Working across Defence and National Security constantly reminds me of a pattern that repeats itself in almost every major programme. Just like Dickens’ classic Christmas story of A Christmas Carol, government is haunted by three ghosts: the Ghost of Delivery Past, the Ghost of Delivery Present, and the Ghost of Delivery Yet to Come (not Future, for all those whose only exposure to this story was portrayed by The Muppets…)
These ghosts are not fictional. They take the form of outdated policies, exhausted processes, predictable consequences and poorly used delivery frameworks, but more importantly they hold back skilled teams who know how to deliver. They shape procurement decisions, talent pipelines, governance models, and all the subtle dynamics that determine whether a programme succeeds or…not. This is not a story about individuals. It is about systems that keep pulling people into the same trap, year after year.
The Ghost of Delivery Past
Anyone who has worked on a long-running public sector programme knows what this ghost looks like. It appears through legacy choices made years ago, often with the best of intentions, now binding teams to decisions that no longer make sense.
Past decisions show up in:
- multi-year business cases locked to assumptions
- technology stacks carried forward because changing them feels too expensive (and there’s no budget to achieve it)
- governance models designed for a world who tech landscape isn’t changing monthly
The National Audit Office reported in 2024 that more than 80 percent of major government programmes inherit constraints from previous cycles, either through sunk cost decisions or inflexible commercial arrangements¹. Once these commitments are locked in, teams spend more time keeping the product alive or as a senior leader once put it, government delivery is like spinning plates in the dark because you heard something break but you can’t figure out what.
Recently I was part of a process where teams in a department were asked to categories their effort into three buckets; Sustain (keep the product alive), Maintain (day-to-day development and support) and Transform (continue to add value). It’s not actually a bad activity, but when the results came back, I’m surprised the department leadership didn’t run for the hills – the amount of effort being used on Sustain was incredible.
Take a look at the graphic and see if you can relate:
1: Rapid discovery, quick value wins, the problem is being worked on, people are happy.
2: Value delivery has increased, the problem is better understood, feature growth accelerates, technical debt begins to have an impact.
3: Technical becomes an impediment (surprise!), we need to hire more people to get it under control, people are losing patience.
4: More people are hired, more features are delivered instead of reducing technical debt, everything seems better.
5: The technical debt has grown (surprise x2!), we should probably re-architect this system, focus on keeping the lights on, people have lost patience.
6: Funding is given to build a new system because technical debt has become unmanageable, team profile is heavily reduced.
7: Full-maintenance mode, the system was supposed to be replaced but that will take years, key knowledge resides in a few heads who are external contractors, the fuse is lit…
The Ghost of Delivery Present
This ghost is more familiar because it is visible every day in meetings, by email, and across procurement processes. It is the ghost that thrives in a culture where compliance is perceived as safety.
Symptoms include:
- governance that values documentation more than working product
- procurement rules that prioritise fairness over outcomes
- pay structures that push skilled civil servants into the private sector
- assurance cycles that halt delivery the minute they sniff a risk
The Institute for Government’s 2024 capability review found that digital and data roles had some of the highest turnover in the Civil Service, driven largely by pay compression and stalled progression². Programmes lose continuity, teams lose knowledge, and suppliers re-enter to fill the gaps, often at significantly higher cost.
I have watched delivery slow to a crawl while leadership waits for approvals that everyone knows will come eventually. I have watched suppliers over-engineer bids because the system rewards risk transfer rather than clarity. These are not isolated incidents because The Ghost of Delivery Present thrives on fear. Fear of making the wrong call. Fear of creating a precedent. Fear of scrutiny. The private sector calls this risk management. In government, it becomes inertia.
The Ghost of Delivery Yet to Come
This ghost is not here yet, but its arrival is predictable. If nothing changes, the future looks like a more expensive version of the present:
- greater dependency on suppliers
- slower procurement cycles
- increased spend on legacy maintenance
- widening talent gaps in critical DDaT roles
- deteriorating public trust in major programmes
The Infrastructure and Projects Authority has repeatedly highlighted a systemic decline in delivery confidence across major programmes when continuity and capability are disrupted³. If past constraints and present culture continue to compound, the future will be defined by stagnation punctuated by expensive restarts- in the past, I’ve heard this called The Magic Roundabout (for those 90’s children amongst you).
Coming back to the story for a moment, we should remember that this ghost shows us that a change of course is always possible. Government can change its trajectory by addressing root causes rather than symptoms.
What Needs to Change This Time
The solution is not more strategy documents or more frameworks because government already has an abundance of both. The real shift requires something more fundamental: the willingness to let teams learn, adapt, and deliver without being trapped by ghosts from previous cycles. A few practical things stand out.
1. Treat business cases as hypotheses, not commitments.
Move to continuous funding models that follow evidence, not predictions. Start small, validate early, and scale based on outcomes.
2. Build commercial models that reward learning.
Contracts should accommodate change without penalty. Buy discovery, not just delivery. Use Lean Agile Procurement to shorten cycles and co-design outcomes.
3. Protect continuity instead of increasing control.
Teams with stable membership deliver faster and with fewer surprises. The Civil Service can only compete for talent when pay, progression, and recognition match the realities of the market.
4. Make governance proportionate to uncertainty.
Apply scrutiny where risk is real, not where process is easiest to enforce. A light-touch approach on low-risk work frees up assurance capacity for higher-stakes decisions.
5. Institutionalise learning instead of repeating it.
Capture evidence across programmes using shared playbooks, common failure patterns, and outcome data from Evidence-Based Management. This moves learning from individual memory to organisational muscle.
A Christmas Reflection
The Dickens story ends with transformation. Not because the ghosts disappear, but because they force reflection, and our government delivery is at a similar moment. Past decisions cannot be undone, but they can be acknowledged. Present constraints can be redesigned. Future consequences can be redirected.
I have spent almost a decade working inside environments where people want to deliver more effectively, more honestly, and more adaptively. The talent is there, the intent is there, the problem is the system that limits both. If the Civil Service wants a different future, it will need to stop reliving the same delivery story every year. The ghosts will keep returning until the system chooses to change.
References
- National Audit Office, Major Projects Report 2024. https://www.nao.org.uk
- Institute for Government, Civil Service Capability Review 2024. https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk
- Infrastructure and Projects Authority, Annual Report on Major Projects 2024. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications