Recommendation 1
The Cabinet Office should work with all functions to develop and report consistent and well-evidenced data on functions’ performance, costs and benefits, building on assurance work done to date.
Source · National Audit Office
Specialist skills in the civil service
This report examines the progress the government has made in developing specialist skills in the civil service.
Published: 17 Jul 2020
Recommendations: 13
Type: Value for Money
NAO confirmed: 10
Department: Cabinet Office
Recommendations
Recommendation 2
Each function should continue to develop indicators and intelligence that provide evidence of its impact on cross-government outcomes, including how it has helped improve government operations and efficiency.
Recommendation 3
The Cabinet Office should make available consistent workforce data, statistics and information to all functions, based on its Civil Service Statistics data, which the functions could use in their workforce planning.
Recommendation 4
The Cabinet Office should continue to work with departments to improve the quality and completeness of Annual Civil Service Employment Survey data, the basis for its Civil Service Statistics data set.
Recommendation 5
Functions should ensure additional workforce data they collect aligns with the wider Civil Service Statistics data set. Where appropriate, functions should also engage directly with departments so both functions and departments can understand their specialist workforces, including their diversity and geographical profiles.
Recommendation 6
All functions should collect data on the impact and benefits of their training initiatives, to ensure training resources are targeted and deployed most effectively.
Recommendation 7
Functions and professions should seek to identify and understand the effects of any disparities in pay for civil servants in the same function/profession at equivalent grade levels.
Recommendation 8
Functions and professions should work with departments and other bodies to prevent or minimise any detrimental effects from pay disparities and internal competition for specialist staff - bearing in mind affordability concerns for departments.
Recommendation 9
The Cabinet Office's civil service pay team should review the issue of specialist pay disparities across all functions, for senior civil service and lower grades. It should use this analysis to inform discussions with functions on how they are addressing pay disparities.
Recommendation 10
Functions should work collectively with departments to develop capability and capacity plans which allow departments to fully exploit functional expertise. These plans should consider the most appropriate operating and funding models for each function, and agreement on service delivery levels and cost - bearing in mind the particular needs and approach of each individual function.
Recommendation 11
Departments should accelerate adoption of existing workforce planning tools, so that they have data on their functional resources and can understand what skills they have, where they are allocated and where capacity and skills gaps exist.
Recommendation 12
Where cross-functional matters are addressed to the Civil Service Board, these should be taken through the Heads of Function Steering Group first to ensure a collaborative and coordinated approach across functions.
Recommendation 13
The Cabinet Office and HM Treasury should continue to work with functions and departments to ensure functions contribute views and expertise on departmental spending bids. Functional expertise should be used within departments in planning and spending activities, including to inform spending review plans put forward by departments to HM Treasury.
Public Accounts Committee follow-up
The Public Accounts Committee examined this NAO report and published its own recommendations. The government responds to PAC recommendations via Treasury Minutes.