Written evidence from Dr Richard Kirkham[1] (MMP 16)

Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

The Government’s Management of Major Projects inquiry

In late 2015, and in response to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) ‘Delivering Major Projects in Government’ inquiry, a collaboration of academics, civil servants, industry and professional body representatives formed a working group to identify research ‘grand challenges’ in the space of major project and programme delivery. With support from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and The Infrastructure and Projects Authority, ‘Project X’ #BetterGovProjects was launched. ‘Project X’ seeks to generate unique insights into the performance of major projects and programmes within and outside of government through excellent ‘co-produced’ research. Our aim is to improve the evidence base by fostering distinct communities across disciplines and knowledge areas, united by a common interest in project and programme management delivery. We aspire to translate this research into ‘useable’ outputs that support continuous project and programme management improvement in government and beyond. Project X research is organised into thematic areas that reflect the grand challenges we have identified through extensive consultation and engagement with our stakeholders;

• Theme A: Defining value, understanding and measuring success and the identification of critical success factors (led by The University of Oxford)
• Theme B: Front-end and back-end management practices and their influence on project performance (led by University College London and The University of Bath)
• Theme C: Data quality and use and their connections to project performance (led by The University Hull)
• Theme D: Assurance, reviews, reporting and governance and their connections to effective decision-making (led by Cranfield University)
• Theme E: Capability & knowledge management (led by Brighton University and University College London)
• Theme F: Government transformation (led by The University of Manchester and Sussex University)

Your committee has identified 17 questions that will frame the enquiry, most of these reflect contemporary research activity in Project X; Table 1 maps those questions to the 6 thematic areas of Project X research actions.

Whilst remaining respectful of the desires of the committee, we are exercised by the scope and short-timeframe of the enquiry; many of the 17 questions posed address highly complex issues that require (and deserve) in-depth and rigorous investigation.  For example, our research has identified evidence to support the proposition that the asynchronous nature of policy development and implementation through projects and programmes introduces emergent, unforeseeable risks to the realisation of long-run benefits.  Variations in the forecasted benefits may not always necessarily be a consequence of project delivery inefficiency, but a symptom of changes in the policy landscape upon which the business case for the project is predicated. This ‘temporal complexity’ is ever present in the work of government and our research is attempting to ‘unravel’ this complexity through a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the anatomy of major projects and programmes.  Our initial findings in Theme B suggest that there is significant variation in capability at the crucial “bookend’ phases. Critical time and organisation spanning processes, such as policy/project interaction and transition to business as usual are poorly understood and often poorly executed.

The committee may be aware that investment in project studies and related research is relatively low when contrasted with other disciplines, despite the recently announced £1.1m investment into Project X by the ESRC. This exercises us; particularly in the context of a growing number of postgraduate students[2] studying for project management related qualifications who expect research informed education and a significant recruitment exercise across the Government Project Delivery Profession. The ESRC have demonstrated a commitment in the form of Impact Acceleration Accounts (held at Sussex, Manchester and Edinburgh) and through recently announced medium-term strategic ‘capacity building’ funds. The current EPSRC research landscape in project management is virtually non-existent, which is frustrating as many of our academics undertake research that exists at the interface of the remits of both EPSRC and ESRC. It is our hope that through Project X, we can demonstrate the importance and relevance of project studies to society through the new body Research Councils UK. We have already demonstrated the impact that can be achieved through our contributions to the National Infrastructure Assessment and the Cross-Government Transformation Programme.

The committee seeks to identify how ‘lessons can be learned from examples of projects in other countries’. We have undertaken extensive research, funded by the Project Management Institute (PMI), to understand how ‘espoused’ and ‘practiced’ methods of benefits realisation management help shape project and programme delivery. This has led us to explore another question posed by the committee – ‘who should be held accountable for the conduct of major projects and for their outcomes?’ Our early stage findings question the legitimacy of assigning the accountability for benefits realisation with the Senior Responsible Owner (SRO), and the evident lack of tracking of benefits as projects transition into operational state (often referred to as business as usual). Our research on assurance reviews, for example, uncovers evidence that recommendations (arising from assurance reviews) tend to focus more on delivery than benefits although we found signals of greater emphasis on benefits at project initiation and project closure review stages. The obvious corollary is a more detailed investigation into the impact of our democracy and parliamentary reporting cycles on ministerial decision-making and how this impacts on long-term benefits realisation.

The committee also seeks to uncover answers to ‘how major public projects (should) be managed to command more respect and public confidence?’.  Published ‘transparency data’ provides some insight but rarely provides the public with a detailed understanding of why major projects are often challenging to deliver.   Our research highlights a number of concerns that are interrelated with other key questions including ‘how are decisions to commission and deliver major projects taken?’ and ‘how is the requirement for the project assessed?’ Our study of the “front end” of projects show that too much emphasis is placed on pre-decided solutions and less on choosing the best project concept to answer identified public needs. We have identified a defined set of best practices that should be in place before a major public project starts but which are often missing. A separate study has shown that UK public outsourcing contracts are subject to systemic risk, which requires special tools in the future to analyse and defend against the risks.  Research commissioned by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority and undertaken by the Thomas Ashton Institute for Risk and Regulatory Research at The University of Manchester has examined the risks associated with understanding behaviour change in transformation projects and programmes. The results of this study identify a number of challenges including

• Behaviour change is often a critical success factor in delivering programme benefits, yet it is not currently considered to be within scope of programmes. There needs to be a clear ambition to include behaviour change within scope of programmes if it is expected to happen, and a common understanding of what this means in the context of transformation.
• Business cases in transformation programmes that require behaviour change are based on untested assumptions about how people will behave. In addition, programme resource needs to match programme ambitions. Early stakeholder / citizen consultation with policy teams to understand current behavioural drivers will help generate realistic assumptions.

