Transparency data
HMRC Government Major Project Portfolio data, September 2018 (csv)
Updated 18 July 2019
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| Project Name | Building Our Future Locations Programme | Columbus (formerly Aspire Replacement Programme) | Compliance For The Future Programme | CUSTOMS DECLARATION SERVICES (CDS) Programme | Government Gateway Transformation | Making Tax Digital for Business | Tax-Free Childcare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Department | HMRC | HMRC | HMRC | HMRC | HMRC | HMRC | HMRC |
| IPA Delivery Confidence Assessment (A Delivery Confidence Assessment of the project at a fixed point in time, using a five-point scale, Red – Amber/Red – Amber – Amber/Green – Green; definitions in the IPA Annual Report on Major Projects) | Amber | Amber | Amber/Red | Amber/Red | Amber | Amber/Red | Amber |
| Description / Aims | HMRC’s transformation is the biggest modernisation of the UK tax system in a generation making fundamental changes to the way it operates. The ambition is to become one of the most digitally-advanced tax authorities in the world. This will be done by becoming a smaller, more highly-skilled and flexible organisation. The Locations Programme is key to HMRC’s wider transformation, by changing the working environment it will help change the way they work. The estate will be made up of 13 Regional Centres, 7 Transitional Sites and 5 Specialist Sites and a London Headquarters. This will enable HMRC to create modern, adaptable work spaces that will support the digital infrastructure, staff collaboration and development that HMRC requires to modernise. This Programme also supports the wider Government agenda to transform the Civil Service estate; all of our chosen locations for HMRC Regional Centres align with the siting of Government Hubs. The Programme will deliver both financial and non-financial benefits. The financial benefits are largely based on reduced accommodation costs. Over the 10 years to 2025 the expected cumulative net Programme benefits of around £300m. Additionally, after 2028 the Programme will deliver annual savings of over £90m. • Moving to regional centres will save around £300 million up to 2025. The Programme will deliver annual cash savings of £74 million in 2025-26, rising to around £90 million by 2028, while improving customer service and modernising how HMRC works. The Programme are also confident that it can enable a wide range of non-financial benefits, including increased use of flexible working patterns, more effective management of peaks of customer demand, improved IT delivery and people benefits including improved recruitment and staff retention. | To Achieve a safe transition from the ASPIRE contract to the new HMRC IT operating and sourcing model, enabling HMRC’s digital and data transformation and deliver the benefits of the new model thereafter. | The strategic objective of the Compliance for the Future (CftF) programme is to enable HMRC to transform its Compliance business and meet the compliance challenge set out in the SR15 settlement by maintaining the compliance revenue baseline at lower cost. The programme contributes efficiencies to maintaining the compliance revenue baseline and thereby helping ensure that the additional revenue to which the Department is also committed. | HMRC is responsible for delivering an end to end Customs declaration processing service for imports to and exports from the UK. The current system is the Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight service (CHIEF). Each year this business critical service handles c.60 million declarations and collects £34bn revenue, set in a context of an international trade supply chain that is worth £700bn p.a. to the UK economy. CHIEF operates real time, 24 hours per day, 365 days of the year. The current CHIEF system is more than 23 years old and based on aging Virtual Machine Environment (VME) technology which is becoming difficult to maintain. The service has reached a point where any changes will be both expensive and technically difficult to implement. HMRC is seeking to replace CHIEF with a robust, scalable set of import /export services, capable of delivering this critical function into the future. | The Government Gateway Transformation Programme (GGTP) will deliver the identity, credential and risking elements that support the full suite of HMRC’s digital services and some services for Other Government Departments. GGTP will replace the existing gateway with a new and improved set of processes, customer experience, staff tools and technology stack. GGTP is also responsible for transitioning services, migrating data and decommissioning the existing Government Gateway in March 2019. | Delivering requirements to modernise IT architecture, bring tax reporting closer to the point of transaction, removing the need for customers to complete tax-specific returns and/or provide information HMRC already holds, enhancing digital services for businesses and agents and delivering a better customer experience. | Under TFC the intention is to provide childcare accounts for all eligible children for which the first £8,000 deposited by parents or others is topped up by government by 20p for every 80p deposited, up to a maximum of £2,000 per child per year (£4,000 for each disabled child). The TFC programme will design and implement the TFC scheme. Accountability for TFC is divided between HMRC and HM Treasury (HMT). HMRC are responsible for TFC delivery and for outcomes on customer service such as correct payments and data security. HMT have responsibility for ensuring the scheme delivers its intended policy outcomes and for advising ministers on any further policy changes needed to ensure the outcomes continue to be achieved. HMRC will also deliver, for DfE who are the accountable Department, the functionality to support the enhanced 30 hours free childcare provision for 3 and 4 year olds. |
