Recommendation 2

We are concerned that the Treasury, DMO and NS&I will not have the necessary skills, experience, and institutional knowledge needed to overcome the challenges they face now, and in the years to come. The DMO and NS&I are both specialist organisations, with distinctly different skills sets and experience to those normally found in the Treasury. The Treasury faces challenges in maintaining the appropriate expertise in its debt management functions to be able to adequately scrutinise and challenge the work of the DMO and NS&I, which can be affected by staff turnover levels. The DMO is entering a period of transition with the current CEO due to retire at the end of June 2024 after being in post for over 20 years. This role has a long and steep learning curve and benefits from having deep, specialist knowledge which can only be developed over time. The Treasury has started the process of finding a replacement but needs to ensure a successor is willing to be in post long enough to develop this expertise. The DMO’s small executive team has other key members nearing retirement, highlighting the need for a clear succession plan. The Treasury asserts that NS&I has been upskilling and increasing the size of its workforce to reduce reliance on contractors and make it a better IT customer as it delivers its Rainbow Programme. NS&I currently outsources its entire back- office and customer-facing operations to a single service provider and the Rainbow Programme, which is already significantly delayed owing to a poorly executed procurement process, will see it move to a multiple service provider model. Recommendation 2: The Treasury should set out, as part of the Treasury Minute response, its overarching plan for building and retaining skills and experience, which should include, but not limited to, the following: • How NS&I is upskilling its workforce to deliver its Rainbow Programme; 6 Managing government borrowing • Details of the DMO’s succession planning, in particular an asse