Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 3
3
Accepted
Develop consistent methodologies for functions to report total costs, benefits, and comparable savings
Recommendation
Cabinet Office and HM Treasury do not have a full picture of the performance of functions. Cabinet Office’s current exercise to quantify functional savings has reported for the last two years, but it does not include all functions. In addition, 6 Cabinet Office functional savings functions deliver different types of savings and each sets its own methodology for tracking and claiming savings. This can make it hard to compare progress between the functions and means that there is a risk that efficiencies are being under reported. One of the barriers to doing this more consistently is access to the necessary data. Government has already committed to creating more successful data exchange, so that locally created data can be shared more effectively across government. Standardised metrics, including establishing accurate baselines, are needed to address gaps in the existing data, fully capture the savings made, and allow comparisons to be made across functions. Recommendation 3: As part of the Treasury Minute response, the Cabinet Office should set out how it will work with functions to develop consistent methodologies that report the totality of the costs, benefits and savings delivered by functions, using metrics that can be compared across time and different areas of government.
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the recommendation, stating that the Government Efficiency Framework (GEF) will drive consistency in how departments measure and report efficiencies. It explains that the GEF standardises definitions and reporting, requiring all efficiencies to be reconcilable to departmental budgets.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. savings reflect the diversity of functional activity undertaken in their respective areas. These methods range from release of cash (commercial), efficiencies baselined against projected scenarios (communications), fraud prevention, detection and recovery (counter fraud) to cash collected over business as usual (debt). The GEF will drive consistency in the way that government departments measure and report efficiencies. The GEF sets out what efficiency is, how it should be categorised, and best practice in gathering high quality information to measure and report efficiencies. The Cabinet Office and HMT are working closely together as the GEF is adopted by departments and functions. Through the adoption of the GEF, all efficiencies will be required to be reconcilable to departmental budgets and as such will avoid double counting of efficiencies by requiring common and comparable baselines.