The Cabinet Office recognises the continuing role of other boards and channels in governance activities. The department told us that responsibility for obtaining departmental buy-in to join shared services is agreed with each department’s Permanent Secretary at the Transformation Board, which does not form part of the two-tier set-up.44 The Cabinet Office clarified that the Transformation Board additionally acts as a third tier of escalation for issues which the Shared Services Board itself cannot resolve.45 However, key Cabinet Office officials and cluster stakeholders responsible for delivering shared services, including the senior responsible owner of each cluster and the Cabinet Office Director of the Shared Services Strategy, do not regularly attend the Transformation Board.46 The Cabinet Office acknowledges that its attempts to manage interdependencies have not been consistent. The department indicated that clusters’ concerns about interdependencies between shared services and the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) programme had been worked both through the Shared Services Strategy’s governance channels, as well as a parallel governance channel consisting of the ATS advisory board. This inconsistency caused delays to clusters’ design decisions, and led to the ATS programme’s abandonment in October 2025 at a cost of between £26 to 38 million.47 43 C&AG’s Report, paras 1.21 - 1.22 44 Qq 79, 80 45 Q 14 46 Qq 78, 81 47 C&AG’s Report, paras 3.7, 3.16 14 2 Working with departments, functions and other change programmes Unclear buy-in