Recommendation 17

The Cabinet Office told us that it is working with HM Treasury and all five clusters to revise and externally validate these estimates and obtain a benefits figure from the ‘Defence’ cluster. It said that it is working to ensure that costs and benefits are calculated on a consistent and comparable basis by all clusters, to strengthen their business cases for delivery.32 Part of this work includes examining the “non-cashable” benefits, such as resource management, productivity, and better reporting of financial data, to see if these benefits can be monetised in some way. The Cabinet Office expected this work to be completed about three months after our evidence session in January and said it would then update its “Case for Change” to include the latest data on costs and benefits.33 Monitoring progress