Digital

Digital Support Service Procurement- SRO reflections on embedding assurance

April 23, 2025 by Stewart Hamilton No Comments | Category Digital Assurance Office, Digital Scotland

Guest blog by Laura Johnstone, Continuous Improvement team, Digital Assurance Office.

The Digital Assurance Office (DAO) are working with project and service teams who have received independent assurance through the Technology Assurance Framework (TAF) to share their experiences.

We recently caught up with Eddie Turnbull, Deputy Director, Agriculture and Rural Economy (ARE) Directorate in the Scottish Government. Eddie is the Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) for the Digital Support Services Procurement project.

TAF independent project reviewers commended the approach taken by Eddie to embed independent assurance in the project through the use of TAF and Gateway Review. They also highlighted the project’s wider use of independent assurance. For example, establishing an Oversight Board including stakeholders not directly involved in the project and subject matter experts from elsewhere in the Scottish Government.

In this blog the DAO caught up with Eddie to explore the approach he took to independent assurance. This is the first of two blogs with Eddie.

What is the project’s objective?

The prime objective of the Digital Support Services Procurement Project is the procurement of a single Service Provider contract – mainly driven by the ending of incumbent contracts.  The Service Provider will work in partnership with the ARE Digital and Data Division and supplement in-house resources and other specialist services. This is mostly, but not exclusively, through working in blended teams to deliver maintenance, support, modernisation and enhancement capability and capacity. ARE relies on the these contracts in order to deliver its agriculture and rural support payments and services.

The review team commended your approach to independent assurance, can you explain what drove it?

I am a firm believer in the value of peer review. For all the major projects I have been responsible for or involved in, I have always incorporated independent input and have engaged in some form with Gateway Review and the TAF.

Particularly for this project, as well as having a significant potential value over the maximum seven years for the contract, there are specific risks in running the procurement, embedding a successful contract and ensuring a long-term value for money service. For example, ensuring that we secure strong competition; making sure from the outset that the competition is fair and open and is seen to be so; and managing the transition of a very large and complex service from multiple current Service Providers to one over a five-month period. The whole process from initial market engagement through to having completed the transition from current contracts to the new one is around 18 months.

How did you set out to mitigate these risks?

Depending on the successful Service Provider, this could require extensive knowledge transfer and the handover of a broad range of responsibilities. Mitigating these risks has been multi-faceted.  Principle amongst our mitigations were:

• working as a single team with professional procurement colleagues from the Scottish Procurement and Property Directorate (SPPD)
• proactively putting in place an assurance plan from the outset that incrementally builds assurance rather than only seeking assurance at mandated milestones

How did you put in place this plan for assurance?

Given the potential value of the procurement and level of risk, I completed both parts of the Risk Potential Assessment, as mandated in the Scottish Public Finance Manual. That assessment verified the heightened nature of the assurance that was required. I then met the Portfolio, Programme and Project Assurance Hub (PPPA) and the DAO to discuss the level of assurance that should be put in place. TAF reviews were mandatory for this project and these conversations explored how to tailor the TAF process and blend it with appropriate Gateway Reviews.  This helped to mitigate the identified project risks and make assurance fit the needs of the project. Dialogue at this early stage was so valuable in getting the timing right and shaping the different assurance products (e.g. the form of Business Case and the financial approvals that would be required at each stage).

What did the assurance for the project look like?

This project used a two-staged procurement approach for services mainly required to keep ARE’s complex portfolio of Digital services reliable and secure while following a multi-year Technology Roadmap. The award of contract will be followed by a transition phase where services under the existing contracts are picked up under the new contract in a stepwise manner, but not completely like-for-like. The nature of the project required an on-going and incremental assurance approach.

Can you tell us what you mean by incremental assurance?

To date the project has used independent assurance under the TAF to assure progress towards readiness to issue Invitations to Tender (ITT).  We have used assurance early throughout to sense-check our approach and give us the time to respond. This started with a health check shortly after project initiation, mainly to verify the project scope, resourcing, and timeframe. We followed that some months later with the first pre-procurement review to provide assurance that our initial market engagement was sound and that the materials prepared for the first shortlisting stage of the procurement were comprehensive and appropriate. Ultimately both were providing assurance leading to the second pre-procurement review preceding Invitations to Tender (ITT).

With the agreement of the DAO, this second pre-procurement review was deliberately scheduled a couple of months earlier than usual to give us time to address recommendations. The recommendations were cleared in a very short and sharp assurance of action plan review, allowing us to issue the ITT to the shortlisted Service Providers in September as planned.

Our most recent independent review took place in January. This was a Gate 3 Review – Investment Decision scheduled before the contract can be awarded. Again, we augmented the core purpose of that review with a forward look at our planning for the critical post-procurement Transition Phase that comes next. The final piece in this incremental assurance approach is a planned TAF health check once the contract is in place, mobilisation has started and detailed plans for transition and exit are complete. We will then most likely follow up with a proportionate Gate 5 Review – Operations Review and Benefits Realisation about nine months after the contract has been live running. This will verify that the proposed benefits have materialised.

Find out more

For more information about this case study contact DigitalAssurance@gov.scot.  Keep an eye on the digital blog for our next case study with Eddie’s reflections on the benefits from the assurance he received and his recommendations for others.

The Technology Assurance Framework (TAF) is designed to help prevent digital projects from failing for common reasons, improve delivery and ensure that the lessons learned from previous experience are reflected and embedded in future practice. The DAO are working with organisations to share information which might help others deliver digital projects and we have been publishing our insights and case studies on our digital blog. If you want to get involved contact us at DigitalAssurance@gov.scot.

The Gateway Review process gives independent guidance to Senior Responsible Owners (SROs), programme and project teams on how best to ensure their programmes and projects are well managed, and identifies the key issues that need to be addressed to increase the likelihood of successful delivery.

For expert guidance on delivering a digital project visit the Digital Scotland Service Manual.

You can get information, advice and guidance on developing digital, data and technology skills to support transformation from the Scottish Digital Academy.

For further information and signposting to advice and support on programme and project management contact the Programme and Project Management Centre for Expertise. The Scottish Government programme and project management principles are available and apply to any project of any size.

Tags: Agriculture and Rural Economy (ARE), Continuous Improvement, Digital Assurance Office, Technology Assurance Framework

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