Peter Hedges approvals and business case page
Introduction
Peter Hedges is a BDA Business Architect, is new to wiki authoring and so is creating this content in the sandbox for now.
Approval levels
Projects will usually need investment approval from Portfolio and Investment Committee (PIC) if:
- Whole life cost exceeds £5m.
- Cabinet Office (CO) or Treasury (HMT) approval is needed.
- Project is deemed to be novel (completely new or done differently).
- Project is deemed to be contentious (likely to cause debate).
CO approval is needed if Cabinet Office controls apply (see below).
HMT approval is needed if whole life cost exceeds £100m or HMT deem the project to be novel/contentious.
PIC is the single point of contact for CO and HMT.
Cabinet Office controls
CO controls apply to a wide range of spend, including strategic suppliers and digital/ICT.
Definition of digital - any external-facing service delivered through the internet to citizens, businesses, civil society or non-government organisations. This includes information services, websites, transactional services, web applications, mobile apps, and extranets.
Definition of technology - any internal-facing service, delivered Government to Government.
Strategic suppliers:
- £5m spend with a strategic supplier.
Digital/ICT:
- Any spend on projects with external-facing digital services or websites.
- £100,000 spend on digital projects.
- £1m spend on IT for shared services (eg HR, finance, procurement).
- £5m spend on general IT.
Gov.uk link to CO controls index page
Gov.uk link to CO controls guidance page
On the controls index page see Annex 5.1 which links to the Cabinet Office Technology and Digital Spend Control Form v3.0.
Agile projects - specific guidance
This Major Projects Authority document provides a good overview of agile methodology and covers assurance and approvals. It concentrates on assurance and the interplay between Government Digital Service (GDS) assessment reviews and gateway-type reviews.
MPA assurance of agile projects
The HMT Green Book provides general guidance on business cases. The links below are to the index page and specific guidance on agile projects. The index provides a link to 'Public sector business cases using the five case model: templates'. This 185-page document includes several templates one of which is the Strategic Outline Programme (SOP) (pages 8-19).
HMT Green Book index page
HMT Green Book guidance for agile projects
The GDS Service Design Manual includes this guidance on approvals for digital services.
Business cases for large projects
A business case sets out what a project will deliver, why and how.
The Home Office has developed comprehensive guidance and templates for full-scale business cases that need to be reviewed by PIC. Home Office templates provide plenty of structure so may optionally be used for relatively large projects that do not need to go to PIC, but which do need formal HMPO approval.
Horizon link to material on business cases
Horizon link to business case guidance document
Horizon link to business case template
BDA has developed a recommended template which includes all key features of the Home Office one, but is presented in a more familiar HMPO format. The template below is suitable for full scale business cases and has been used for projects requiring PIC approval and above.
Business cases for smaller projects
For smaller projects it may be necessary or useful to develop a business case less comprehensive than that required for larger projects.
BDA has developed a recommended template which is a cut-down version of the full scale one. It retains a five-case structure but with fewer headings, and contains guidance on sections that may be considered optional.
Overview - WORK IN PROGRESS
This (work in progress) slidepack provides an overview of business cases:
