Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

One of the slides covers what is critical for success. I am not sure who wrote this but it is very generic. There is a piece on deep knowledge. It states that the Department invests in the right staff who have deep knowledge of the subject area of the Department. It also states, "crucial to the success of the programme as the programme were working at pace to meet tight timelines by investing appropriately engaged staff". It goes on to say that the transformation enables the Department to extract more insightful information which enables more informed planning. Each of the five paragraphs are generic, broad and poorly worded. Whether that is what EY has presented the Department with or that is what has been written internally, the fact that there are even simple grammatical errors shows there has not been much focus on it. It goes on to say that frank communication and engagement with staff enabled the transformation team to minimise resistance to change. It seems like this is all congratulatory. That is positive if that is the Department's perspective, but I believe we need less of that and more metrics. I would like to see Mr. O'Driscoll present the key performance indicators and actual measurable cultural indicators that are changing within the Department so that we can track these over time. That particular slide is rather loose. It is like any basic governance slide in a presentation that anyone would receive if they have any knowledge of it. We need to see more depth rather than the usual wording that we could probably see dotted in every agency or Department proposal on future success. That is the danger. It is not for the Department officials present alone. It is probably for every public and private sector organisation. We see this type of language and the concern about it. I would like to see more depth on metrics to enable us to track the success of the Department over time. I hope it is a success.