Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 5
5
Accepted
Require NISTA to outline strategic objective milestones and improve major project data use.
Conclusion
NISTA has a broad and stretching range of responsibilities, which will require it to juggle many competing demands on its resources. NISTA is responsible for infrastructure strategy, major project assurance, project delivery capability and has six objectives covering these broad areas. To fulfil these, NISTA has approximately 200 members of staff, though it stated it can also draw on around 18,000 project professionals across government, and the Treasury told us that it envisages some efficiency in it being brought into the Treasury. NISTA is also responsible for improving the collection and use of data to drive government project delivery, and acknowledges there is more work to do in standardising and using the data provided by projects. Bringing NISTA fully into the Treasury requires a fundamental change in culture, thinking, and the way Government delivers mega projects as they will now have a direct stake in the success or failure of these projects. recommendation a. NISTA should outline milestones for achieving its strategic objectives, including how it will allocate its resources to deliver its objectives, and ensure it retains a focus on priority areas such as digital and transformation projects. b. NISTA should make better use of data on the performance of major projects to inform its assurance work. 5
Government Response Summary
The government agrees, stating NISTA is already making progress in connecting data sources, producing insights, and exploring ways to share performance data. NISTA is also working to implement Project Data Standards, a common reporting platform, and upskilling colleagues in data and AI.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented NISTA has made significant progress to date in connecting individual systems and has brought several performance data sources together in one place to be better visualised. This is enabling an improved ability to analyse performance data both at a project and overall portfolio level. NISTA intends to continue building on this work and has plans in place to produce project level insights that support better targeting of assurance and intervention activities to where they are most needed and would deliver most benefit. NISTA is already exploring ways to best share and present project performance data to support the analysis of documentary evidence. This work will help to inform independent assurance review teams and allow them to utilise more information. NISTA will increasingly use major project performance data to generate portfolio level insights that help identify where system level interventions could be required to tackle more systemic blockers affecting multiple major projects. NISTA is working closely with departments and ALBs to bring together data in a systematic, consistent way including through publishing Project Data Standards, implementing a common reporting platform, and upskilling colleagues across government on the use of data and AI skills. It is working with industry and professional bodies to develop and implement these.