EURIM Briefing No. 33
January 2002
Modernising Government and Programme Management
–The Critical Success Factor
Introduction
Radical changes in the management and procurement of
delivery programmes are essential for Government to achieve its public service
targets for 2005.
The agenda set out by the
present Government for Modernising Government1 and improving
services in Health, Justice, Welfare, Education and Transport is the most
challenging public sector change programme ever undertaken in the UK. High-level objectives for Modernising
Government are defined in the white paper of 19991: to make
interaction between government and the public easier, improve service and
enhance the standing of public service, but the detailed roadmap of how to get
there and who is responsible is not clear.
Programme Management
is the method by which hundreds of individual change and investment projects
can be coordinated to deliver maximum benefit.
It is widely recognised as essential for controlling this type of
activity and is supported by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC). However, while there is general agreement
about how change should be managed, this is not happening at the working level,
suggesting that the likely outcome will be a large cost with little
benefit. The problem seems to be
particularly acute in central government, while many local authorities are
making significant progress.
Bringing about organisational
and behavioural change is particularly difficult and planned benefits often
fail to materialise because projects focus on delivering computers or software,
while the benefits arise from the way they are used. Programme Management provides a coordinated view, enabling risk
to be balanced and managed across the portfolio and delivery of benefits to be
achieved.
Recommendations
1.
A complete list of high value projects
across the public sector should be published, showing how each relates to the
overall policy and to other projects, with quantitative outcomes.
2.
The recommendations of the Successful
IT: Modernising Government in Action report2 and OGC best
practice must be joined up into a coherent, understandable approach that can be
applied in practice.
3.
This should include the specification,
measurement and reporting of objectives and should be mandated for public and
private sector use on all government programmes.
4.
Training in these areas should be a
prerequisite for appointment as project or programme manager on such work.
5.
Programme Managers with the requisite
experience and skill set must be developed by cooperation between industry and
the public sector.
6.
Senior Responsible Owners (SRO) must be
selected on ability (leadership, programme experience and influential skills)
not grade; be involved from initiation of the programmes and give the role top
priority and adequate time.
7.
Programmes
must be managed in a no-blame culture in which decisiveness and managed risks
are encouraged, with rewards linked to achievement.
8.
The
contractual framework within which industry and government work together on
change programmes must emphasise outcomes and value rather than cost and
volume.
What Is Programme Management
Programme management has been
the subject of a number of publications by the OGC (formerly CCTA) since 1994.3,4
The elements of programme
management, including Project Management, Risk Management and Benefit
Realisation, are embodied in the recommendations of Successful IT:
Modernising Government in Action2 and are implicit in proposals
such as the January 2002 white paper on local government8. The IT industry equally recognised the
importance of the principles in the CSSA paper on the subject.5
There are clear examples of
where Programme Management has been practised rigorously with excellent result,
such as the introduction of Self Assessment by the Inland Revenue: or the
restructuring of the Ordnance Survey topographic database. Yet, the term
Programme Management is not widely recognised or understood and we see little
evidence that it is practised on Business Change programmes involving IT in
Government.
The essence of Programme
Management is the management of a collection of related projects to bring about
a beneficial change in the state of an organisation. In the private sector this often means an increase in value or
profitability and in the public sector an improvement in service, the
implementation of policy or a reduction in cost. A programme must be thought of in terms of a structure such as
that below, constructed from the top down and delivered from the bottom up:
Definitions
Definitions vary but
some common themes of programme management are:
·
The elements of the programme are
related to strategy and together deliver a measurable change in performance
rather than simply the delivery of products, so the results must be continually
measured in business terms.
·
Programmes cross functional silos and so
need to be managed at senior level by empowered individuals
·
A programme is ongoing – business
change is a journey rather than a destination – with new projects being added
as old ones are completed.
·
Programmes exist in an environment in
which the economy, policy and technology are continually changing. Management, therefore, involves continual
evaluation of the collection of projects and whether they continue to be
relevant and contributing benefit, as well as the culling of projects where
necessary.
·
Elements of a programme are prioritised
to focus on early and important outcomes or benefits in order to maximise value.
·
The relationship of the elements of the
programme must be understood, to ensure that they fit together to deliver the
required effect completely and without duplication.
·
Project management is an essential
element of programme management, but it is not sufficient in itself to ensure
delivery of benefits from investments.
·
Programmes focus on value. Traditionally, for the private sector, Value
= Benefit – Cost, all measured in £’s and, while this does not always apply in
the Public sector, mechanisms such as Public Service Agreements provide a key
metric of benefit that can be used to justify investment and trade off between
competing business cases.
Traditional project management metrics (cost, time,
scope) are not enough to provide a reliable indication of the performance of
complex change programmes. The
programme manager and/or Senior Responsible Owner need a wider dataset to
answer the key, business-related questions highlighted in the chart below, and
to ensure that every activity is contributing to strategic goals.
Focus On Outcomes
Project management is
typically measured by the delivery of objects, such as computers and
facilities. It is an effective
mechanism for getting pieces of work done but without a programme framework
does not address the wider objectives.
The job of the project
manager may be completed by the construction of a building. Benefit is achieved in the following 1, 5 or
25 years through the proper use of the facility. Programme management takes a lifecycle view of the asset
and is concerned with delivering measurable benefits.
