I have always been sceptical about the assumption in government circles that Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) or Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) for IT projects will deliver benefits over and above acquiring skills and managing risks in-house. Given the PFI-based government IT projects that have failed to deliver on time and to budget, proof should be sought that PFIs are the best option, and make the best use of taxpayers' money.
During recent research I found that the policy arm of the Treasury's Private Finance Initiative Taskforce was subsumed into the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in April 2000. The OGC is also responsible for guidance notes on PFI and PPP - a role it performs well.
The Projects Group of the PFI Taskforce became Partnerships UK, which completed a capital-raising exercise in March 2001 that allowed it to become a public-private partnership, to balance private-sector disciplines with its public-sector mission. Most of Partnership UK's board members come from the private sector; the public sector is represented by two non-executive directors appointed by the Treasury.
The organisation's aim is to work with the public sector to make PPPs better. Its Wider Markets Initiative helps the public sector to make more efficient use of public assets - software, databases, skills and intellectual property. So there must be in-house expertise, somewhere.
IT projects are examined by the Public Accounts Select Committee and, when reviewing the cancellation of the Benefits Payment Card PFI project in November 2001, it pointed out that the Treasury had issued guidance in the previous year, drawing on the lessons learned. In addition to this, and the report by Ian McCartney, then minister of state at the Cabinet Office on major government IT projects, there was more expertise within the Treasury and the OGC to help departments.
So I was surprised by an item in a report on the OGC from the Treasury Select Committee, published in May. It expressed disappointment that a previous Select Committee recommendation for the creation of a central system to collect information on each PFI project - to enable comparisons to be made - has not been implemented. The committee accepted that departments should be responsible for monitoring their own PFIs, but considered that the growing number and value of PFI projects reinforced the need for comparisons. The committee reiterated that a central system was needed to collect information on project performance to allow, where practicable, benchmarking for projects. However, no timescales for implementation were mentioned.
Meanwhile, the government intends to forge ahead with PFIs and PPPs without any evidence that these are the most suitable solutions. It seems incomprehensible that there is no mechanism against which to measure performance. If this is the best way forward, then let it be proven. One-off reports on projects and innumerable best-practice documents are not good enough.
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