Setting Up for Government

Government and public sector organisations manage portfolios that are shaped by ministerial priorities, budget cycles, and policy commitments rather than commercial return. StartConsole supports this environment well — but it requires configuration that reflects public sector governance language and approval structures.

Recommended pillar structure

Five pillars reflect the strategic architecture of most government portfolios:

• Citizen Services — programs that improve the quality, accessibility, or speed of public-facing services
• Digital Government — digital transformation of internal systems and citizen-facing channels
• Policy Delivery — programs implementing enacted legislation or ministerial commitments
• Infrastructure — capital programs: roads, buildings, utilities, public assets
• Fiscal Responsibility — efficiency programs, cost reduction, value-for-money reviews

If your organisation is a ministry or department with a dominant mandate (e.g. health, transport, education), that mandate may become the primary pillar and the others become supporting pillars. Structure the hierarchy to reflect how your Minister and Permanent Secretary think about priorities.

Recommended theme names

In government, themes most naturally map to department, portfolio, or portfolio area:

• Under Citizen Services: Benefits & Welfare, Housing, Employment, Education
• Under Digital Government: Service Digitisation, Data Sharing, Cyber & Security, Legacy Modernisation
• Under Infrastructure: Roads & Transport, Social Housing, Public Estates

If your organisation spans multiple agencies, use themes to distinguish agency portfolios within shared pillars — this keeps the cross-agency view consolidated while still allowing per-agency filtering.

Typical initiative types

• Policy programs — initiated by legislation, ministerial directive, or manifesto commitment. These programs often have non-negotiable external deadlines (parliamentary timetables, statutory commencement dates). Treat all external deadlines as hard delivery gates.
• Infrastructure projects — capital-intensive, multi-year, complex supplier dependencies. Gate approvals in StartConsole map directly to Treasury approval stages (business case, full business case, implementation). Use deliverables to track procurement milestones.
• Digital transformation programs — legacy system replacements, service digitisation, data platform builds. These frequently span multiple financial years and require careful budget year-end management.