Government launches project leadership academy

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude today launched the Major Projects Leadership Academy, which will train senior civil servants in the skills needed to manage large government projects.

The academy will be delivered in partnership with the University of Oxford's Said Business School. 

"This will reduce the over-reliance on expensive external consultancy further and build expertise within the Civil Service. In future no one will be able to lead a major government project without completing the academy," the government said in a statement.

The Cabinet Office said it drew on international experience in the public and private sectors to create the programme, but said that the UK government is the first to introduce a compulsory training programme across its entire major project portfolio.

The past few years have seen several major government failures, such as the NHS National Programme for IT and the scrapped FiReControl project, which was labelled "one of the worst cases of project failure in many years" by the Commons Public Accounts Committee in September last year.

"[The academy] will relinquish taxpayers from having to foot the bill for external consultancy to deliver the projects and services the country needs," said Maude.

The academy will be managed by the Cabinet Office Major Projects Authority (MPA), which oversees major projects and ensures that they deliver for taxpayers.