Lessons and observations

Issue

Comments/recommendations

ToR took far too long to get sign-off - project events overtook much of the original ToR. In my opinion one of the key problems is the template is too big and this leds to significant ambiguity through the document. A ToR needs to be shorter with a lot of the current contents moving into the project management plan.

ToR process and template needs to be more streamlined

Communication with agencies is key. Too many inconsistent messages from different project teams caused varying degrees of confusion and anxiety for agencies

Need to be vigilant about consistency of messages from different parts of the programme.

Engagement with agencies took a significant effort.

A high degree of effort was required getting agencies to understand what was expected of them and to establish buy-in within most agencies. Many agencies used us to sell the project at the senior levels within their own agencies. The EGU-Agency terms of reference proved useful, as a formal commitment was required from agencies, especially when internal agency priorities were in conflict with this project's priorities.

Needs to be estimated upfront and carefully managed during project.

Develop multiple options for plan to proceed.

Need to ensure agency executive buy-in for the process.

EGU internal co-ordination was not as effective as needed. Lack of a consolidated programme plan had a negative impact on the project:

• lack of understanding of the role of the various projects

• individual project managers not able to highlight overlaps

Overlap was inevitable given the "planned" overlap of data collection tasks. These were later rationalised and programme planning and co-ordination has improved - scope and boundary issues need to be continually monitored by individual project managers.

Early agency commitments didn't match actual commitment of resources in many cases.

Apply a more rigorous engagement model such as a formal ToR for agency participation in all but small projects.

Business knowledge is important for the agency team - technical meta-data expertise was useful, but less important (the tool enabled hiding the technical aspects of meta-data)

Recognise different types of agencies and agency team capabilities exist. The methodology and approach for any agency-oriented project has to be flexible to cater for these differences.

Need to cater for changes to agency personnel during the process

Service delivery agencies found the process easy vis-à-vis policy agencies. Delivery agencies appear more accustom to thinking about service users and the services they deliver.

Recognise there is a difference and plan for it.

The handover from e-Services to Metadata Collection team should have been more formal, with possibly formal communication to agency leaders.

Include in future planning.