Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 16
16
Accepted
Absence of single service owners impedes understanding of government-wide service costs and quality.
Conclusion
We heard that the lack of a single service owner makes it very difficult to answer questions about the costs of providing a service more widely across government.35 There can be many handovers between different teams delivering a service – policy, operations, digital and transformation. Furthermore, not all services are fully digital and require manual administrative effort to switch between different systems.36 Only 10 of government’s ‘top 75’ services are at a ‘great’ standard, when assessed for how easy they are for people to use and how efficiently departments are providing them.37
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and states that CDDO has already established a framework with a 'Cost Per Transaction' metric for the 'Top 75' services, and has committed to making 50 of these 'Great' by 2025, which requires understanding and reducing end-to-end costs.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
1.3 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation Target implementation date: June 2025 1.4 CDDO has led the establishment and publication of a new framework that measures efficiency and usability of services. The framework includes a ‘Cost Per Transaction’ metric, requiring an understanding of the total cost of running the service. 1.5 The framework has been applied to the ‘Top 75’ services in government. The government has committed to making 50 of these Top 75 services ‘Great’ by 2025. Delivering this commitment requires service teams to understand and reduce their end-to-end costs.