Project Future Update Report
By Premier Hon. Alden McLaughlin, MBE, JP, MLA
8 June, 2016

In November, 2015, the Deputy Governor and I launched the “Programme Brief” for Project Future, establishing a comprehensive and far-reaching programme of public sector reform. Project Future is made up of 50 potential projects, which will drive efficiency, improve the effectiveness of public services and ensure a sustainable future for the Cayman Islands.
The potential for Project Future to impact on Government and the services it provides is huge. The programme cuts across the Public Service spanning, for example:
• Large, complex capital projects, such as the Cruise Berthing Facility,
• Projects that will transform the way Government does its business, such as the Creation of a Utilities Commission, and the transformation of IT services within Government,
• Projects that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of departments or particular services such as Vehicle Safety Inspections, and
• Projects that deliver key policy priorities such as tackling unemployment and implementing E-Government.
As I have explained before and most recently in an update to this Honourable House in May, 2016, Project Future is not designed as a short-term, quick-fix programme. This Government is determined to deliver lasting change which achieves the ambitious goals this country needs. Therefore, we have designed Project Future as a programme to be implemented over the next five years. Therefore, some projects will be completed before the 2017 elections, while others are not expected to be delivered until after the elections.
This is a bold move – but it is the right move – if we are to put the needs of our country before political expediency. As I reminded members of this Honourable House, it is right for the Government to take a long term view and to put in place the delivery of the reforms this country needs. If we remain bound to electoral cycles we remain bound to short-term action that will not tackle some of the fundamental issues we face. However, taking the long term view that our country needs cannot become an excuse for inaction and we need to ensure that progress toward our ambitious goals is maintained.
Today I am pleased to have been able to place on the table of this Honourable House, the first “Project Future Update Report”, which demonstrates our progress over the first six months of the programme.
I encourage the members of this Honourable House, the public and the media to read this important report. I especially recommend that they take the time to review the project overviews to get a sense of the extraordinary scope, scale and complexity of what the Government is determined to achieve. I think they will be struck by the contribution these projects can make to the future of our country and the Public Service.
In my recent statement on Project Future to this Honourable House, I was pleased to report that over 30 of the 51 projects from the “Programme Brief” had been progressed. I promised further details.
As the Project Future Update Report indicates, as at 25 May, 2016, 57 projects were being monitored by the Strategic Reforms Implementation Unit, on behalf of Cabinet and the Deputy Governor (the number of projects has increased as some of the original 51 have been broken down into sub-projects). Two-thirds of these projects (38/57) are already being progressed by the Civil Service. This means that they are active, and fall within one of the project phases being utilised for Project Future, as follows:
• 16 projects are in the initial phase and strategic assessments are under way.
• For nine projects, formal Outline Business Cases are being prepared.
• Seven projects are in the project initiation or project planning phases
• Six projects are in the project execution or closing phases and
• One small project, the transfer of the London Office to the Cabinet Portfolio, has been completed.
Approval of business case documents is a key milestone for projects and for Project Future overall. These documents are the results of analysis and research undertaken by the civil service on the projects assigned by Cabinet. They provide Cabinet with recommendations on the options available to achieve our policy priorities and to achieve value for money for any investments that are required.
As the Project Future Update Reports points out, since November, 2015, one Outline Business Case and two Strategic Assessments and have been finalised and approved by Cabinet:
• The business case for the creation of the Office of the Ombudsman has been approved
• A strategic assessment to explore options to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of land surveying services has been agreed; and
• The project to explore the potential to commercialise the national mail service has also had a strategic assessment approved by Cabinet.
In addition, the following projects have recently been submitted for approval by Cabinet:
• Implementing E-Government
• Options for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of prisoner transport
• Options to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of vehicle safety inspections
A significant number of the other strategic assessment and business case documents are at an advanced stage and are expected to be ready for submission in the upcoming weeks.
Once considered and approved by Cabinet or the Deputy Governor, Project Future Strategic Assessments and Outline Business Case documents will be published. Already the first Outline Business Case to be approved has been published, for the creation of a new Office of the Ombudsman, and is available on the website of the Office of the Deputy Governor. Going forward, it is my expectation that these business case documents will be published, both on the websites of the Ministries/Portfolios responsible for their delivery and, centrally, on the Project Future website www.Projectfuturecayman.com. Accordingly, the two completed strategic assessments that I mentioned earlier will be published shortly.
This continues this Government’s commitment to openness and transparency, and our desire to keep the people of the Cayman Islands informed about the efforts the Government is making on their behalf, through the Project Future programme.
This Government has resisted calls for the blanket implementation of EY’s 2014 report. In November we were able, after careful analysis, to rule out 16 of those recommendations because they ran counter to Government policy or because our work demonstrated they were not right for Cayman at this time. These are things our critics would have had us wasting time and resources to rush to implement.
Still though, the lesson has not been learned and we still hear calls for the EY report to be implemented regardless. Last month in May, I had to come to this House to make a statement to correct the errors of the latest Compass editorial on the subject. I am not sure of their agenda, but they are wrong in principle, they are wrong in policy and they are wrong in practice.
They are wrong in principle because I and this Government believe in democracy. As such, we believe it is for the Government, not a group of consultants, to determine what is right for our country. Yes we are willing to listen to EY. Yes we respect their advice or we would not have hired them in the first place, but as EY themselves said, it is for Government itself to weigh that advice along with further work and evidence in order to determine what action is needed.
