Gov CIO council told to "raise its game"

The government's CIO council has been told by MPs to "raise its game" and act more like its US counterpart to become a key influence in improving the track record of big public sector IT projects.

The CIO council is headed by government CIO John Suffolk and includes senior board-level IT representatives of all major Whitehall departments. The council is tasked with promoting a common approach to portfolio management, sharing information on suppliers' performance and assessing the capacity of the IT industry to deliver the government's portfolio of IT projects.

But in its Delivering successful IT-enabled business change report, Whitehall spending watchdog the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the role of the CIO council is not clear and its profile remains low.

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The report said: "The [CIO] council offers the potential to identify key risks to the delivery of programmes and projects and to drive up and ensure greater consistency of practice and performance across government. It needs to raise its game, acting more like its American counterpart."

Those recommendations include reporting regularly on the emerging risks around the government's portfolio of IT-enabled programmes, providing authoritative advice, promoting good practice, strengthening relationships with the supplier community and encouraging the involvement of smaller suppliers.

The PAC report also recommends a single body to improve IT and project management skills and knowledge across government, citing potential confusion between the various initiatives being led by the Cabinet Office's Delivery and Transformation Group and the Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

In response to the PAC's criticism about a lack of transparency about the identity or performance of 120 mission-critical IT programmes across government the OGC has now provided details on 90 of those to MPs.

The report also cites the Department for Work and Pension's payment modernisation programme and the pension credit as evidence major IT-enabled programmes can be delivered successfully by government, and said a "senior responsible owner" should be appointed at the outset of any project with performance and reward linked to agreed targets and milestones.

Edward Leigh MP, chairman of the PAC, said in the report: "If more large IT projects are to be similarly successful, then departments will have to understand what was done to make things go right. It's certainly no good putting someone in charge of the programme who lacks the experience and skills to get the best out of external contractors and stays in post only as long as it takes to get another civil service position."