Recommendation 8

The National Audit Office’s report called for the Department to present a detailed plan and schedule identifying how it will meet the timeline.16 But when we pressed for a broad timetable or indicative dates for the essential steps towards achieving the target, the Department stated that it was awaiting Ministerial approvals. The Department repeatedly declined to provide any firm answers on when these approvals would be forthcoming or when it expected to determine the sequencing of events, beyond stating this would be “as quickly as possible.”17 We were unable to elicit any more detailed information about how long the Department estimates the contracting process to take, nor its view on the latest date by which it believes contracts would need to be in place for installation work to start.18