Forty-Eighth Report - Digital Services at the Border

The government agreed and detailed its robust assurance oversight processes, including independent reviews by the IPA and GIAA, monthly programme boards, and a dedicated assurance lead. It also committed to report back on the July 2021 IPA review and confirmed no additional costs from delivery plan deviations since 2019.

The government agrees with the recommendation and states it has been implemented. It details a reset in 2019 which led to changes including full-time SROs for major programs, new governance and risk processes, manageable scope, separate Programme and Technical Delivery directors, agile delivery methodologies, and a product-based approach to ensure timely delivery.

The government agrees and states the recommendation is implemented, detailing specific actions taken to resolve technical problems. These include implementing agile methodologies, migrating the Border Crossing product to a robust platform, refactoring the "secret data" solution, deploying standard logging and monitoring, adopting Site Reliability Engineering, and ensuring performance testing in every release cycle.

The government agreed and stated the recommendation is implemented, confirming a detailed programme delivery plan with exact milestones has been baselined at the DSAB board, encompassing all main elements of delivery through to March 2022.

The government agreed and stated the recommendation is implemented, detailing how progress against planned milestones for related programmes is tracked, impacts mitigated, and updates provided to a transformation board, noting all related programmes are progressing as planned.

The government provided its own introductory overview of the Digital Services at the Border programme, rather than engaging with the committee's initial descriptive statement about taking evidence.

The government stated it had nothing further to add to previous evidence, providing no new information or commitments regarding its past failures to deliver Advanced Freight Targeting Capability and Border Crossing systems by 2017.

The government declined to add anything further to its previous evidence, thus not addressing the committee's conclusion regarding failures in transparency and communication about program delays.

The government stated it had nothing further to add to previous evidence, providing no new information or commitments regarding the external factors that hindered the Digital Services at the Border programme.

The government's response addresses mechanisms for oversight and assurance of delivery and costs incurred from deviations, which is a different recommendation, and does not directly engage with the committee's conclusion about the past failure to deliver value for money.

The government explicitly states it agrees with PAC recommendation 3 (regarding leadership and oversight) and has implemented changes. These include assigning SROs full-time responsibility for a major program, implementing new governance with robust risk and change processes, strengthening stakeholder engagement, and adopting incremental, product-based technical approaches.

The government detailed its robust assurance oversight processes, including independent reviews by the IPA and GIAA, monthly programme boards, and a dedicated assurance lead. This demonstrates the streamlined oversight the committee noted the department claimed to have implemented.

The government states it has agreed with PAC recommendation 2 (regarding oversight and transparency), independently reviewed and reset the program in 2019, and has since delivered all key milestones on time and within budget. It details robust assurance processes, including independent reviews, a dedicated lead, monthly boards, and embedded internal assurance.

The government stated it had nothing further to add to previous evidence, providing no new information or commitments regarding the technical difficulties and external factors that led to the programme's eventual reset.

The government detailed specific technical actions taken to resolve problems with the Border Crossing system's components, including migration to a robust platform, refactoring for scalability, improved logging, and performance testing, which aim to enhance reliability and availability towards the stated target.

The government's response details technical improvements to the Border Crossing system, which does not address the committee's conclusion regarding the Department's challenges with scarce technical skills and its strategies for addressing resourcing issues.

The government's response did not address the committee's observation that the Border Crossing roll-out started on time, instead providing information about setting out programme milestones.

The government stated it had nothing further to add to previous evidence, providing no new information or commitments regarding the mobile capability for Border Crossing systems at non-major entry points.

The government described specific actions taken to resolve technical problems, such as implementing agile methodologies, migrating Border Crossing to a robust platform, and enhancing monitoring. These actions contribute to improved governance and address underlying issues mentioned in the conclusion about risk ratings.

The government's response explicitly addresses a different recommendation (regarding progress against milestones for related programmes and their impacts) and does not engage with the committee's conclusion on the UK's dependency on data quality and upload speed from other countries.

The government described its established system for managing and tracking dependencies between related programs, mitigating impacts, and providing updates to the BICS Transformation board, aligning with the committee's observation on the importance of coordination.

The government detailed its instituted risk management approach, including a Red Team analysis and updated contingencies with specific actions like adding time and revising strategy, addressing the committee's observation on contingency plans.