Recommendation 19

The Cabinet Office explained that the Digital function has made progress identifying the cost savings of moving to permanent staff from contract labour and, as part of this, the function has recognised the indirect cost benefit of retaining skills within the organisation. It also told us that the maturity of the Commercial function meant that it is able to point to direct savings as a result of its work, and told us that the increasing standardisation of processes across government—particularly in the Finance and HR functions—will generate future savings which are likely to stem from increasing automation.35