18 November 2005
Measuring progress on efficiency will form a significant part of the new Departmental Capability Reviews for Whitehall, launched by Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell last month.
Speaking to Public Finance last week, John Oughton, chief executive of the Office of Government Commerce, which oversees the efficiency drive, confirmed that there would be considerable overlap between the two agendas.
'Everything we do very much fits in with the DCRs,' Oughton said on November 11. 'One of the elements will be on commitments to deliver efficiency. I would expect all the evidence from the work we do already to feed into the review process.'
David Rossington, director of the efficiency programme, added that a member of his team had moved over to work on the development of capability reviews to ensure confluence between the two projects.
Similar in scope and ambition to the Comprehensive Performance Assessments for local government, DCRs will examine the strategic and leadership functions of each Whitehall department, assessing how well they run their human resources, information technology and financial management functions.
Oughton said that, six months in, the government's wider efficiency programme was progressing as expected, with £2bn of savings achieved so far, over half of which came from procurement. 'I've got a high level of confidence this [rate of success] will keep going,' he added.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Des Browne also announced the introduction of 'efficiency stocktakes', a chance for the chief secretary and ministers in each of the big spending departments to review progress.
'They'll be similar to the stocktakes on delivery that the prime minister holds with departments and his delivery unit – an opportunity to focus on performance and progress,' he said.
'With this in mind, I'm also establishing a network of ministerial efficiency champions across government, to share progress and the hard lessons learned – and to take a vested interest in this agenda.'
Oughton later told PF that, despite the early success of the efficiency drive, it was important not to become complacent. He said: 'The departmental stocktakes will be a conversation, but a challenging conversation, between the chief secretary and ministers.'
PFnov2005
