GRP-01Delivery risk: AmberGate: pending
Deliver what is already funded
A broad priority grouping A23, A20; its scores are its own, never an average of its members.
Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case.
- Who and where
- Population not yet defined. Jurisdiction: not defined.
- Result so far
- Range if completed: 14.0–20.0 out of 30 (equal weights; not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co))
- Funded now (baseline)
- Funded baseline not yet stated
- The change assessed (marginal)
- Marginal change not yet defined
- Domain home: Follow the money
- In the national plan: Growth and prosperity list
- Previous version: NP6: Set realistic costs before spending, then manage contracts to the result (4 October 2026 slate, superseded 7 October 2026).
What the evidence supports—and the next decision
Procurement, digital delivery and contract management are distinct interventions. Their possible savings cannot be added without checking overlap.
AI-assisted analytical follow-up · 8 October 2026. Proposed appraisal design; the attributed scores below are unchanged. No funding or delivery agreement is implied.
- Define the change
- Select a service and contract cohort; separate procurement reform, contract management and digital process changes into costed work packages.
- Test whether it works
- Measure service quality and total unit cost against a documented pre-change baseline and comparison contracts. Verify cash released in accounts separately from staff time freed.
- Establish the cost
- Commercial staff, systems, migration, legal work and transition; reconcile savings to budgets and exclude savings already booked elsewhere.
- Protect against harm
- Protect service continuity, contestability and appeal routes; an apparent saving achieved by restricting access fails the service test.
Read with the outcome evidence and sources in the full assessment. Monitoring proposals are not existing baseline measurements. A numerical benefit or cost score needs evidence for the defined increment, not just the scale of the problem.
Full assessment of Deliver what is already funded: ten criteria, scenarios, delivery, costs and monitoring
The ten criteria (0–3)
Each criterion is scored 0 to 3 by the reviewer. “Not yet assessed” means unknown: it is never counted as zero.
Scale and severity (Sc)2 of 3 — Serious harm to a defined group or widespread moderate harm
Reviewer’s reason: Provisional problem-importance judgement from linked site pages; not the scale of achievable benefit.
Increment beyond baseline (Ad)2 of 3 — Specific material change to existing delivery
Reviewer’s reason: Name contracts, renewal dates and weaknesses; recruit commercial expertise; publish baselines, performance and remedies. A missing rating requires a defined marginal change.
Confidence in the proposed action (Ev)1 of 3 — Indirect, mixed, modelled or weak causal support
Reviewer’s reason: Audits diagnose failures; no general cash saving is established for this proposal.
Expected incremental benefit (Bn)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Unknown unless a reasonably defined target-population benefit can be judged; no bonus merely for spanning domains.
Residual harms (Hm)2 of 3 — Manageable harm with specified safeguards
Reviewer’s reason: Legal disputes; supplier exits; pushing costs elsewhere.
Incremental affordability (Co)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Commercial staff, data systems, legal work and transition costs; separately verify cashable savings.
Delivery capacity (Ca)1 of 3 — Binding scarce resource
Reviewer’s reason: Name contracts, renewal dates and weaknesses; recruit commercial expertise; publish baselines, performance and remedies.
Distribution (Fa)2 of 3 — Mixed or broadly neutral with safeguards
Reviewer’s reason: Provisional distribution judgement for the stated target; verify who pays, who gains and excluded groups.
Meaningful first outcome (Ti)2 of 3 — More than one and up to three years
Reviewer’s reason: First meaningful outcome, not announcement: Quality-adjusted service delivered, whole-life costs and supplier performance.
Readiness (Rd)2 of 3 — Named commissioning/allocation/coordination step
Reviewer’s reason: Contracting authorities and Cabinet Office; Bounded contract-improvement programme
Four weightings
Normalised as 10 × weighted sum ÷ sum of weights, on a 0–30 scale. Where a criterion is not yet assessed, the range is the lowest and highest result if it were later scored 0 or 3 — not a score, a confidence interval or a rank.
