Recommendation 2

We are concerned about the continued lack of transparency to Parliament about the progress of government projects. This Committee has examined many programmes where issues were emerging for some time that only became public knowledge much later. For example, the Committee was kept in the dark for over a year before being told about the difficulties on the High Speed Two programme, and the programme now reports to Parliament half-yearly as a result of our work. The IPA agrees that creating a culture of openness and transparency is critical to effective project delivery. However, data on individual programmes can be poor, and there can be trade-offs to manage between commercial confidentiality and public transparency. Departmental processes for publishing information, such as in annual reports, may be delayed and/or inconsistent with information presented elsewhere in government. While the IPA states that it has good quarterly reporting in the GMPP and in its annual report, there is a time lag between the reported data and what’s happening on a project. As a result, we question whether this is useful for helping Parliament or the public to understand how major projects are progressing. The NIC told us that GMPP project business cases, outturn costs and schedules and other long-term evaluations will now be published from April 2021, which we welcome. Recommendation: HM Treasury and Cabinet Office must set out what they are doing to make sure that information on the progress of major projects is transparent and reported to Parliament in a more timely manner, particularly 6 Lessons from major projects and programmes for those projects that are nationally important. They should also set out what they are doing to make sure that all Accounting Officers comply with the rules around making assessments of major projects (against the criteria of propriety, regularity, feasibility and VFM) and to publish summaries of this advice on a timely basis. The Committee reminds all AOs