I recently read HM Treasury’s ‘Treasury approvals process for programmes and projects’ (April 2024), and I soon found myself drowning in a sea of acronyms. I found 27 with only one that I recognised: HMT for His Majesty’s Treasury.
I thought IPA was a beer that I enjoy, but to the Treasury it means Infrastructure and Projects Authority. For those in the know, this is not the first time that the Treasury tried an IPA. In the early 2000s, they were spending a lot of time on pension reform, and they came up with and then abandoned an Individual Pension Account. I guess to keep the imagery alive, today we have a SIPP, (Self-Invested Personal Pension).
I thought DAL was an Indian dish. The Treasury believes it is delegated authority limits. DAL must not be mixed up with DEL: departmental expenditure limits. I turn on the TAP to run the bath, but never use the Treasury approvals process. For Europeans, RTL is a well-known radio and television station, not a ‘review team lead’, whatever that might be. I know what PAR is on a golf course, but Treasury personnel do not play golf, they ‘project assessment review’. The Treasury does not use RPM but MPM: managing public money. This is not a scientific paper so one would expect that CO does not represent carbon monoxide, and it doesn’t. Here it means the Cabinet Office.
They have a sock, only one, without the ‘K’, SOC which is apparently a strategic outline case, and I have no idea what that is either. Neither do I know what their three ‘cases’ mean; BPC, OBC and FBC. Smart to HM Treasury describes an ideal objective: one that is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-limited. They don’t have apps but an AAP which logically for them is assurance of action plan. OGDs are never explained in the document, the only acronym without a definition. Readers are expected to know they are ‘other government departments’.
These interminable acronyms mean that some sentences are impossible to understand. How about this simple one:
“A PAR commissioned by the relevant IPA project delivery adviser is typically carried out 6 weeks prior to each MPRG panel.”
Or this more complicated one:
“It may be appropriate for departments to discuss the delegation of project approvals when securing Treasury approval of the PBC or the IAAP as well as the delegation of FBC approval when securing Treasury approval of the OBC.”
But HM Treasury do not limit themselves to acronyms, they go inventively wild with gates and frames. A gate is no longer a gate. In the Treasury it is, would you believe, ‘a decision point’. [1] Not only that, there are many different types of gate. As in horseracing there is a starting gate, but this one is a discussion: ‘starting gate discussions’ begin at an early phase of a project. Then comes a stage gate which has nothing to do with theatre, but follows traffic light colours and can be green, amber or red depending on what the ‘case conference’ recommends. On page 22, we find:
“If the AAP also returns a ‘Red’ outcome, the Treasury and IPA convene a formal Case Conference with the SRO and AO.”
after a ‘stage gate review’ no doubt.
But a gate, in Treasury speak, sometimes becomes a gateway, as in the ‘IPA gateway review rating’ or other unspecified key gateways. Remember gates and gateways are decision points, not gates. Other gates can be found in investigate, navigate and delegate which abound in the Treasury approval process.
The Treasury also have their own frames and frameworks. Opportunity framing, for instance, is a step in the process which comes before the starting gate described above, and evolves into the rather muddy ‘IPA opportunity framing discussions’ and eventually into the formal ‘business case development framework’. But surely the most complex combines both gates and frameworks giving at some obscure point in the process a ‘project delivery framework gate’.
This document tangles initials with initials, and jumbles gates, frames, works and ways. I was lucky not to see any gateworks and frameways.
[1] On page 9 of the Treasury approvals process for programmes and projects you will find this definition: “A ‘gate’ or gateway’ refers to a decision point carried out as part of formal governance, at significant points in the life cycle to ensure that the decision to invest as stated in an agreed business case remains valid.” Here is the link: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66e2e98861763848f429d5ca/Treasury_Approvals_Process_guidance.pdf