Overview

  Understand risks - Understanding and allocating risks appropriately remains fundamental in driving the right behaviours

Over the last few years, many of our disagreements with government relate to how it measures, understands and allocates contract risks. Inappropriate allocation of risk has been a problem we have seen since our audits of the earliest government public-private partnerships. It continues to be the area of most contention between the NAO and government in our audits of its largest contracts. Although the importance of risk is widely recognised across government, we would be more convinced that it was well managed if we saw proper processes in place.