Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 2
48th Report - Smarter delivery of public services
Published 22 Oct 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Smarter delivery of public services All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
There are examples of innovation happening across government but more needs to be done to harness the ideas of the 290,000 members of the ODP for improving service delivery. There are 23 examples of innovation in the NAO’s report, which show it is possible for teams working across government to continuously improve and be innovative–even in adverse circumstances where operational delivery is highly challenging. The transformative changes needed by government will require both large scale projects and day-to-day incremental improvements involving front- line staff. This requires a working environment that encourages openness, innovation, and challenge of current thinking, with senior leaders who 3 see failure as an opportunity to learn rather than an exercise in sharing out blame. It is important to build ways of working that allow ideas to flow and give people time outside of their day job–for example, HM Passport Office says that its Quality Framework project has involved training around 1,000 people to identify issues and raise them. But considering there are 290,000 members of the ODP, the innovative potential is enormous. recommendation The ODP should require all its Departmental Heads of Profession to set out how they will ensure that their staff have the time, skills, tools and support to raise ideas, learn from each other, and get involved with improving services.
From: Public Accounts Committee, 48th Report - Smarter delivery of public services (HC 889), 22 October 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Forty-eighth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026 (deadline 22 December 2025).
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Forth-eighth report from Session 2024-26
Published 19 January 2026.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Operational Delivery Profession states that it "agrees with the Committee's recommendation" on each of the six recommendations, giving target dates for four and describing two as already implemented.
- On external visibility, the Profession agrees and gives a target implementation date of September 2026; its annual business plan will include metrics on profile-raising, with the 2025-26 plan "due to be shared by August 2026".
- On joining up with local government and the private sector, the Profession agrees and describes the recommendation as "implemented", citing sharing of its Professional Skills Framework and Centre of Excellence access with the wider public sector.
- On monitoring capability, the Profession says initial measures "will be baselined by September 2026", while recognising "the inherent challenge of evidencing a direct causal relationship" between its activities and outcomes for citizens.
- On digital skills and AI, the Profession agrees, with a target date of December 2026, and says a workforce challenges study is "underway" to identify future skills needs in operational delivery.