Home truths

Keynote APM Conference speaker, Sir David Normington, gives an insight into project management at the Home Office where, as permanent secretary for the past three years, he has been responsible for overseeing several multi-million pound and highly controversial projects.

Arriving at the Home Office in heavy weather in 2006 with the departments reputation damaged and under criticism from John Reid, the Home Secretary at the time, Sir David Normington embarked on a reform programme that recognised the importance of improving Programme and Project Management (PPM) and the capability to manage as one of the key strands.

The opportunity to do that was grasped, partly because reform was critical to the way the country operates but also because, as Sir David says: I have a deep belief that effective programme and project management has to be at the heart of the improvement of public services and that PPM skills are not just needed for classic projects, like the introduction of a new computer system or the building of new premises. They also need to be at the heart of any programme in government that seeks to convert any political or policy objectives into the delivery of public benefit. They are relevant to almost everything that we do in government where there are outcomes to be delivered.

The Home Office and its agencies have several hundred projects of all shapes and sizes. About 35 of those projects have a lifetime cost in excess of 40 million, of which six are included in the portfolio of 40 major projects which OGC monitors across government. Says Sir David: These are projects of major political and public interest. It matters that they succeed because they affect our ability to protect our citizens and secure the country.

They include two which go to the heart of our system for protecting children against abuse and vetting those who would work with children and vulnerable adults. One is about the creation of electronic borders, so that we can track people coming into and leaving the UK, another about the security of the 2012 Olympics. Then there is the introduction of National Identity Scheme and the last is about the capability of our police and security services to track the communications of criminals and terrorists. These all matter but theyre only the tip of our project iceberg.

The Home office operates as a federated organisation, like a group of companies with a corporate HQ, trying to embed good practice principles in quite developed parts of the organisation. That brings benefits, but systems and processes have had to be put in place and resources pooled in order to pull programmes and projects together across the department. For example, the first product from the identity card scheme was an identity card for foreign nationals, which was a UK Border Agency product, while the main scheme is led by the Identity and Passport service. In the latter stages, information databases will be used jointly by the borders agency and Passport service.

Unless you can get agencies and people working together, you're only dealing with consequences we can deal with the enforcement end of policing but we need to address the prevention end as well programme management is essential.

Although here are just 20 people in the Home Office Programme and Project Management Centre for Excellence, each of the Home Offices major business (such as the UK Border agency and the Identity and Passport service) also has their own PPM support team. Some of the Home Offices major projects involve teams of 100 or more. Members of these teams have high levels of training and awareness about how to manage projects.

Success!

Contrary to public perception of the Home Office has a lot of experience with successful projects:

We have recently introduced biometric passports, complete with biometric chip, enabling us to check you are who you say you are delivered on time and on budget, says Sir David.

We have just completed a multi-agency programme tackling guns and gangs in four city areas during which firearm related injuries were cut by half and firearm offences dropped by 27 percent.

We set up from scratch a new border and immigration operation at terminal 5, Heathrow, which functioned perfectly from day one of the operating of the terminal but, of course, you didnt hear about that one.

We have run the programme to rebuild the Home Offices capability, which a couple of years ago was famously described as not fit for purpose, and to rebuild reputation on PPM lines with clear responsibilities allocated at senior level and measurable outcomes identified. The capability review we had in the summer produced a headline that the Home Office is fit for purpose at last. Of course compared with the 2006 one, it was a small headline.

PPM development across government

Across government departments a PPM network is developing, led by OGC and involving centres of excellence and resulting in a network of professionals learning from each other and sharing best practice with increasing willingness.

Project management is becoming a core management skill across government departments and is now an integral part of Civil Service training and development. Recently, a further training initiative was launched specifically for sponsors of projects the Senior Responsible Officers (SROs).

We have put a lot of effort into raising capability, benchmarking, recruiting talent when we need it, and raising the skills of key individuals. We know that, across government, we need to grow more in-house expertise and reduce our reliance of consultants.

We have been raising the levels of oversight and involvement in key projects at a senior level. We have a Group investment Board as a sub-group of the Home Office Board, to scrutinise the investment cases of our critical projects. We review progress on red-rated projects quarterly at the main Board and at my monthly performance reviews with the big operating divisions and agencies in the Home Office. And we have recently begun to develop a portfolio approach to the management of concurrent changes because one thing government is not short of is a lot of concurrent projects and programmes, full of risks. Government departments are not as risk-averse and popularly believed we need to understand interdependencies across our big programmes, especially where they are IT enabled.

Where we do have weakness [in government] is embarking on projects before we really know what we want to achieve; testing the business case, clarifying the purpose and assessing the risk. Im a big believer in spending time at the front end knowing exactly what we want will pay dividends later and we now use a project initiation process developed with the OGC called P2D (Project to Delivery) to ensure proper process for all projects in the Home Office family. Other issues that have contributed to problems have been a lack of timely management information and a tendency towards over optimism over problems, accompanied by a reluctance to escalate risk to the point where decisions about correction or cancellation can be made.

We have worked hard, again with OGC input, to develop a new project management office model which helps with more effective deployment of scarce PPM professionals and we have done a lot to create good practice models on line, with 700-900 staff accessing that advice every month.

A rewarding role?

There can be little doubt that the challenge of running and developing projects at the Home Office differs markedly to Sir Davids previous experience at the department for Education and Skills, but is it equally rewarding?

What more challenging and rewarding role could you have than being involved in protecting the citizens of the country? says Sir David. Its one of the hardest things to do in the modern world and people at the Home Office are passionately attached to that mission. It is our challenge and responsibility to get that right, which is the reward, in a very complex environment.