Portfolio, Programme and Project Management (P3M) is espoused as best practice by the Efficiency and Reform Group within the Cabinet Office. Portfolio Management is about choosing th...

Portfolio, Programme and Project Management (P3M) is espoused as best practice by the Efficiency and Reform Group within the Cabinet Office. Portfolio Management is about choosing the right things to do, whilst Programme and Project Management is about doing those things right. So if we are doing Portfolio Management properly, we wouldn't choose to do something that's unsustainable... would we?

"Doing things right" includes procuring sustainably at project level, and delivering beneficial outcomes at programme level. How does the government evaluate the success of project and programme delivery across the departments so that it can prioritise funding towards those programmes and projects that support truly sustainable development?

Good progress has been made in sustainable procurement in the last few years, but this is only half of the problem. Unless the requirement has been set for a sustainable outcome, you can do as much sustainable procurement as you like and still end up being unsustainable. How do we ensure that requestors ask for sustainable solutions?

Does the government have sufficient visibility down the supply chain to be able to provide assurance that it is procuring sustainably? Does it have sufficient knowledge of what it needs to measure to provide such assurance?