4.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: April 2021 4.2 In January 2021, the IPA Chief Executive Officer (CEO) addressed permanent secretaries, requesting that they insist their teams are more realistic and evidence-driven in their approach to estimations of major project cost and schedule. The IPA will formally set out new requirements of departments, on a comply or explain basis, in Best Practices for Cost Estimating which will be published in March 2021. This will include a requirement to use ranges that are gradually narrowed as certainty emerges. The IPA will offer additional training to SROs on cost estimation later in 2021. 4.3 The IPA is working to develop a centralised data platform to aggregate and leverage past government project data to underpin, challenge and assure future project estimations of cost and schedule. This platform will be piloted across a number of asset classes from March 2021.