Golden thread of accountability could help remove States 'fog'

IN JUNE the States will go through a massive prioritisation exercise, which will include how to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on major capital projects.

That could be anything from a new school to a runway extension to new fuel berth facilities or sea defences.

Committees compiled a £690m. wish list with 51 proposals on it.

There will be about £282m. available.

These are big numbers, but despite all the tightening up of procedures, there remains a healthy scepticism that the government can spend this money wisely.

How does the States overcome this?

It is no longer enough for a senior figure to stand up and say everything was on time and on budget, pat the questioner on the head and move on.

The public has the right to know that not just the correct projects are being pursued, but when they are complete they have been built efficiently, and then when they are in action they are achieving what the States said they would.

There should be a golden thread of accountability.

Instead there has been a fog which this Assembly will need to help clear.

Towards the end of its existence, the Public Accounts Committee made some key recommendations that, if enacted, would offer people a level of reassurance they are being denied.

It identified the tendency for contingencies in States projects to be set at a relatively high figure.

This is great for those running the project, as in many cases this allocation is fully spent but the committee can still claim the on-budget tag. And, of course, detailed breakdowns of the spending are hard to come by after the event – requests get blocked in a world of 'not all the elements have been done', 'we're still finalising the accounts' or 'commercially sensitive'.

If the details do come out, it is often so many years afterwards as to be rendered meaningless in terms of building the impression that the States is in control.

Any capital project worth more than £1m. is the subject of an independent formal review to see whether it has achieved its aims and objectives and ensure lessons that have been learned are shared across other committees.

These post-implementation reviews are not published, indeed attempts by this newspaper to get details of the six major projects reviewed last term – electronic health and social care record system, St Peter Port School, Belle Greve waste water, the first phase of the airport pavements project, the airport terminal and the Guernsey Integrated Learning Environment, Education's big IT project, were all knocked back.

The PAC argued PIRs should be released. Its report indicated that lessons are not being learned, with issues being re-encountered, racking up avoidable costs with things such as planning consents not being in place before a project started or formal contracts not being signed before work begins.

On the face of it, that seems like the very basics.

PIRs are not routinely shared, even among States departments, sinking the 'lessons have been learned' argument.

The reluctance to publish is based around the fear that people will not be candid with the reviewers, as they are at the moment.

But these reports are about improvement and reassurance that money is being spent wisely, factors that should override keeping things behind closed doors in order not to be embarrassed.

The new Scrutiny Management Committee has taken on the mantle of overseeing this all.

We await with interest its stance, but it helps no one that the prevailing impression for the public, whether justified or not, is that there is waste.

That cannot be dispelled just by words but needs hard evidence.

So publish key objectives for a project that can be evidenced, tell the public what they are and then revisit them and show people how it is measuring up.

And don't then just forget about them. Revisit it each year.

So with something such as the Joint Emergency Services Control Centre, proactively publish the response times.

If schools' ICT improvement has, as the chief executive has said only in December, brought about a significant reduction in the level of IT-related disruption to teaching time, publish the figures that show it. Then when teachers come out indicating otherwise, you can counter with evidence already in the public domain.

That will build trust and confidence.

The agenda for public sector reform rightly spoke about the role of key performance indicators.

It is time now for that to start bearing fruit, not just for capital projects but for the States as a whole.

If it became ingrained in the everyday mindset, it drives better performance yet is not time-consuming – if done reactively, it looks defensive.

With the States in the midst of deciding what its spending priorities will be, it has the ideal opportunity to make this improvement.

Attention has also been focused recently on how committees are dealing with smaller, routine capital projects.

We should shortly get the results of the review of the Salerie Corner overspend – from what is already in the public domain, it is clear a loose attitude to budgeting was being taken, with late decisions being made to add more elements to the project.

If it happened there, the fear must be it has happened elsewhere.

There is nothing like the level of scrutiny given to this type of everyday spending – the Salerie Corner issue blew up only because it was controversial to start with.

But all across the States, committees are spending up to £500,000 on these smaller projects with no real prioritisation, no way of knowing how wisely budgets are being spent or whether lessons are being learned and shared.

There was £10m. allocated in routine capital in the 2017 Budget.

Policy & Resources says it will report back in June for a revised approach to this type of spending, whether to allocate the money to broad areas of property, ICT, equipment and fleet management, roads resurfacing and replacing medical equipment.

It would give away some autonomy from the committees, but bring about co-ordination.

In the past, spades have been put in the ground with the only criteria for success being whether something is on time and on budget, and with quite a liberal interpretation at times on that too, but there is so much more to it.

Now is the time for action, not just words, to show that this States is being transparent – and it can start with releasing the project reviews from last term.