Recommendation 10

The previous Committee raised concerns about the lack of transparency because some assessments were not being published.27 A lot of summary AO assessments are still not published.28 The National Audit Office reviewed 73 published summary assessment to see how soon they had been published after they had been signed. Only 56 of these had sufficient information to enable it to complete this analysis, a quarter were published more than six months after signature.29 HM Treasury told us that “transparency is absolutely critical” but it was not clear on the consequences for departments not publishing summary AO assessments. It also told us that departments do not report or account to it for their responsibilities.30