Hopefully, in the next few months.
David Pitchford: I would think absolutely by the end of this year but certainly in the autumn, as you say here-where I come from, you would say October. What I mean by that is that we are trying to set a deadline to get this sorted, in terms of the intersection between the two main Departments, but we have established a thing within the Cabinet Office called ICT Futures, which is now solely responsible for looking at-