| Departmental commentary on actions planned or taken on the IPA RAG rating. | The Locations Programme currently holds an AMBER/GREEN IPA Delivery Confidence Rating. Significant progress made with all of the leases for Regional Centres signed, bounding the financial risk and maturing the Programme with robust Project Controls and Governance. The Programme has also made progress in the following areas: the Programme Business case has been refreshed and approved with 19/20 funding agreed; 3 Regional Centre Full Business Cases and 1 Specialist Site Outline Business Case have been approved; and the Regional Centre occupation levels are agreed with Business Groups and a change control process is in place to control any change requests | The amber status at Q2 was due to the uncertainty around quantifying the benefits, this has subsequently been resolved as part of the programme closure activity. | As part of wider departmental prioritisation exercises, the decision was taken to refocus the programme resource onto business critical EU Exit-related activity. As a result, the programme closed. In the months preceding the closure decision, the programme had worked closely with stakeholders across HMRC to mitigate the significant impact of a separate programme closure, upon which the programme had a key dependency for Strategic Risking. The programme had identified appropriate ways forward to enable successful delivery of this capability and, in doing so, address the dependency risk and build confidence that would be reflected in its future overall RAG status. Following the decision to close the programme, the business critical elements, particularly strategic risking, are being taken forward as technical mitigations under separate business cases. | The amber/red delivery confidence assessment reflects the concerns that IT testing activities took longer than expected and CDS Release 3 go-live date was moved to March 2019. We have agreed and begun to implement a significant delivery organisation change, with clearer accountabilities and increased levels of SCS leadership. This will allow targeted action on key lessons learned to date, particularly Release 1 delivery. | The Programme RAG status reported at Q2 was amber as there were still a number of HMRC Services which needed to migrate over to the new Secure Credentials Platform. 46 Services had been migrated but a further 28 were still needed to be transferred over; plans were still in development in getting the remainder of the Other Government Departments to off-board and on-board their Services; and the Enrolment and Agent & Client Database (EACD) Project still had several complex deliveries to be scheduled with very little room for contingency. These issues have now been addressed. All 160 HMRC and Other Government Department services and dependencies have been removed from the old government gateway. All Services were transitioned smoothly and access to services was maintained throughout the data migration window. The EACD Project delivered its remaining milestones and the new database became the master of HMRC data in November 2018 for over 100m records. The old government gateway was decommissioned in March 2019 and all physical KIT has been destroyed. | An IPA-led Critical Friend Review in July 2018 gave an overall DCA of AMBER/RED which was in-line with the previous assessment at the PAR/OGC review in May 2018. There were eight recommendations (3 critical, 5 essential). At 30 September 2018, actions to address these recommendations were still in progress. All been fully addressed and closed since. The programme had a further IPA review in February 2019 to assess readiness for VAT mandation from April 2019, which assessed the overall DCA as AMBER/RED. The programme has completed actions to address 6 of the 7 recommendations (which were deemed ‘critical’ or ‘essential’), with progress ongoing on the final one (deemed ‘recommended’). Programme Board on 21 March 2019 gave approval to proceed with VAT mandation from April 2019. | The Programme's DCA has been amended this quarter, to Amber, following agreement at Programme Board on 25 September. This decision was made due to the uncertainties around some of the delivery dates within the IT delivery plan and the current take-up shortfall against the KAI OBR forecast. Work is underway to prioritise the remaining programme deliverables and ensure the delivery, before the programme closure on 30 September 2019, of all critical components. The TFC marketing campaign started on 10 September with the aim of increasing take-up of TFC accounts. |
| Project - Start Date (Latest Approved Start Date) | 05/01/2016 | 01/01/2014 | 01/04/2016 | 16/10/2013 | 01/04/2017 | 01/04/2016 | 10/09/2013 |
| Project - End Date (Latest Approved End Date) | 31/03/2026 | 31/12/2021 | 31/03/2021 | 31/01/2019 | 31/03/2019 | 31/03/2021 | 30/09/2019 |
| Departmental narrative on schedule, including any deviation from planned schedule (if necessary) | The Programme continues to make significant progress with all 13 Regional Centre Locations now confirmed. The delivery of the Programme to time is considered probable. | At Q2 the Programme was ahead of schedule, and subsequent to that the programme has closed ahead of schedule. | The schedule was impacted by the decision to close another programme, upon which this programme had a key dependency, as well as ongoing departmental prioritisation decisions. The programme had worked with stakeholders to agree revised timescales that took into account departmental pressures and prioritised business critical activity. However, as part of a departmental wide prioritisation decision to focus key resource onto EU Exit-related activity, programme resources were deployed onto EU Exit work and the programme closed. | Release 2 ( All Imports functionality) delivery date remains the end of November and Release 3 (All Exports funtionality) delivery was moved to March 2019 as agreed at August Programme Board. However as with any large complex delivery there are always risks to delivery. | Overall the programme remained on track but there was some slippage and the following milestones were re-planned. The migration of all HMRC Services to the Secure Credentials Platform were re-planned due to the complexity of the some of the services which required additional work. These were all successfully migrated in January 19. All enrolment and known facts data successfully migrated milestone was re-planned due to allow further work to minimise customer impact and to complete additional performance testing of the new database. All data was transferred over successfully in