Formats and related files
Staff and teams are writing in their individual capacity and the views are not necessarily a “Treasury” view. Please read our disclaimer.
Executive summary#
The Treasury is undertaking a multi-year review and update of the Better Business Case (BBC) and Gateway frameworks. This review is in response to feedback from stakeholders that business cases take too much time and cost to develop, are too long, and are not presented in a way that supports Ministers and Cabinet to make well-informed timely investment decisions.
During 2024, an initial set of changes (Tranche 1) were designed and implemented. The purpose of this evaluation is to assess the early impacts on these changes, noting that it is too soon to assess the impact of Tranche 1 on outcomes.
This evaluation consisted of an anonymous stakeholder survey, with 87 responses; interviews with 13 agency senior leaders; a workshop with 17 Gateway review experts; and a desktop review of 16 Cabinet papers seeking business case approval between October and December 2024.
Key findings from this evaluation are:
- Most respondents (65%) said they had a high or very high understanding of the investment lifecycle and Cabinet expectations for medium and high-risk investments.
- The BBC framework remains highly valued. Nearly all respondents (97%) saw at least some value in the BBC framework.
- The Gateway framework remains highly valued. Most agency respondents (89%) saw some value in the Gateway framework. Agency senior leaders find the Gateway reviews very helpful to ensure investments are set up for success. High understanding was positively related to experience: agency respondents who had greater experience in investment planning were more likely to rate their understanding of Gateway processes as high or very high.
- Respondents were generally confident in applying the BBC framework. Most respondents (89%) indicated a moderate to very high level of confidence. However, there were some pockets of lower confidence (12% had very low or low confidence).
- Most respondents (75%) were aware of the new Treasury guidance for Cabinet papers seeking business case approval. Agencies have begun to structure their Cabinet papers in line with the new Treasury guidance and are providing details on Gateway review outcomes to support Cabinet decision-making.
Overall, the evaluation showed high awareness of Tranche 1 improvements and that these changes are increasing agency knowledge and understanding of the BBC and Gateway frameworks. Given the anonymity of the survey, we were unable to specifically identify the agencies that provided lower scores. However, results from this evaluation are informing Tranche 2 improvement activities, some of which are expected to help improve these measures including uplifting agency understanding of the system and confidence with the application of these frameworks.