What to do next

To learn more about the CAT and how it can help your organisation, please visit our website or contact the OGC Service Desk for further information on the tool, the user guide and the support available. OGC provides assistance in choosing the right approach for your organisation and help in embedding the use of the CAT to maximum advantage.

OGC Service Desk

OGC customers can contact the central OGC Service Desk about all aspects of OGC business. The Service Desk will also channel queries to the appropriate second-line support. We look forward to hearing from you. You can contact the OGC Service Desk 8am6pm MondayFriday Telephone: 0845 000 4999 GTN: 3040-4999 e-mail: ServiceDesk@ogc.gsi.gov.uk Office of Government Commerce Fleetbank House 26 Salisbury Square London EC4Y 8AE Website: www.ogc.gov.uk

Capability Assessment Tool

Supporting IT-enabled business change

An OGC publication printed on recycled paper

What is the CAT?

The Capability Assessment Tool (CAT) is a product and service from OGC to support central Government organisations as part of the SPRITE Programme. The CAT enables your organisation to assess, plan and improve its capability to deliver successful IT-enabled business change programmes and projects. By measuring capability at the organisational level it complements the Gateway process, which considers projects at crucial points in their development. The CAT is a means of self-assessing organisational capability in the ten key areas identified in the report Successful IT: Modernising Government in Action.These are:

How can it help you?

The Capability Assessment Tool will help you position your organisation to:

Helping you to improve

One of the CATs main advantages is that the results can support your wider corporate improvement programmes, or help you to create one. It can be used at any time to see how these programmes are taking effect. The diagram below shows the CATs contribution to a cycle of continuous improvement.

meet the Modernising Government agenda meet your obligations in implementing the Successful IT
recommendations

report progress to senior management and OGC.

CAT assessments help you to:

identify particular strengths, and so spread that best

practice across your organisation

Assess, Plan, Improve and Report

identify areas for improvement, to help plan for

improving capability

Assess
Use CAT to assess progress of the improvement against targets Assure that the right lessons are learnt Set internal targets for areas of improvement and plan how to make those changes

set your own requirements, reflecting your

organisations needs and priorities

business change leadership and responsibility project management risk management modular and incremental development benefits realisation procurement and supplier relationships cross-cutting initiatives people and skills learning lessons.

set direction for achieving target levels balance and prioritise investment in improved capability determine the rationale for specific actions as part of
your improvement plan

Report

compare your organisation with others by providing a

common understanding for sharing best practice

Improve

Plan

gather maturity information in a consistent way,

suitable for submission to stakeholders and other organisations (the NAO, for example).
Implement the improvements (e.g. in leadership and responsibility)

How does it work?

The CAT fits in the context of wider Government policy on both organisational improvement and approaches to departmental change programmes. It also interfaces with OGC best practice products and services. The CAT was developed and piloted with the involvement and support of representatives from the departmental user community. The CAT takes the form of an electronic support tool in Microsoft Excel format. Information is entered into a spreadsheet and automatically analysed to give an assessment of your organisations capability in each of the ten key areas. Results are presented graphically in a way that is easy to understand. It provides a valuable overview and highlights strengths and weaknesses in the individual key areas. trends over time.

A regular assessment using the CAT will reveal progress against the capability targets set by your organisation and

Submitting a copy of your completed assessment will enable OGC to identify where the centre can take action to help organisations and improve practices. OGC will use the information to provide a summary and analysis of progress across government.