Guidance

Set up an assurance board for digital and technology

Published 23 February 2024

As part of Cabinet Office digital and technology spend control policy your organisation needs an assurance board to review and assure the activities in your digital and technology pipeline. 

Assurance board responsibilities

Your organisation must have robust internal governance arrangements with sufficient seniority and experience to review and internally approve pipelines of digital and technology spend. This is defined in the create a digital and technology spend controls pipeline guidance.

An assurance board for digital and technology::

• oversees investment in architectural design 
• considers the financial implications and opportunity cost of expenditure
• follows the government standards including the Technology Code of Practice and Service Standard
• makes sure you are following Cabinet Office policies for getting digital and technology activities spend related approval

The Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) will be in the decision-making process for digital and technology activities with your assurance board. 

The role of the CDDO adviser is to:

• support the board to make sure that the activities are following government standards and policies 
• sign off spend which meets the CDDO thresholds for approval 

The assurance board attendees

You may already have an assurance board in your organisation which has another name.  This could be Enterprise Architecture Board, Commercial Board or Investment Committee. To reduce duplication, the CDDO encourages you to use existing internal governance as part of the spend approvals process. 

Your organisation may need to amend these existing governance bodies so they can carry out timely reviews. You may need to create an assurance board if existing internal governance does not exist.

Digital and technology assurance board attendees 

The recommended members of your digital and technology assurance board are:

• assurance board chair, usually the head of digital and technology assurance
• head of digital design
• head of enterprise IT
• head of data
• head of information security
• Cabinet Office representation through CDDO

CDDO recommends the assurance board chair should be at deputy director level. If they have to be deputised, this should be with people no lower than Grade 6 or equivalent. 

Making decisions in the assurance board

Your organisation’s internal assurance team should have assured any spend items before they are discussed at the board meeting.

There is guidance on the topics you should be considering when assuring a spend item in the ‘setup a digital pipeline’ guidance.

Papers should be distributed ahead of the board meeting, to enable effective decision making and to reduce delays. They should include the findings of the internal assurance team.

All spend requests which have a risk and importance rating of medium or high must be discussed at your assurance board meeting in order to decide whether they should be assigned an ‘assure’, ‘monitor’ or ‘control’ outcome. 

If your organisation has been granted earned autonomy, only spend requests rated as high risk and importance must be discussed at the board meeting. The CDDO’s representatives have the same authority as any other member of the team in the digital and technology assurance board. They can flag spend items that need further review if they have significant concerns. 

Once the board has made a decision, it should be recorded against the relevant spend item in the get approval to spend service.

You should agree an action plan and review point for digital and technology spend activities if you are not able to resolve any issues during your assurance board meeting. 

Agencies and public bodies 

Organisations such as arms length bodies, non executive department bodies and executive agencies can coordinate with their parent department to use their assurance board for assurance and decision making. 

Agencies and public bodies who are thinking about using the board of their parent department, should consider whether there are any constitutional reasons to maintain independence from their parent department when making decisions on spending.