Major projects require greater business skills, NAO insists

6 Nov 09
The government’s commercial skills and expertise suffers from ‘significant weaknesses’, the National Audit Office has warned
By Helen Mooney

6 November 2009

The government’s commercial skills and expertise suffers from ‘significant weaknesses’, the National Audit Office has warned.

An analysis of the government’s commercial skills has found that the value for money of 43 major government projects worth around £200bn is being jeopardised by a lack of such expertise.

The NAO’s report, Commercial skills for complex government projects, was published on November 6. It warned the government that it needed staff with the relevant commercial skills and experience if it were to successfully ‘interact’ with the private sector.

A 2009 review by the Office of Government Commerce had previously found that 44% of the ‘senior responsible owners’ of major government projects did not have any substantial commercial experience.

NAO head Amyas Morse said: ‘Commercial skills are essential to success in complex projects and a great deal of money rests on this; but there is still not a coherent system for providing skills across government or for using the existing skills as efficiently as possible.’

The NAO concluded that government was not using its scarce commercial staff resource to best effect. The report said: ‘Departments lack information on the expertise, skills and availability of staff and there is no formal mechanism to allocate staff and expertise across government departments.’

The report was also critical of the OGC, which it said was not working effectively with government departments and was having a limited impact.

The NAO noted that, of the 16 departmental commercial directors, 14 believed the OGC ‘has done little to address skills gaps within their department’.

An OGC spokesman said: 'We look forward to continue working with departments to further maximise the effectiveness and impact of the initiatives we have established to plug shortfalls identified in capability and skills.' He added the OGC would be responding to the report in due course.

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