Job's a good 'un: Bank of England tech project wins watchdog praise
PAC: Now why can't everybody else in public sector do it like this?
Parliament's spending watchdog has held up a successful large-scale public sector tech transformation as a rare example worth emulating, in a striking departure from the usual diet of failure and overspend.
Reporting on the implementation of the Bank of England's £431 million Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system, the Public Accounts Committee said the UK central bank worked hard to deal with the "inevitable challenges that arise over the course of a major long-term digital program, overcoming many common problems that we see in public sector transformation."
Instead of requiring the public bodies to learn lessons from project failures, as is customary in PAC reports, the committee this time challenged these organizations "to learn and incorporate lessons from an all too rare positive example of public sector digital transformation, to improve government's implementation of such programs."
Examples of similar scale projects which have come up short — to say the least — include the Emergency Services Network, the blue-light emergency service communication and data system, which is about 12 years behind schedule, and £3 billion over budget.
Too different from banking systems? OK, let's try another one. The National Savings & Investments' (NS&I) digital overhaul, which is already £1.3 billion past its original budget and likely to be four years late when it does arrive. The PAC recently dubbed that project a "full spectrum disaster".
"There is much that government can learn from the Bank of England's experience. We are taking the unusual step in this report of making recommendations, not for the Bank, but for the Cabinet Office, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority. We challenge these bodies to learn and incorporate lessons from an all too rare positive example of public sector digital transformation, to improve government's implementation of such programs," the PAC said in its report.
What makes the RTGS project different?
Among the features marking it out as something of a gold standard, is the time the organization spent understanding the scope and objectives: a full two years in which it invested "significant time and resources in planning, analysis and design, with a 2017 'blueprint' setting out five key priorities for the new RTGS."
"The Bank drew on input from payments, technical and procurement specialists to set out clear requirements for the new system. It consulted with industry to identify priority areas for development, engaged with other central banks and commissioned independent external assessments," it said.
During the procurement process, it did not only take the advice of the winning bidders. "It was also able to draw on all the ideas proposed by bidders to set the design awarded in the contract. The process included a practical exercise – unusual for the public sector – to design and build a simplified payment system, for which the two unsuccessful bidders were also paid," the PAC report said.
The program also had its own dedicated procurement team that helped to draw up contracts and manage them.
The RTGS renewal programme began planning in 2016 and went live in April 2025. The system handles sterling payment settlements worth around £790 billion a day. The previous platform ran on ageing mainframe technology that was increasingly difficult to maintain due to specialist hardware demands and a shrinking skills pool. Its replacement, built with Accenture as technical delivery partner from 2020, is still internally hosted but uses cloud-native technologies for greater flexibility.
The Bank created an open "no surprises" culture within the program, with strong collaboration between business, technology and external specialists, the report said.
The BoE has also been able to retain the intellectual property for the system, and has transferred its day-to-day operation and future improvement to an in-house team. At a PAC hearing in March, Nathan Monk, the Bank of England's chief information officer, told the committee that was always part of the plan, supported by Accenture and Bank of England staff working in the same office at the beginning of the contract, while bank technical staff were placed in Accenture teams during the development of the RTGS.
"It has been a conscious decision. We embedded people in the Accenture team really early on, and we've grown that capability throughout the time as well," he said.
The PAC said the government's National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) should "update its guidance and support materials to reflect the distinct challenges of digital program and the success factors that the RTGS modernization demonstrated."
Among the other recommendations, it called on the Digital Commercial Centre of Expertise, which sits within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the Government Commercial Agency — an executive agency of the Cabinet Office - saying they should "update guidance to the commercial function to ensure that time is taken before contracts are let to properly understand the business and technical complexity and requirements for digital programs with full engagement from technical specialists so that delivery time can be realistically planned and costed."
Valuable lessons can be learned from a relatively rare success story -but PAC may not want to hold its breath. ®