We have considered EY’s report properly against our objectives. We will implement the overwhelming majority of the recommendations though many of them in a modified form, appropriate for Cayman. We have also identified significant areas of reform that EY did not look at. If we followed the advice of our critics we would not now be working with business leaders and implementing Ready2Work.Ky to create jobs for our people because EY did not consider projects to promote employment. Instead we would be dedicating our efforts to merging the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee and Veterinary Board, which EY did recommend. Forgive me, if I think that would be a very strange set of priorities for the Government.
The Compass is wrong as a matter of policy because their dogmatic belief in the privatisation of public services as the panacea for every problem is misguided and flies in the face of both the wisdom of experts in the field and international practice. There are many Project Future undertakings that will require chief officers to consider outsourcing as one of a range of available options to improve the delivery of services provided by the public sector and it is already apparent that Project Future will lead to greater involvement of the private sector in the delivery of public services. However, involving the private sector will be part of the solution where we are convinced that is appropriate as a result of rigorous exploration of all the options available rather than a first choice based on a false pre-conception and a prejudice against public servants. As a Government, we have a great deal of respect for the hard working civil servants who do so much for the people of our country, and we see no reason to risk their jobs on the basis of beliefs held by a few; that outsourcing is the panacea for every problem.
Finally, this Government’s critics are wrong in practice. They accuse us of making no progress on public sector reform but, as the Project Future Update Report demonstrates, the reality is quite different.
I would like to talk briefly about some of the key themes emerging from the work so far. In doing so, I am drawing both on the work that has reached Cabinet for decision and on what I know is under way in Ministries that will be coming to us shortly.
First, it is worth reflecting that our adherence to a robust management process has still allowed us to be flexible and take strategic decisions to press ahead with the implementation of projects where there is a pressing need to do so.
At the launch of the Programme back in November, I said that the major priority for the Government was to support Caymanians into employment. Accordingly we have split the project on tackling unemployment into its component parts, allowing our innovative public-private partnership for jobs, Ready2Work.Ky, which I referred to earlier, to progress straight to implementation while business cases for other aspects, such as the development of a clearing house for jobs, are developed.
The House will also be aware that we have maintained progress with the much needed reform of the education system in the country. When the new Education Bill comes before this honourable House, its passage and successful implementation will underpin the long-term development of the knowledge and skills our young people need to compete in the jobs markets of the future.
More generally, I am pleased to say that under the Deputy Governor’s leadership, our civil servants are embracing the potential for reform and bringing forward genuine options for significant change. I have long believed that those who work in public service day after day are best placed to identify the changes needed and so it is proving.
So far we have seen proposals that will:
• Improve customer service in operations as diverse as public complaints handling and planning and building inspection;
• Modernise legislative and regulatory frameworks for example thorough the creation of the new utilities commission, the Office of Competition and Regulation;
• Boost economic growth and support job creation including targeting support to new and growing small businesses; and
• Create new approaches to tackling seemingly intractable problems such as drug misuse and dependency.
We have also seen options for change that will drive efficiency, reduce costs and deliver better value for money. Some of those options are concentrated on improving in-house, public sector provision. Others consider the outsourcing of services, where this is appropriate and can be done without encountering the problems that I referred to earlier.
Options for outsourcing are being actively considered in a range of projects from public works to hospital linen cleaning. It is clear, as I have said that one of the outcomes of the Project Future programme will be a greater role for the private sector in the delivery of public services. It will be a greater role reflecting a sound approach to outsourcing when that is demonstrably the right answer for the future.
Projects are also demonstrating the civil service’s willingness to learn from experience in other jurisdictions rather than thinking everything must be invented here. The emerging business case for implementing e-Government, for example, is likely to demonstrate that we can deliver much improved on-line services and generate considerable efficiencies by following the lead of other countries, notably Estonia.
Even in areas such as vehicle inspection and licencing where initial work is suggesting that services may not, in fact, be good candidates for major reform projects, civil servants are still identifying potential improvements that can be implemented as “business as usual” activity.
Given the mix of projects, Project Future has the potential to impact, profoundly, the customer experience of public services and to reduce the future burden we place on those who pay to finance our public services. As such, it is vital that we undertake these reforms in a structured and measured way. For the first time, a major reform programme, and the individual projects within it, is being managed in accordance with international best practice standards. This demonstrates the Civil Service commitment to effective delivery and increasing capability to manage this type of undertaking.
Increasing the project management capability within the Civil Service takes time, and we need to continue to build the professional expertise to deliver the necessary strategic assessments and business cases that will guide the delivery of projects. I am pleased to say that as a result of training and support, as demonstrated by the progress documented in the Update Report, the pace of the programme is now picking up in a sustainable manner.
I recognise that these are early days in the life of Project Future. Much is still to be done to bring these great ideas to fruition and to implement the ambitious programme of reform that we have set ourselves.
Project Future is a significant and far-reaching reform programme and we are committed to delivering the changes in our public services that this country needs. This Government has demonstrated over the last three years that it delivers on its promises.
Creating a long term programme may be seen as a political risk as it ignores the usual electoral cycles that bind political action. Make no mistake, though, I am all too aware of the reality of those cycles. When this Progressives-led Government goes to the polls, we will be proud to lay before the people a track record of achievement, of which Project Future will be an important part. We will also be laying out our plans for the future of our country and the platform we are creating, by beginning now to work on major reforms that will only bear fruit after the elections. This will enable the electorate to have confidence in our ability to see through the changes that this country needs.