Recommendation 22

As part of the Vetting Reform programme, the Cabinet Office planned to replace UKSV’s legacy IT system, the National Security Vetting System, through the Future Vetting System programme, by February 2020 at a cost of £19 million. Failures in project management meant that the programme ran £9 million over budget and resulted in a 47 C&AG’s Report, para 3.5 48 C&AG’s Report, paras 1.2, 2.10 and Footnote 8 49 C&AG’s Report, para 3.15 50 C&AG’s Report, para 3.3 and paras 3.7 to 3.12 51 Q 62 52 C&AG’s Report, para 3.11 and Figure 15 53 Qq 74, 80; C&AG’s Report, paras 3.11 and 3.12 54 Q 78 55 Q 63 56 Q 82 The performance of UK Security Vetting 17 £2.5 million write off in the Cabinet Office’s 2021–22 accounts.57 The IT modernisation programme was subsequently rolled into the wider Vetting Transformation programme. After several failed attempts to get business case approval for the whole transformation programme, in December 2022 UKSV successfully submitted a less ambitious business case for the development of just the first of three new levels of vetting.58 UKSV is expecting to seek approval for the next level of transformation in summer 2023 and agreed that it is unlikely to be completed until 2025.59 When asked what had gone wrong previously and what she would do differently next time, UKSV’s chief executive said that they would replace the previous “big bang approach” with a “very agile, iterative and low-risk rollout approach” and that she had high expectations that the next version of the business case would be approved.60