MD3412 Procurement of an off-the-shelf Portfolio and Project Management System for the GLA

1.1    The Greater London Authority (GLA) is implementing new portfolio and governance arrangements, using best practice governance methodology to support the delivery and monitoring of the key outcomes for London and hold those responsible for delivery to account. At the heart of the new approach are a set of strategic programmes that the Mayor has commissioned the GLA’s corporate leadership, via ‘mandates’, to develop and deliver. A delivery plan is being developed for each of the 21 proposed programmes. The implementation of the new governance arrangements is a major change programme for the GLA, and for it to be successful we need to provide staff with the tools and systems to implement the new arrangements effectively and efficiently.  

1.2    The GLA currently manages a diverse and complex portfolio of projects that support London's strategic priorities. A review of the GLA Programme Portfolio identified over 17 different systems in use across directorates, including Microsoft Excel, GLA OPS, and Asana. Project management is largely manual, with a heavy reliance on Excel and officer-led reporting. A significant number of projects in the planning phase had yet to identify a management tool, while others depend on third-party data provided by delivery partners. The lack of standardisation poses risks to portfolio oversight and highlights opportunities for greater alignment and efficiency.

1.3    This Mayoral Decision proposes implementing Asana as the centralised Project, Portfolio Management (PPM) tool for the GLA. Asana will provide a single source of truth through a structured, transparent, and efficient system to support project delivery and active risk management while offering real-time, aggregated data on the entire GLA portfolio. This will enhance portfolio decision-making by providing visibility on:

•    delivery status
•    success measures and programme outputs 
•    risk exposure
•    spend forecasts
•    resource allocation.

1.4    In August 2024, the Assistant Director of Environment and Energy approved, via an Assistant Director Decision (ADD2727), funding for the pilot of Asana, a programme performance software tool in the Good Growth directorate. Expenditure of £30,000 was approved to purchase 50 Asana licences funded from the Retrofit London Budget within the Environment and Energy Unit’s approved budget for 2024-2025.

1.5    The pilot confirmed that Asana meets the GLA’s requirements, providing a solid foundation for wider adoption. The pilot was overseen by the Improvement and Change Board who approved the business case to move forward with this project.

1.6    The services and supplies required will be procured (by TfL Procurement) by seeking requests for proposals from Asana resellers under TfL’s IT Reseller Framework (following a TfL cyber assessment). 

1.7    The £405,000 of system costs include supplier implementation resources, operational support services and user licences which include 600 full licenses, plus unlimited read-only and guest (partner) licenses. The £135,000 of officer costs are for a new post that will provide operational support and platform management for the new system. The role and system will support the Performance and Governance team in ensuring adherence to the Portfolio Management Framework. This role will need to be approved in parallel through Establishment Control purposes. 

1.8    There is a drive to have a consistent approach to programme management across the GLA. The introduction of a single system will form an essential part of progressing this. Further, as a publicly funded organisation, the GLA strives for transparency in reporting, ensuring it provides published updates on the progress and status of the programmes and projects it is delivering. The implementation of a portfolio and project management tool will facilitate this. 

1.9    From 2026-27, London will receive certain government grants via an Integrated Settlement model. Under this model, the Greater London Authority (GLA) will have full devolved powers over how the funding is allocated and spent, subject to the parameters set by the agreement. The government intends that this will provide greater flexibility to drive forward the strategic objectives of inclusive, sustainable growth and improving quality of life across London. Government oversight on how these funds are spent will take place through an outcomes framework, which will be agreed by the GLA and the government ahead of the Integrated Settlement entering operation. The GLA’s performance against these outcomes will be overseen by a programme board led by MHCLG which will meet every six months. This investment in a single programme management system will be a key facilitator in driving those performance outcomes across the wider organisation in a single view for reporting to MHCLG. It will also provide strategic oversight that will be able to inform prioritisation and decision making. 
 

2.1    There is a business need for a portfolio and project management tool. Currently GLA’s project management processes suffer from:

•    lack of standardisation across projects, which leads to different approaches which makes integration and reporting difficult
•    inefficient collaboration due to reliance on emails, spreadsheets, and Microsoft PowerPoint
•    difficulty in tracking project progress, dependencies, and risks
•    time-consuming reporting processes
•    limited resource visibility and planning capability
•    lack of real-time data insights, making decision-making slower and less data driven.

2.2    We expect that the adoption of Asana will result in: 

•    improved accountability and greater transparency across the Mayoral delivery programme 
•    enhanced portfolio performance monitoring through aggregated data, to show cumulative programme outputs, impacts and risks; it will do so via dynamic and interactive dashboards making it easier to assess the performance across programmes
•    improved standardised governance tools and templates across programmes and projects
•    improved quality assurance
•    enable the integrated settlement target operating model. 

2.3    Implementing Asana as a PPM tool will address these issues, ensuring improved project execution, strategic alignment, active risk management and reporting efficiency, with the potential to move to a self-service model.

