The Office of Government Commerce has published the "traffic
light" status and recommendations of Gateway reviews of 23
high-risk IT-related projects - three years after Computer Weekly
requested them.
The disclosures under the Freedom of Information Act cover
projects such as the
ID cards scheme and "Impact", a police intelligence system
which Sir Michael Bichard recommended after an inquiry he chaired
into the murders by school caretaker Ian Huntley of two 10 year-old
girls.
Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled that it was in
the public interest for Computer Weekly's request to be met in full
- except for one high-risk IT-related project at the Home Office
which was
so secret it could not even be named.
Traffic light status
We had asked the OGC for the RAG - red, amber or green - status
of Gateway reviews and their recommendations, as carried out on
high-risk IT-based projects at the Home Office, Department for Work
and Pensions and the Department of Health.
The OGC could have appealed against the ruling but did not - a
possible sign of a change in culture at the OGC and within
government towards more openness on the progress or otherwise of
major IT projects.
In June, the OGC took the unprecedented step of releasing
Gateway
reviews - 31 of them - on the NHS's £12.7bn National Programme
for IT (NPfIT).
Before then, the OGC had released no details about any Gateway
reviews, except the names of projects and the Gate number, from
zero to five.
The six main stages of a Gateway review assess projects through
their lifecycle. Gateway zero reports on a project's feasibility,
and five on its benefits.
Even today, though, no Gateway review at stage five has ever
been published. The House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee has
found that many departments and public sector organisations fail to
request Gateway five reviews, even though they are mandatory.
Full reports held back
The OGC, in
complying with the Information Commissioner's ruling to publish
the recommendations and RAG statuses of the reviews we had
requested, has decided not to release the entire reports, though it
had the discretion to do so.
And the OGC has only released details of reviews which are at
least three years old, which makes it difficult for potential users
of the systems, MPs, the media and others to judge the progress of
high-risk projects and programmes.
So the OGC's approach to openness and Gateway reviews is
ambivalent: the arguments it had dreamed up against publishing
recommendations and the RAG status of reviews were laboured.
It argued that it was not possible to "redact" - edit - the
recommendations of reviews. The OGC told the Commissioner, "It is
not the detail of [Gateway] recommendations that favours
non-disclosure, but their fundamental nature. The balance of public
interest is therefore in favour of complete non-disclosure."
It also told the Information Commissioner it did not want to
publish Gateway reviews on high-risk projects because people may
discover what projects were not being reviewed.
Of the latest Gateway information the OGC has published, much of
it is worthy, professional and strikingly prosaic. "The project
should confirm that it is delivering value for money," says an
"amber" recommendation on a Gateway 4a review of the NPfIT
electronic booking systems.
Useful information
Dull and limited as they are, the OGC's latest disclosures are
welcome. If the OGC could bring itself to publish Gateway reviews
which are current, and therefore relevant, it would allow scrutiny
to be purposeful, rather than of historical interest only.
To its credit, the OGC has made Gateway reviews more useful than
at any time since the launch of the scheme in 2000. Since April
2008 the reviews tell senior responsible owners what they really
need to know: whether a project is likely to succeed or appears to
be unachievable.
All the more reason for the OGC to shun Whitehall's still
oppressive regime of secrecy and publish Gateway reviews while they
are still up-to-date.
When knowledge of the way government works increases, the public
contribution to policy making becomes more effective and
broad-based; and greater openness will increase trust in the
Gateway process and in the management of high-risk IT projects and
programmes generally.
The FOI response to Computer Weekly in full - IT Projects blog
>>
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