Digital First: A Programme Without a Control System
A county council is three years into a five-year 'Digital First' programme with five projects and a £31m budget. The programme board has not met for seven months. The senior responsible owner left last year and the role is covered part-time by the head of ICT. Two projects have changed scope without change requests; the benefits register has not been updated since 2023. One supplier is 14 months late on the customer portal. The council's audit committee has asked for assurance that the programme will deliver its benefits. Spend to date is £19m, and the remaining £12m is committed to contracts.
1. Identify the management case weaknesses and the immediate actions the council should take, stating what you would do first and why.
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The control system has failed, and that is the priority rather than the supplier.
Weaknesses:
- No substantive SRO. Part-time cover by the head of ICT lacks the authority and time the role requires.
- The programme board has not met for seven months, so decisions are being taken outside governance and are unrecorded.
- Two scope changes bypassed change control, which means cost and benefit baselines are unreliable.
- The benefits register is stale, so nobody can state what is being delivered.
- No independent assurance exists over a £31m programme.
Immediate actions: appoint a named director-level SRO with ring-fenced time; reinstate the board with terms of reference, quorum and a decision log; require retrospective change requests with impact assessments for the two projects; rebuild the benefits register with owners and baselines; commission an independent health check reporting to the audit committee.
Sequence matters: the SRO and board come first because they are the mechanism by which everything else is fixed.
2. The customer portal is 14 months late. How should the council manage this using contractual and non-contractual levers?
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Establish the facts first: the cause, whether the delay sits on the critical path, what work remains, and what recovery plan the supplier proposes.
Contractual levers: check service credits, liquidated damages, termination and step-in rights, and price them honestly. Their value is usually modest relative to the harm, and enforcement is slow.
Non-contractual levers: a joint recovery plan with dated milestones; additional supplier resource at the supplier's cost; a formal re-baseline; and a decision point at which remaining scope is re-procured.
The judgement is to protect deliverability rather than pursue penalties for their own sake. A supplier driven into dispute delivers nothing.
Update the programme plan, risk register and benefits profile: a 14-month delay pushes benefits right and changes the programme's value and its dependent projects. Report the position and the chosen route to the board and audit committee with evidence, and record the decision.
3. The audit committee asks: 'Can you assure us the programme will deliver its benefits?' What is the appropriate response?
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The honest answer is no, and offering such assurance would itself be a governance failure. The committee can be assured about the arrangements, not the outcome.
Provide:
- A benefits realisation plan with each benefit baselined, owned, dated, valued and rated for confidence.
- A distinction between cash-releasing benefits and those that are notional, or cashable only by reducing services.
- A trajectory showing benefits achieved to date against plan.
- The findings of independent assurance, with RAG ratings and actions arising.
Where a baseline does not exist, as here, say so and set a date for establishing it. State what would cause the programme to be stopped or re-scoped.
That is a defensible assurance position: transparent, evidenced and time-bound, rather than a guarantee that cannot be honoured.