1 This report has been prepared to provide insights from our previous work auditing major programmes, examining common issues that we see and providing learning points that we think government should focus on to help improve its performance on major programmes. It is not an exhaustive account of the difficulties that programmes face.
2 The report focuses mainly on infrastructure rather than purely transformation or digital programmes, but these lessons are also applicable to all types of projects and programmes. In some places we include specific examples from our published work, which are illustrative examples and are not indicative of the overall performance of a specific department. Nor do all of the programmes featured, or in government, suffer all of the issues we identify.