- Equal weights: Range if completed: 14.0–20.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Evidence doubled: Range if completed: 13.6–19.1 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Scale doubled: Range if completed: 14.5–20.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Cost ignored (the funding gate still applies): Range if completed: 15.6–18.9 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
Funding gate: Not passed — the cost is not yet assessed or no allocation is committed for this scope. Ignoring cost in a weighting never removes the gate.
Delivery risk and gate
Delivery risk shown: AmberReview’s claim: Amber. Best the recorded evidence allows: Amber.
Review’s reason: Commercial staff, data systems, legal work and transition costs; separately verify cashable savings.
Why it is not Green yet
- Scope (population, place and increment) not verified against the delivery baseline.
- No verified owner with the powers in place.
- Delivery capacity not verified.
- Lifetime incremental costs not complete.
- No credible funding (a committed allocation for the scope).
- Safeguards not specified.
- Monitoring lacks a metric, a data source or a baseline.
Green needs verified scope, a verified owner with the powers, verified capacity, complete lifetime costs with credible funding, specified safeguards and monitoring with a metric, source and baseline. Amber means appraisal gaps remain; Red means a material delivery obstacle. Red does not mean unimportant.
Gate: Pending — appraisal incomplete (review label: “Pending: incomplete appraisal”).
Why: Scores incomplete; Funding gate not passed (cost unknown or no credible funding).
The gate is separate from national list membership: being listed does not make an option eligible, and an eligible option need not be listed.
Cost and funding
Lifetime costing: Not established. Review: “Full incremental costing not established in reviewed material”.
Still to cost: Commercial staff, data systems, legal work and transition costs; separately verify cashable savings.
Funding status: not established in review.
Owner, powers and capacity
Proposed owner: Contracting authorities and Cabinet Office (proposed, unverified).
Powers: needs a decision or allocation. Capacity: binding constraint.
Powers and capacity read from the review’s Rd and Ca anchors; no proposed owner has agreed to act (the review: “Proposed owners have not agreed to act”).
- England:
- not assessed
- Scotland:
- not assessed
- Wales:
- not assessed
- Northern Ireland:
- not assessed
Not defined in the review.
Dependencies, safeguards and risks
Depends on: None recorded.
Safeguards
None specified yet.
Risks and residual harms: Legal disputes; supplier exits; pushing costs elsewhere.
Monitoring and measured results
Metric: Quality-adjusted service delivered, whole-life costs and supplier performance.
Data source: Not yet named. Baseline: Not yet established.
Measures already on the domain page
- Government major projects rated Red: latest 34 of 172 (ratings at 31 March 2026); baseline not published (United Kingdom).
A page measure is not necessarily the review’s metric; linking the two is an editorial decision still to be made.
Evidence for the outcome
Outcome: Quality-adjusted service delivered, whole-life costs and supplier performance.
Audits diagnose failures; no general cash saving is established for this proposal.
SWOT points it addresses
- Targeting named parts of the gap — including help with record-keeping where error dominates — and publishing outcomes for renewing contracts would turn big theoretical numbers into auditable cash and services. (Follow the money)
- 34 of 172 rated government major projects were Red (successful delivery appears unachievable, with major issues that do not appear manageable at that stage), 16 ratings were withheld and 1 project was not yet rated. (Public procurement)
Review record
Assessment status: Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case.
Reviewer: Original assessment author (name not supplied). Reviewed: 6 October 2026.
Scored in the working review of 6 October 2026 on the shared ten-criterion scale (one reviewer); not independently calibrated.
First 90 days (review): Produce a signed scope and current-delivery baseline; Name contracts, renewal dates and weaknesses; recruit commercial expertise; publish baselines, performance and remedies. Obtain incremental costs and an accountable decision before expansion.
Decision route: Bounded contract-improvement programme
An editorial screening framework by one reviewer, not a formal appraisal or business case. Proposed owners have not agreed to act.