Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 3
3
The Department’s failure to deliver the Digital Services at the Border programme by March 2019...
Recommendation
The Department’s failure to deliver the Digital Services at the Border programme by March 2019 was caused by a lack of effective leadership, management and oversight. The Department accepts that the Digital Services at the Border programme did not achieve value for money up to 2019, with none of the three 6 Digital Services at the Border systems being delivered as planned. It failed to respond to or address risks that were flagged to the programme board. There have been three Accounting Officers and four Senior Responsible Owners (SROs) since the Digital Services at the Border programme began. The Department now expects the Digital Services at the Border programme SRO to focus full-time on seeing the programme through to delivery. The Department claims to have streamlined its oversight and reporting and says that in future it will hold its programme leaders more closely to account for programme delivery. Recommendation: The Department should set out specifically what it is doing differently in its approach to the DSAB programme to ensure that it is delivered on time to its revised end March 2022 timetable.
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
3.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 3.2 The reset in 2019 provided valuable lessons learned which the department has implemented, including: • the SRO having responsibility for one major programme and being able to flex their time commitment at varying points of the programme lifecycle, to ensure alignment and commitment to delivery of similar changes across the department; • new governance including comprehensive risk and governance processes, and mechanisms for managing change and scope requests and scope change are all embedded within the programme; • setting a manageable scope for the Digital Services at the Border (DSAB) programme and not trying to do too much; • the appointment of separate Programme and Technical Delivery directors to reinforce the senior leadership team; • establishing and using frameworks so technical resources can be quickly secured and deployed to support the phases of the programme; • building upon learning from the Border Crossing pilot into the current national rollout; • strengthening stakeholder representation at the programme board and in response to GIAA recommendations, the department has improved stakeholder engagement and tracking; and • increased allocated time for presentation of technical challenges at the programme board. 3.3 The technical differences in the department’s approach are: • the programme is delivering incrementally with short feedback loops; • key design decisions are flowing through the Home Office wide Technical Design Authority (TDA); • the department has taken an industry standard product-based approach; • teams work more collaboratively to deliver the roadmap; • estimating is data driven, using metrics from teams to improve forecasting accuracy. The people doing the work provide the estimates; and • there is a much stronger grip on dependencies and sequencing to enable the department to achieve its key goals.