• People are adaptable to change providing that programmes consider the citizen perspective, i.e. how best to deliver these changes in a given context. Early citizen and stakeholder engagement will help identify enablers and barriers to inform approaches.

• Adopting a holistic approach that draws on a full understanding of the nature of the behaviours to be changed, for different groups, will promote success and sustainable change. Behaviour change should not be seen as a single, global change but as made up of several interconnected micro-behaviours that need attention.

The research also sets out a number of recommendations including a) action research to test the behaviour change tool in practice with a selection of government departments and develop a ‘toolkit’ that includes specific guidance and templates on how to generate behaviour change in programme teams. We also believe it important to research with citizens affected by a number of programmes to provide rich insights into the capacity of different demographic groups to adapt to changes.

The Thomas Ashton Institute has undertaken further research into the impact of’ legacy ICT’ infrastructure on transformation programmes; the results of this study also identify a number of issues including: -

• Digital achievements in Government tend to be ‘front-end’ (i.e. layering digital services on existing legacy systems). Government has tended to de-risk transformation programmes involving significant legacy ICT infrastructure by focusing on the ‘front-end’, or the citizen facing element rather than dealing with the highly complicated ‘back-end’ legacy systems, the layers of which introduce a degree of complexity that challenges digital transformation aspirations

• The layering of legacy ICT systems makes change more difficult over time; this inhibits the ability of government to deliver transformative change. Availability of experts with the appropriate coding skills (i.e. languages that are redundant throughout the rest of ICT market) and experience to manage legacy systems, the increasing costs of those experts over-time coupled with extensibility and interoperability issues can present significant challenges in achieving successful transitions to digital services. The susceptibility of legacy infrastructure to security attacks with fewer provisions for data backup and recovery is a major risk; in our 2016 research proposal to Cabinet Office, we highlighted the vulnerability of Windows XP, an operating system that is six times more likely to be attacked by malware than newer versions of the software environment. This was subsequently exposed in the NHS cyber-attack

• As more government services migrate to digital environments, dependencies on legacy systems continue to restrict innovation and realisation of the benefits that digital technologies can deliver. The application of ICT to digitise information and integrate systems across the project life cycle and through the value chain lies at the heart of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ (also known as Industry 4). These technologies include; big-data analytics, the Internet of Services (IoS) and The Internet of Things (IoT) simulation and virtualisation. If government is to fully embrace and capture the benefits of these technologies, it must possess the technical and commercial skills necessary to commission and procure projects and programmes that challenge suppliers to meet the technology maturity demand.

• Keeping pace with policy changes and government reform is an issue too. The asynchronous programme and policy delivery environment amplifies the delivery challenge of long-duration and highly complex legacy ICT intensive transformative projects and programmes. This presents difficulties in ‘future-proofing’ major transformative programmes. The impacts on benefits realisation require careful monitoring too. Our research suggests that this one issue alone is fundamental to how we understand and measure programme and project success.

• ‘Agile’ project management may offer improvements to ‘de-risking’ digital projects.  Agile project management methods, as distinct from ‘traditional’ waterfall methods, have the potential to enable project and programme teams to ‘de-risk’ complex and challenging ICT legacy work where it is appropriate to do so. The Government Digital Strategy sets out the requirement to establish better ways to develop policy and deliver services in tandem, intimating that ‘an agile approach to iterate rapidly’ could create the necessary conditions to achieve transformative change. Our research may assist business case developers in the approval process for agile projects outlined in recent HMT guidance4. Our research points to increasing visibility of agile in the ICT space with advocates arguing that the nature of ICT projects (such as writing code) lend well to this methodology, although overall programme delivery beyond the technical ICT work may still lean better towards waterfall.

The structure of Project X is designed to encourage the civil service to engage in an active relationship with academic researchers and shape the agenda across our research themes. Curiosity-driven research is important in establishing a sound theoretical basis for addressing important questions such as ‘how well equipped is the Civil Service to commission, manage and deliver major projects?’ and ‘what represents best practice and how well is best practice understood?’ The importance of theory must be tempered by a recognition of the practical limitations of theory in practice; our researchers have embraced phenomenological methods alongside empiricism to understand some of the challenges to ‘up skilling’ the civil service against an increasingly digital and transformational backdrop.

The announcement of an enquiry into the Government’s Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP) by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) offers a unique opportunity to cast light on the capability of our government to successfully deliver complex projects and programmes – both vital to effective policy implementation and a stable democracy.   Our researchers continue to engage in the debate that surrounds many of the most complex projects and programmes in the GMPP; what we know is that there is much to do in addressing the problems that are inherent at the interfaces of policy, project delivery and operations; policy makers have tended to operate in isolation of the project delivery profession - we find this perverse.  The ESRC and Cabinet Office funded ‘What Works?’ centres have demonstrated that there is a genuine desire to improve evidence based policy development – but this has not extended sufficiently into the project delivery profession and operations, nor has sufficient funding from UKRI.  Our ambition, through Project X, is to bring that rigour and evidenced based thinking to project delivery.  Through our outreach work we aim to improve the public’s understanding of major projects, this will drive improvements in their oversight and empower the public with the capability to challenge Ministerial decision-making where necessary. If Ministers can be encouraged to speak more openly on the risks, uncertainties, unpredictability and variability of the delivery of government projects, we believe that the public will feel more confident in the capability of government to make decisions that are in the best long-term interests of our society.

November 2018

Table 1: Matrix of Project X research and PACAC enquiry questions ( ✪completed research projects, ★live research projects)