07 November 2008
By Tash Shifrin
The government's public service transformation programme is mired in uncertainty, with the Cabinet Office unable to say how many of the outcome targets set for 2008 have been met.
The Transformational Government programme was first launched by the Cabinet Office in 2005. It was followed by a December 2006 report, Service transformation, produced by Sir David Varney for the then-chancellor Gordon Brown. This was enshrined in the Service Transformation Agreement, published with the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review.
Varney is now the prime minister's adviser on public service transformation.
But the Cabinet Office was unable to say this week whether it had met any of the 124 outcome and output targets for 2008, set out in its document, Transformational government implementation plan: workstrand updates 2007/08.
The targets cover areas from service design and shared services to data sharing, 'reliable project delivery' and information management.
A Cabinet Office spokeswoman told Public Finance there had been 'a strategic review' of the way outputs were monitored in April. She added: 'They are working to a new set of targets from the original report, so those targets are no longer relevant and the new targets will be published next year.'
The spokeswoman was also unable to say whether the Cabinet Office would meet a recommendation in Varney's report – cited in the STA – that all public sector contact centres should be accredited by the end of the year on operating standards and performance levels.
She said the target was now for 90% of calls by the public to central government contact centres to be accredited by April 2009, 'and that target is expected to be met'.
Although the recommendation originally applied across the public sector, the spokeswoman said: 'The Cabinet Office does not measure local government call centres.'
The fate of the centrepiece 'Tell Us Once' project is also in the balance. The scheme to create a one-stop notification service to report births, deaths and changes of address 'was going to plan', the Cabinet Office said.
But a full business case for the project first outlined by Varney in 2006 is not expected until April 2009.
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