Gateway IT reports to stay confidential

The government has rejected calls for the Gateway IT project monitoring reports to be published.

Treasury financial secretary Ruth Kelly told MPs that the confidentiality of the Gateway process, run by Whitehall buying agency the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), is key to its success.

'The OGC helps and advises the department when it has a project to deliver, and it is right that, once the department owns that project, such information be kept confidential,' said Kelly during a Commons debate about Parliamentary watchdog the Public Accounts Committee.

'If we took confidentiality away from the discussions we would not have such open and honest negotiations. Lessons would not be learned to the same extent, and the value added by the process could be significantly diminished,' she said.

Kelly said she would consider proposals for a statutory framework to enforce the Gateway process.

OGC Gateway programme executive director Ian Glenday told Computing earlier this year that legislation is not needed (Computing, 3 March).

'The pressure being built into the system now is already showing results, therefore we want to see the impact of what we have already done before getting sidelined into something quite different,' he said.