A final version of chief executive Boley Smillie’s report could be with the Policy & Resources Committee as soon as the week after Easter and will certainly be out before the next States meeting.
‘The investigation is progressing as planned and we will publish a report before P&R provides a further update to the Assembly on Wednesday 22 April,’ said Mr Smillie yesterday.
‘This report, which will be in my name, has primarily focused on the MyGov programme. However, it has also drawn out broader themes and actions relevant to the delivery of major transformation projects across the public service.
‘Where appropriate, the report will include reference to wider systemic issues that have also been evident in other programmes, including, for example, aspects of the Revenue Service project.’
His investigation was announced in November, as P&R revealed that the £18m. MyGov scheme, which was meant to centralise customer services, had delivered no substantial improvements, while an attempt to modernise systems at the Revenue Service at a cost of £24m. had made things worse for taxpayers and staff.
It is understood that P&R is yet to decide whether to submit the inquiry findings to the Assembly for debate. Most of the recommended actions are unlikely to require States Resolutions.
Mr Smillie wants his report to lead to significant and permanent change in how major projects are run by the States.
It will also identify what went wrong with MyGov and other projects, and there is a widespread expectation among States members that it should clearly identify the officials and politicians primarily responsible for the worst of the IT failures.
‘This work has been carried out both to ensure proper and current accountability, and to support necessary reform and ensure that future programmes are managed with greater transparency and accountability,’ said Mr Smillie.
Writing in today’s Guernsey Press, P&R’s IT adviser, Marc Laine, said the report would ‘make painful reading’ and must lead to major reform in the public sector.
‘The media and public will draw the obvious conclusion: that the States cannot be trusted to deliver large, complex projects. That conclusion will be uncomfortable. It will also be essentially correct,’ said Deputy Laine.
He warned that responding in a conventional way – by commissioning more reviews and adding more procedures – would inevitably lead to more project failure in the future.
Instead, he hoped that the States would improve its capability to manage major schemes.
‘Project delivery must become a recognised discipline in its own right, with the seniority, status, budget and career structure to match,’ he said.
‘This is fundamentally about whether government can be trusted to do what it promises to do.
‘What the public needs to hear, and what I hope we will be in a position to demonstrate before long, is that we are professionalising [and] building a project delivery function with genuine standing in this organisation.’