The Cabinet Office is the ‘Scheme Manager’ for the Civil Service Pensions Scheme (CSPS) and the Royal Mail Statutory Pensions Scheme (RMSPS). The CSPS is the 3rd largest UK occupational pension scheme with approximately 1.6 million members and 300+ employers whilst the RMSPS is currently the 6th largest public sector pension scheme, with approximately 365,000 members. The Future Services Programme was established to run the procurement and transition of services to the new transformed contracts. This is one of the flagship programmes in the Cabinet Office with combined contract values of £350million, thus inviting scrutiny and interest of ministers, cross government senior leadership, unions, members and the media.
Acuity are providing the Programme Director for this high-profile programme. A key component of this role was to author, socialise and secure approval of the OBC (pre-procurement)and FBC post procurement for both of these contracts from senior governance bodies across government including Cabinet Office Approvals Board, HM Treasury Spend Control, Cabinet Office Digital and Central Data and Digital Office and ultimately the Minister for the Cabinet Office.
These procurements were not just a ‘like for like’ replacement for the current contract, they sought to secure a fundamental change in the services provision whilst also harnessing emerging technologies, such as AI. To secure commitment to, and achieve the Authority’s visions of transforming the CSPS in to the best managed and administered UK public service pension scheme, whilst also providing a highly efficient,effective and Value for Money service for the RMSPS, the programme had to secure commitment and support from the Cabinet Office senior Executive team as well as Ministers through the OBC and FBC process. In preparation for the development of the OBC our team worked with Subject Matter Experts across Cabinet Office including the Complex Transactions Team, Cabinet Office Digital, Cabinet Office Commercial and the Economic Investment Team to develop key supporting documentation, including:
These SMEs were engaged again during the development of the FBC to revaluate and validate the assumptions made at OBC stage.
The Cabinet Office have implemented a streamlined version of the 5 Case model which required their cases to be as short as possible, with the target of being 20pages long but still addressing the key aspects of the 5 case model. Our team were fundamental in ensuring that the messages and content of the cases were succinct, direct and informative to achieve this. During the development of the OBC and FBCs our team lead the following activities to secure successful sign off ·
In the case of the FBC for the CSPS the successful bidder has suffered a cyber security breach five months before the Approval process.Given the sensitivity of the CSPS data set, which contains data for employees including GCHQ and the National Crime Agency, ministers were rightly seeking additional assurance that all steps were, and would continue to be, taken to ensure the credentials of the supplier’s Cyber Security controls and ultimately the protection of the CSPS data set. To achieve we:
All OBCs and FBCs were successfully approved by all stakeholders and the programme was commended for being one of the best run procurement programmes in Cabinet Office by the Permanent Secretary and Chief Financial Officer. On the back of this the Future Service Business Cases was seen as an exemplar and the team have been approached by a number of other programmes across Cabinet Office for advice and guidance.