Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 5
5
The Department’s lack of transparency on the service’s performance is hindering the kind of engagement...
Recommendation
The Department’s lack of transparency on the service’s performance is hindering the kind of engagement with stakeholders that it claims to want. The Department has committed to learning lessons from the Windrush scandal, including listening to the people most affected by the Department’s policies and operations and consulting with a wide range of people and organisations. Yet stakeholders who represent asylum seekers still need more information on the contracts’ performance to help them better support people. For example, stakeholders need greater transparency over service standards and performance management to give them confidence that the Department has effective mechanisms in place to hold suppliers to account for the services they provide. Cabinet Office guidance on public contracts states that departments should publish data on contract performance. A year into these new contracts, the Department has not yet published any performance data, although it plans to publish some performance information from October 2020.1 Recommendation: The Department should immediately meet its commitment to communicate with stakeholders by publishing data for all key performance indicators, and should also identify what other information, if published, would provide stakeholders with a full picture of the service.
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
5. 1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Ta rget implementation date: July 2021 5.2 The department agrees that stakeholders should have greater transparency on the performance of the service and has been making progress on providing that transparency. Working within Cabinet Office guidance and commercial confidentiality, summary performance data is being shared. The department has also worked with stakeholders to identify the information that would be most helpful to share. The assurance team has been developing multiple sources of insight into service performance, including the customer experience surveys carried out by each provider which came into operation in October 2020 and will report quarterly, analysis of the rich data available from the Advice, Issue Reporting and Eligibility (AIRE) provider, and data from oversight of the new complaints service. A customer insight dashboard is also being developed which will capture the findings and will be shared with stakeholders. The department has also been working closely with local authorities though the Home Office Local Government Chief Executives Group (HOLGCEX) to define and deliver the further data sharing that is useful to support the functions of local authorities.