Recommendation 4

The lack of Single Service Owners with accountability for all aspects of an end-to-end service inhibits departments’ ability to identify the visibility of a service’s end-to-end cost and the incentive to reduce it. The absence of Single Service Owners (SSOs) with the right mandate and visibility prevents a full view of end-to-end service costs and weakens incentives to reduce them, as focus remains on individual components rather than the whole process. Achieving larger benefits requires deeper service understanding and, in some cases, re-engineering of those services. The SSO role is not well understood across departments compared to other senior roles, and more can be done to raise its profile. There is an opportunity to build on the existing community of Service Owners and the methodology from the Top 75 programme, which included industry benchmarks for segmented digital services. Permanent Secretaries should be responsible for appointing SSOs with appropriate skills and talent, though the Cabinet Office has not set a timeframe for this. recommendation a. The Cabinet Office should, within the next six months, require Permanent Secretaries to appoint Senior Single Service Owners for all remaining services identified by the Cabinet Office and the Government Digital Service which do not yet have one in place. b. The Cabinet Office should set out a deadline by which Permanent Secretaries must complete the identification and appointment of SSOs for their remaining services. 5