Recommendation 21

Previously the Treasury has expressed dissatisfaction at the level of expenditure across all types of government spending that is classified as miscellaneous or other by WGA bodies, as it prevents the WGA providing more granular information. The Treasury stated that the implementation of the new OSCAR II IT system should help improve the quality of the information disclosed.44 To further improve the quality of information about what costs Departments have incurred, the Treasury’s Government Finance Function is planning to bring in a standard chart of accounts which it believes will remove manual work in Departments and provide more granular data.45 However, the introduction of a standard chart of accounts is a time-intensive and costly task, which would need to be timed with when Departments were already changing systems and the Treasury also need to consider interactions with shared service centres. This aspiration aligns with other work already undertaken in the Government Finance Function around converging other processes, such as expense claims.46 39 Letter to Sir Tom Scholar, September 2019 40 Public Accounts Committee, Seventy-Fourth Report of Session 2017–19, para 3 41 WGA 2018–19, p 12; National Audit Office, The cost of EU Exit preparations, HC 102, March 2020 42 Q 84 43 Qq 89, 92 44 Public Accounts Committee, Seventy-Fourth Report of Session 2017–19, para 9 45 Q 93 46 Qq 94, 95 14 Whole of Government Accounts 2018–19 Risks to quality