2.4    An estimate of the efficiency savings of this project are set out below.  Although at this stage these are not “cashable”, once fully implemented the opportunity to realise the efficiency savings delivered through this transformation will be pursued through future budget setting cycles. 

2.5    The implementation of Asana will take place over several phases. The initial sprint phase will focus on inputting the success measures from each programme’s Delivery Plan into Asana to enable consistent, top-level performance reporting for quarter two of 2025-26. This will be implemented as a stand-alone task and will establish a single source of truth for tracking progress against strategic objectives. In the subsequent phase, Asana will be further developed to support broader work management functionality. This will include milestone tracking, timeline and Gantt-style visual planning, task dependencies, workload view for resource planning, team dashboards, and real-time status updates. This phased rollout will support a top-down approach initially, with capabilities expanding to support cross-team collaboration, operational planning, and day-to-day delivery management over time. 

2.6    Lessons learnt from this project will be captured throughout the project lifecycle and support the design of each delivery phase. 
 

3.1    Under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, the Mayor and GLA are subject to the public sector equality duty and must have due regard to the need to: 

•    eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation.
•    advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not.
•    foster good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not.  

3.2    The “protected characteristics” are age, disability, gender re-assignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and marriage/civil partnership status. The duty involves having appropriate regard to these matters as they apply in the circumstances, including having regard to the need to: remove or minimise any disadvantage suffered by those who share or is connected to a protected; take steps to meet the different needs of such people; encourage them to participate in public life or in any other activity where their participation is disproportionately low. This can involve treating people with a protected characteristic more favourably than those without one. 

3.3    This project is designed to support the successful delivery of the GLA’s portfolio of strategic change programmes. Equalities issues have and will be fully considered in the throughout the design and delivery of this portfolio, including through the requirements of the Portfolio Management Framework. 

3.4    The commissioning team will consider those with protected characteristics when implementing the application. As a minimum, we will require the system to meet WCAG 2.0 level A accessibility. Any future development will comply with this requirement. 
 

4.1    There are no conflicts of interest to note for any of those involved in drafting or clearance of the decision.

4.2    The Good Growth Coordination Team, with the support of the Digital Experience Unit (DEU), assessed a number of PPM tools in the market before a decision was made to pilot Asana in the Good Growth directorate. The outputs of the Good Growth pilot were considered by the Improvement & Change board along with a proposal for full implementation and were considered to meet the time, costs and quality metrics required by the GLA.

4.3    A project team will be formed from existing GLA staff which will total approximately 8 FTE. Resources will be allocated by prioritising this project across a number of colleagues workloads.

Key risks and issues

4.4    Risks are outlined in the table below:

Links to Mayoral strategies and priorities

4.5    The GLA is implementing new portfolio and governance arrangements, using best practice governance methodology to support the delivery and monitoring of the key outcomes for London and hold those responsible for delivery to account. At the heart of the new approach are a set of strategic programmes that the Mayor has commissioned the GLA’s corporate leadership, via mandates that set out his priorities in the relevant area. The delivery plan for each programme will set out the relationship to relevant Mayoral strategies. 

4.6    The implementation of the new governance arrangements is a major change programme for the GLA; for it to be successful we need to provide staff with the tools and systems to implement the new arrangements effectively and efficiently.  
 

5.1    Spend approval is sought for £540,000 split as £280,000 in 2025-26, and £260,000 in 2026-27. The breakdown of the spend is outlined in the table below: 

5.2    The £145,000 annual recurring Asana license costs will be re-charged to directorates from 2026-27 onwards, reflecting their usage of the system and that they will benefit from cost and efficiency savings compared to existing processes. 

6.1    The foregoing sections of this report indicate that:

6.2     The decisions requested of the Mayor concern the exercise of the GLA’s general powers, falling within the GLA’s statutory powers and duties, exercisable by the Mayor, to do anything facilitative of or conducive or incidental to the promotion of the improvement of the environment in Greater London.

6.3    In formulating the proposals in respect of which a decision is sought officers have complied with the GLA’s related statutory duties to: 

a.    pay due regard to the principle that there should be equality of opportunity for all people.
b.    consider how the proposals will promote the improvement of health of persons, health inequalities between persons and to contribute towards the achievement of sustainable development in the United Kingdom.
c.    consult with appropriate bodies.

6.4    In taking the decisions requested, the Mayor must have due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty; namely the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010, and to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic (race, disability, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity and gender reassignment) and persons who do not share it (section 149 of the Equality Act 2010). To this end, the Mayor should have particular regard to section 3 (above) of this report. 

6.5    If the Mayor makes the decision sought officers must ensure that:

a.    the services and supplies required are procured in liaison with TfL Procurement in accordance with the provisions of TfL’s IT reseller framework and the requisite call-off contract documentation is put in place between and executed by the GLA and the successful framework provider before commencement.
b.    all applicable GLA HR protocols are followed and related approvals obtained in respect of staffing proposals.