Whitehall can learn from London 2012 Ministers are frustrated about delivery. Like their Labour predecessors, they complain about delays and question the competence of Whitehall to handle big projects. There is talk of the dead hands of "paper shufflers" derailing policy ambitions. But government can work. Take last summer: just as Department for Transport officials were making a costly mess of the West Coast Mainline franchise, other civil servants were making a triumphant success of the London Olympics. Can some of the winning ways of E20 be transferred to SW1? Government and opposition seem to think so. At the Treasury, the recently ennobled Lord Deighton, who ran the London 2012 organising committee, has been brought in as commercial secretary with a remit to ensure delivery. Meanwhile for Labour Ed Balls, shadow chancellor, has asked Sir John Armitt, who chaired the Olympic Delivery Authority, to look at infrastructure. The rationale for such eye-catching appointments is understandable. The government has £380bn of major infrastructure projects, such as the High Speed 2 rail project, that are crucial to the private sector. Getting them right is important not just for the economy but also for the credibility of the government. In terms of effective and successful delivery, there are many lessons for officials - and investors and contractors - to be learnt from London 2012, as a study by the Institute for Government has found. Yes, the games were exceptional: there could be no delay and the International Olympic Committee imposes tight conditions. But success was not guaranteed. That rested on other important, and widely applicable, aspects of the project. Most notable was the cross-party co-operation and continuity that transcended changes in central government or City Hall. Dame Tessa Jowell and Hugh Robertson, her Conservative shadow and successor, kept each other informed during the delivery period. When he was elected mayor of London, Boris Johnson retained Ken Livingstone's key Olympics adviser. Likewise in Whitehall and the delivery bodies, there was continuity of senior officials over half a dozen years. By contrast, an inquiry by Sam Laidlaw, non-executive director at the DfT, highlighted the problems of having three different civil servants handling the West Coast franchise. More generally, such senior officials have changed on average every 18 months on big projects - a source of complaint for outside contractors. Another critical move was to appoint high-quality people with established records on big projects. The cap on public sector salaries introduced in 2010 makes this a less easy lesson to implement, though Francis Maude, cabinet office minister, seems keen to try. London 2012 also showed the benefits of establishing clarity over roles and responsibilities among politicians, officials and project specialists. This contrasts with the Millennium Dome, where the organisational arrangements were elaborate and complex. Olympic success also came through a conscious limit on innovation. The project was kept straightforward, building on tested processes. Compare that with the big increase in the cost of the London's Jubilee Tube line extension because of "overambitious" plans for new technology. The Olympics required the use of existing methods on a larger scale. Most involved rose to the occasion - G4S, the security provider, was a notable exception. Finally, the games had a realistic, and transparent budget with healthy contingency funds. This was admittedly after a shaky start, when Whitehall seriously under-budgeted. With the appointments of Lord Deighton and Sir John, politicians have signalled that they have heeded the lessons of the Olympics. If these can now be implemented, the games" legacy will be considerable. The writer is director of the Institute for Government, which has just published Making the Games