November 2018. | In September 2018 the Departmental Delivery Confidence RAG was assessed as Amber/Red which reflected challenges in delivering functionality to enable us to open up the VAT pilot from mid-October 2018. Plans were on schedule but additional complexity and risk was introduced by the requirement to prepare in parallel for postponed VAT accounting in the event of exiting the EU without a deal. There has been no deviation from our plans since that time and we have now delivered the functionality for all customers mandated from April 2019. There are over 89k customers in the VAT pilot as at 28 March 2019, and take-up has now increased further with the service continuing to hold up well. | The timeline to deliver the remaining TFC improvements and functionality before programme closure is challenging and the scope has been reviewed to ensure delivery of critical components. Regular planning sessions are ongoing to review the IT delivery plan and any issues identified during development or delivery. |
| 2018/19 TOTAL Baseline £m (including Non-Government costs) | £326.10 | £104.00 | £50.45 | £75.49 | £28.04 | £77.09 | £54.06 |
| 2018/19 TOTAL Forecast £m (including Non-Government costs) | £302.80 | £6.00 | £34.40 | £75.57 | £25.19 | £75.15 | £50.91 |
| 2018/2019 Variance %age | -7% | -94% | -32% | 0% | -10% | -3% | -6% |
| Whole Life Cost TOTAL Baseline £m (including Non-Government costs) | £2,835.90 | £694.00 | £188.18 | £226.33 | £131.11 | £334.48 | £356.89 |
| Departmental narrative on budget/forecast variance for 2018/19 (if variance is more than 5%) | The variance is due to a decision taken as part of a HMRC prioritisation exercise to defer Newcastle and Nottingham regional centre delivery. Both were planned to commence in 2018/19 but this will now be in 2020/21. | The variance allowed for significant contingency to be built into business case to move physical infrastructure to the HMRC estate; in reality the transition was subsumed into existing servers and on to Cloud infrastructure at a lower cost. | The Baseline figure of £50.45m was consistent with the Programme Business Case presented to HM Treasury in October 2017. Underpinning this was an assumption of a 3 Year Delivery Profile with appropriate cost estimates. Following a departmental prioritisation exercise in December 2017 the programme delivery plan was stretched to 5 years and associated revised cost estimates were developed lowering the requirement in the 2018/19 year accordingly. A further prioritisation exercise in quarter 1 of 2018/19 deferred and de-scoped some project activities leading to a further estimate reduction. It was intended to update the business case to reflect the revisions but as a result of a departmental prioritisation decision to focus resource onto business critical EU Exit activity, the programme has closed. | Budget variance less than 5% | Variance is due to prioritisation of requirements and deliveries to drive down costs to live within departmental funding limitations and the approved funding allocated to the Programme in 2018/19. The Programme prioritised delivery backlogs to live within revised allocations ensuring we could still achieve initial aims of the Programme. The Programme has continued to assess running and transactional costs and update forecasts accordingly. | Budget variance less than 5% | There is a £3m reduction to the overall forecast of £318m reported in the previous quarterly return. This is a consequence of planned development work to deliver essential system impovements and new functionality being deferred in 2018/19. The work will now be completed during 2019/20 but the costs will be absorbed from the ringfenced funding envelope provided. |
| Departmental Narrative on Budgeted Whole Life Costs | Investment to deliver 13 Regional Centres and 5 specialist sites. Includes costs related to design, fit out, furniture, IT infrastructure for the buildings and HR related costs of moving staff from the existing estate into the new buildings such as Exit costs and Daily Travel Allowance costs. Costs are in nominal prices. Whole life running costs are out of scope of the Programme but as a result HMRC running costs are expected to reduce by £90 million per annum by 2028. | Whole Lifecycle Costs are the departments spend on transforming the new IT service provision. Costs relate to contractual costs and programme resource costs for the development and the live running of services. Costs also incorporate some cloud hosting. The costs are reported in real terms with an index year of 2014 | The Baseline Whole Life Cost represent resource and IT delivery costs. The budgeted whole life costs are reported as nominal. | Budgeted Whole Life Costs are reported in Real Terms with an index year of 2017. | Whole Lifecycle Costs represents the departments spend on developing new digital services. Costs predominately relate to contactor and staffing resource costs for the build, development and the live running of these services. Costs also incorporate cloud hosting and license charges associated with the digital deliveries. Reporting is on a nominal basis. | The budgeted whole life costs are based on the latest Programme business case approved by the HMT Treasury Approval Panel on 5 September 2018. It includes investment costs such as IT design, build and development, and running costs to 2022/23. The costs are nominal. | The reduction above will reduce the budgeted whole life cycle costs, which are reported as nominal. Costs cover resources and IT deliveries. |
| Annual Report Category | Government Transformation and Service Delivery | ICT | Government Transformation and Service Delivery | ICT | ICT | ICT | Government Transformation and Service Delivery |
| The IPA Annual Report publishes the whole life cycle costs on projects, based on figures from their Business Cases, whilst the National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline (NICP) focuses primarily on the upfront capital investment on a project. Where both documents refer to the same projects, this distinction will be the principal reason for any differences in the data sets published. Other government publications may use different methodologies to derive cost figures | Not set | Not set | Not set | Not set | Not set | Not set | Not set |