Recommendation 20

We asked the Cabinet Office how accurately it could predict what savings would be achieved in future. It told us that this had changed over time and depended in part on the extent to which the methodologies to calculate savings had been developed by the functions. The Cabinet Office explained that the methodology used to calculate efficiency savings was working well in relation to areas such as counter-fraud, debt management and commercial transactions, but in others they were still being developed. It told us that it expected to be able to develop a methodology that met the required audit standards for areas such as shared services and property management, and some others, which is expected would change the composition of the savings as they developed. It told us that, having reported overall savings for the last two years, it was confident that it would continue to be able to report savings in “that kind of ballpark” in future.27 25 Qq 18, 29, 31, 33, 36 26 Qq 13–16; C&AG’s Report paras 18, 2.11 27 Qq 7–8 14 Cabinet Office functional savings 3 Future reporting of efficiency savings The Government Efficiency Framework