Recommendation 22

We asked what scope there was to accelerate the identification of savings. The Cabinet Office told us that the next year would be one of transition given the introduction of the Efficiency Framework and expanding this from the Treasury and Cabinet Office teams to all government departments. The Cabinet Office told us that it wanted to increase savings, but that it was simultaneously aware that savings were also indications that something could have been done at a lower cost in the first place, so it did “not necessarily regard more and more of them every year as a goal”. But it committed to ensuring, with the NAO’s advice, that it was comprehensively capturing, in a consistent way, the savings being achieved.32 The impact of efficiencies elsewhere in government