Recommendation 5

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