Central civil government annually spends £2.3 billion on information technology, some 16% of its total procurement budget. This report examines the progress the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has made in improving departments' capacity to deliver successful IT projects and programmes. In particular it looks at the application of the Gateway Review Process, where there is an independent review of projects at critical points; the use of OGC initiatives by departments; and engagement with suppliers.
The Government set out its strategy to improve the delivery of public services through increased and better use of information technology (Cm. 6683, ISBN 0101668325) in November 2005, with the aim of ensuring services are designed around the needs of customers or citizens rather than the provider. Drawing on 24 case studies from the public and private sectors in the UK and overseas, this NAO report highlights examples of successful IT-enabled programmes and projects which have achieved tangible benefits for citizens and taxpayers and identifies good practice which can be transferred to new and existing government programmes and projects. It pinpoints three key issues in these success stories relating to: i) the degree of engagement by senior decision-makers; ii) the level of organisational understanding of what is needed to be an 'intelligent client' (in terms of having the necessary skills to negotiate effectively with suppliers and users); and iii) the importance of realising the benefits of change by determining at the outset what the desired benefits are and how the project will be managed to ensure these benefits are optimised.
In recent decades, we have witnessed an increasing use of projects and similar temporary modes of organising in the public sector of nations in Europe and around the world. While for some this is a welcome development which unlocks entrepreneurial zeal and renders public services more flexible and accountable, others argue that this seeks to depoliticise policy initiatives, rendering them increasingly technocratic, and that the project organisations formed in this process offer fragmented and unsustainable short-term solutions to long-term problems. This volume sets out to address public sector projectification by drawing together research from a range of academic fields to develop a critical and theoretically-informed understanding of the causes, nature, and consequences of the projectification of the public sector. This book includes 13 chapters and is organised into three parts. The first part centres on the politics of projectification, specifically the role of projects in de-politicisation, often accomplished by rendering the political “technical”. The chapters in the second part all relate to the reframing of the relationship between the centre and periphery, or between policy making and implementation, and the role of temporality in reshaping this relation. The third and final part brings a focus upon the tools, techniques, and agents through which public sector projectification is assembled, constructed, and performed.
The business of government is necessarily diverse, changing and of considerable scale. A focus on improving the implementation of government programs and initiatives is important because the community expects the Government to deliver on its policies, as does the Government. The papers included in this collection address numerous aspects of improving implementation. They were initially presented at the Project Management and Organisational Change conference held in Canberra in February 2006, the first annual research conference organised by ANZSOG in conjunction with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. This collection represents a comprehensive drawing together of experience and insight from both practitioners and academic researchers, with speakers including top public sector executives from the Australian jurisdictions as well as representatives from the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand.
Provides, for the first time, a comparative overview of practices from A to Z. It maps out practices to enhance integrity throughout the whole procurement cycle, from needs assessment to contract management. It also takes a global stance by including practices from non-OECD countries.
