The LandWeb Project and Digital Transformation

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE
Parliament Buildings
Ballymiscaw
BELFAST
BT4 3XX
Tel:  (028) 9052 1208
Fax: (028) 9052 0366
Email: Committee.publicaccounts@niassembly.gov.uk

26 October 2020

Public Accounts Committee Evidence Session on 22 October 2020 – Request for follow-up information

Thank you for attending the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday 22 October 2020 and for the evidence you and your officials provided.

However, the Committee are disappointed that the additional information it had requested after the evidence session on 24 September 2020 was received too late to scrutinise on 22 October 2020. Although this information was distributed to the Committee Members just prior to the meeting, the Members didn’t have enough time to meaningfully refer to it in the evidence session of 22 October.

Following on from the recent evidence session of 22 October 2020, I am requesting some additional information and would appreciate if this would be received by the response date:

• To provide details of your first day brief as Permanent Secretary of the Department of Finance, and specifically, if both projects, LandWeb and Digital Transformation were ‘red flagged’;
• In relation to the project overspend of £110m, to provide an analysis of the monetary value of both projects against the additional cost to the public purse;
• To provide details of who approved [signed off] the 2012 Digital Transformation BT contracts and the other subsequent contracts at that time;
• To provide details of who filtered the 120 projects down to the 18 projects that were awarded in 2016.
• Clarification on whether the filter projects were ranked; and
• Details of the challenge function of the projects: i.e. the negotiations for the original contract; the negotiations on the reviewed contract; who was involved in both of these negotiations; and all quotes received and costs incurred for both contracts.