Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 23
23
Deferred
Cabinet Office's cautious approach delays Vetting Transformation programme following past IT modernisation failures.
Conclusion
The Cabinet Office told us that following its bad experience with its first attempt to modernise IT, it was now adopting a more cautious approach to transformation, and that it rejected the business plan for the Vetting Transformation programme on a few occasions because it was “not totally happy with the plan” and wanted to “be sure that this one was going to work”. It accepted that it had been a little optimistic about the achievable rate of transformation, but also pointed out that the need to focus on catching up with the level of demand for the day-to-day business, meant that it had had to push the transformation programme to the right, with customers’ agreement.61
Government Response Summary
The Cabinet Office has contracted external support for a 10-week discovery phase to review and advise on Vetting Transformation delivery models, with outputs forming an Outline Business Case for consideration in October 2023.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
6.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation Target implementation date: Winter 2023 6.2 In light of the Committee’s recommendations, the Cabinet Office has contracted external support for a 10-week enhanced discovery to review and advise on how best to deliver Vetting Transformation. This discovery phase will assess the technical approach and delivery models for transformation and make a series of recommendations for the Cabinet Office to consider. The outputs of this discovery phase will form the basis of an Outline Business Case which will be considered in October 2023. This Outline Business Case will include the high level implementation plan for the Cabinet Office’s preferred delivery option. The Cabinet Office would be happy to share the key elements of the resulting plan in due course.