Home Office signs £60m partner to provide digital delivery ‘resource pool’


The department has retained a consultancy for the next four years to provide expert support and mentoring for civil service delivery management professionals, to ensure the success of digital projects

The Home Office has awarded a near-£60m contract for a supplier to boost the organisation’s digital delivery credentials and help support a “long-term change programme”.

On 3 January, the department entered into a four-year engagement with PA Consulting. The London-based professional services outfit has been retained “to support the Home Office with more strategically aligned managed service resource pool which will be able to provide specialist resources to support better alignment of delivery management capabilities across the department,” according to the text of the contract.

The commercial document specifies that, from now until 2029, services provided by the supplier will include “delivery management leadership and support, leading workstreams and teams of delivery management or other professions as required for delivery” of digital and data projects.

Although project delivery managers are not “ultimately responsible for making delivery happen”, they do play a key role in ensuring that teams having sufficient skills, understand the desired outcome, and are empowered to work flexibly and effectively while being “protected from outside interference”, the contract says.

The agreement adds that, while the “Home Office owns and directs its delivery-management strategy through civil servant delivery managers, but the variety and fluctuation in demand is such that the flexibility afforded by supplementary service arrangements is invaluable”.


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The support provided to the department via the engagement should be “adaptive” to best suit the differing stages of such projects, from discovery to live service provision, the contract adds. The deal also covers “assurance” of delivery management activities.

PA will also be expected to “engage with, support, and promote delivery management and other DDaT (digital, data and technology) community-development activities, [and] support learning and development of civil servants including their professional development within the delivery management practice”.

This will involve efforts to “mentor and coach civil servants in delivery management and delivery methodologies and lead and support training and information events and practice workshops on specific topics, providing guidance and insights”.

The terms of the contract outline that the commercial arrangement “will sit alongside new resourcing processes which are being developed… and will be applied and enforced through various functions to allow resourcing decisions to be made with a ‘whole DDaT view’”.

“This contract is a key component [of that]… however, there may be occasions when the Home Office looks outside of this contract for similar services”, the document adds.

The deal is valued at £57.6m between now and 2029.

Sam Trendall

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