Watchdog critical of Government of Jersey's risk management

The government must improve its management of strategic risks in major programmes, a watchdog has said.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) has published its follow-up report on the island's integrated technology solution (ITS).

It said the ITS programme remained an "essential element to the future stability of business operations".

Lynn Pamment, C&AG, said key strategic risks were not evident in documentation provided to her office.

The C&AG found 12 out of 16 recommendations made in its first report had been implemented, with two not implemented, one partially implemented and one where "further enhancements could be made".

Ms Pamment said: "The ITS programme was launched in early 2020 and is intended to enable the Government to use modern, cloud-based systems for finance, human resources (HR), procurement and asset management.

"It forms one part of a significant investment being made by Government in digital modernisation."

It said previous finance applications used were "out of date and therefore unsupported", and posed a risk in relation to adopting modern business processes and reducing cyber security risks.

Ms Pamment said her review had "identified some elements of good practice in the way in which the ITS programme has been managed".

Areas of strength included the reporting model adopted by the government's strategic oversight board, and the "strong financial management and governance".

Project level risk management was "working effectively at a detailed level" with clear evidence of detailed project risks being recorded, escalated and mitigated.

"However, there is a need for Government to improve its management of strategic risks in major programmes, to ensure that sufficient specific business-unit level approval of functionality is gained prior to 'go live' and to enhance its processes to monitor the realisation of the benefits expected to be delivered over a sufficiently long time-span," she said.

Ms Pamment said the government should have released a phased implementation of data migration to new systems to avoid "teething problems" - which could have been identified and resolved "without affecting the whole of the States of Jersey".

The report found the government had de-coupled the longer term benefits from the ITS programme, which will close at the end of 2023.

C&AG said this would result in the monitoring of any benefits beyond 2023 ceasing, and the oversight and governance of the realisation of benefits being unclear.

It said formal monitoring and reporting of benefits should be extended to 2030 "if best practice is to be demonstrated".

Ms Pamment said releasing major functionality, "in particular in relation to the impact on the end user community", should be more fully assessed.

A total of ten recommendations have been made, and one area for consideration given.

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