GovTech Catalyst recommendations emailed to Steering Board - 16 March 2020
Published 23 September 2020
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/advice-given-to-the-northern-ireland-audit-office-on-their-govtech-catalyst-challenge/govtech-catalyst-recommendations-emailed-to-steering-board-16-march-2020
Dear GovTech Catalyst Steering Board,
As you’re aware, we have been waiting on an assessment of this challenge, and subsequent recommendation, from Government Finance Function (GFF) before asking you to make a final decision on the progression of this competition.
We have now received that recommendation, which is attached, and based on GFF’s findings, have finalised our recommendation to you. We have also attached supplementary information provided by NIAO to GFF.
Conclusions of the GFF report:
The report concludes that of the 2 streams of work explored in phase 1, the Value For Money piece requires innovation and should progress to phase 2 of GovTech Catalyst.
On the financial audit side, there are recommendations for NIAO to undertake a separate piece of discovery work to firmly establish whether a Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) solution could be procured to meet their needs in this area.
We consider this discovery work would fall outside the remit of the GovTech Catalyst programme, and should be funded separately by NIAO. Should NIAO want to progress this, GDS has offered some initial support by helping NIAO to procure DDaT support via GDS’ Expert Services team. We have made it clear to NIAO that we do not have capacity to offer ongoing support if they follow this route.
Recommendation for your decision:
Our recommendation to Steering Board is therefore aligned with recommendation 4 on the GFF recommendation - that we should progress NIAO’s competition to phase 2 with a sole focus on the VFM workstream.
If you are not content for this competition to progress to phase 2 with a sole focus on the VFM workstream, please let us know by midday on Thursday, March 19.
NIAO are aware of this recommendation and are currently consulting internally and with other DA audit offices to consider their ability to support a VFM-focussed phase 2 and we expect them to confirm in the next week whether they would be content to proceed on this basis.
Please get in touch if you have questions or would like further clarification.
[Name redacted]