A Government department recently demonstrated
benefit from an investment in IT by showing that outsourcing had achieved
delivery of a new system at a lower cost.
The department was unable to show that the system had delivered any
operational advantage across multiple divisions. No individual was charged with ensuring that it was used at all,
or properly across divisions.
Yet the objective of modernising government is not (just)
to do it cheaper, but better.
A local authority programme to establish
Joint Care Trusts (for both health and social care) was not subject to a
definition of the business case and measurable benefits. There was thus no baseline against which to
manage the outcomes.
Performance targets both enable management of benefits
delivery and provide clear evidence after the event of what has been achieved.
Joining Forces
The challenge of modernising government involves
thousands of projects of diverse kinds, including IT, communications
infrastructure, personnel development, cultural change and public
relations. Any project involves
multiple suppliers, internal teams and crosses organisational boundaries.
The challenge is all
the more complex because much of the change must be brought about through
organisations with delegated or devolved responsibility / authority: local
government, RDAs, NHS trusts, police authorities and so on. Over 400 NHS Trusts may go their own way to
implement EPRS (Electronic Patient Record Systems) rather than adopt a national
solution; regional “justice” departments also adopt local solutions.
Without a joined up
view of the overall programme, projects may be initiated and completed without
contributing anything towards the overall desired outcomes.
Speed Of Response
It is common philosophy in
the private sector (and parts of government) that if a project cannot show
results in 6 months then it should not be started. Yet extended decision-making timescales prevail in other parts of
the public sector:- the NHS HR system takes 2 years just to select a supplier.
Revolutionising
public service quickly is a tough challenge.
Regular milestones ensure that benefits are on track and early wins help
to maintain momentum. The programme
should be continually adapted to bring forward benefits. This is only possible if the whole can be
broken down into manageable pieces, while at the same time seeing the big
picture of how they all fit together.
Government And
Suppliers Working Together
The government cannot bring about major change without
the involvement of the private sector, either as partner or supplier. Yet, while there is much talk of
partnership, the reality is that customer and supplier are often on opposite
sides of a great divide.
Traditional supplier
contracting processes focus on technical compliance and minimum cost. The winner naturally acts to expand the
scope of work to exploit wafer thin margins and extend the contract. The losers have incurred crippling bidding
costs and vow not to offer their wares to Government in future. There is little incentive for departments to
find low cost solutions if saving money just results in next year’s budget
being cut.
A pre-requisite for partnership is
a major change in the procurement process
Getting best value depends on rewarding the supplier for delivery of
outcomes, not completion of projects. A
focus on benefits invites the government / industry partnership to looking
creatively at different approaches to achieving the same goal. The user department should tell suppliers
the business objectives and targets, without pre-judging the solution. Industry should then propose how to meet the
targets with rough cost indicators. One
or perhaps two suppliers are selected for detailed negotiations which involve
the user department working together with industry to generate a common plan,
shared information and a non-confrontational attitude to risk and reward.
The Skills And Culture
Gap
The OGC material on programme and project management is widely and
rightly regarded both in industry and government as the best source of
intellectual property available on the subject. However, there is a severe shortage of managers in both
departments and industry partners with the requisite skills and experience to
apply this guidance in practice. There
is a widespread belief that PRINCE2 project methodology is enough to ensure
successful programmes, and avoid blame.
Managing Successful Programmes from the OGC is an excellent guide
to programme management but requires a level of maturity in the user community
that is beyond many departments. There
is a need for a comprehensible, practical programme approach that can be rolled
out and adopted across government programmes.
Cultural change in
public service is one of the cornerstones of modernised government. Yet as well as being an outcome it is a
pre-requisite for making the other changes happen.
Programme management
is about accepting responsibility to make things happen, while public service
has traditionally been about avoiding blame by stopping things happening and
inhibiting change. Making things happen
demands a no-blame, collaborative, risk taking, incentivised culture as in the
recommendations of EURIM Briefing 32 on Change Management6 and the
Cabinet Office report: Wiring it Up 7 Programmes must report to an accountable
individual empowered to make decisions. The programme should be visible to the
public and industry through publication of the programme plan.
Conclusion
The Modernising
Government White Paper itself identifies many of the issues raised here. Government intent is sincere and OGC
guidance is good but the skills, processes and culture needed to make it happen
are lacking. While the application of
programme management is recognised as essential, it is not embedded within the
operations of departments. As a result,
actions are not consistently benefits driven, decisions are not being taken
quickly enough and the desired outcomes will not be realised in the timescales
set, if at all.
References
1.
Modernising Govt.
White Paper, Cabinet Office 1999
2.
Successful IT:
Modernising Government in Action, Cabinet Office, 2000
3.
Managing Successful
Programmes, OGC, 1999
4.
A Guide to Programme
Management, CCTA, 1994
5.
Getting IT Right for
Government, CSSA, 2000
6.
EURIM Paper 32 - Change Management for e Whitehall
7.
Wiring it Up,
Performance & Innovation Unit Report, 2000
8.
Strong Local Leadership
– Quality Public Services, DTLR White Paper, January 2002