Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 4
4
Accepted
Develop a complete and consistent cost-benefit picture for the Shared Services Strategy.
Conclusion
The benefits of the strategy have not been properly quantified. The Cabinet Office did not calculate anticipated benefits of the refreshed strategy, and instead has relied on clusters developing cost and benefits figures as parts of their own separate business cases. These business cases have identified potential benefits of £2 billion at an estimated cost of £0.9 billion. However, clusters have not calculated these figures on a consistent basis, making it difficult to come to a clear financial picture of the strategy. In addition, there is no information available on potential benefits for the two clusters that have begun implementing their plans. The Cabinet Office is working with HM Treasury and clusters to ensure that costs and benefits are calculated on a consistent and comparable basis and are subject to external validation. The Cabinet Office expects this work to be completed in approximately three months and says it will then update its “Case for Change” to include this cost and benefit data. Recommendation 4: The Cabinet Office should develop a complete and consistent picture of the costs and benefits of the strategy. It should report progress to us in its six-month update, providing quantified potential efficiency savings.
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and is working with Ernst & Young (EY) to develop a consistent framework for identifying, defining, and tracking benefits across the strategy. A draft report from EY has been produced and is undergoing a detailed feedback exercise.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. comparisons between them tricky as they had been calculated over different timeframes, differing cashable and non-cashable benefits and different benefit categories. Work is being carried out at pace on developing a full cross-Strategy picture of benefits. There are 4 main objectives within this work: • Consistency: Ensure that benefits are identified and defined clearly and are aligned to strategic objectives. • Accountability: Ensure that cluster and programme areas take ownership of and are committed to the identified benefits and their realisation. • Strategic fit: Ensure that programme/project activity and outputs are aligned to support the delivery of benefits. • Monitor: Ensure that benefits are tracked and recorded, that accountability for delivery is clear, and achievements are reported and recognised. In order to facilitate this, work is ongoing with Ernst & Young (EY) to produce a framework to ensure common understanding and classification of benefits as well as investigating expected benefits across the Strategy and where to go further in the future. A draft report from EY has been produced, a detailed feedback exercise on the report is currently being carried out by the team.