NAO sets out 'to do' list for Cabinet efficiency group

25 Mar 11
The National Audit Office has warned the government’s new centralised savings body that it must set benchmarks and produce quantifiable data to measure its success.
By Graham Clews


25 March 2011

The National Audit Office has warned the government’s new centralised savings body that it must set benchmarks and produce quantifiable data to measure its success.

The NAO’s first report on the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform group, created in May last year, accepts that it is too early to establish whether the group has met its remit of improving value for money across government. Instead, the report outlines the five main areas where improvement is needed.

These are: measuring and reporting value for money; procurement; property asset management; major project management; and process management. The NAO says the group must ensure accountability to Parliament for departments’ implementation of its decisions and establish how its proposals will be integrated with cost saving plans in departments’ business plans.

To improve project management the group will create a Major Projects Authority that will approve significant departmental projects before they are assessed by the Treasury. The NAO says the group must: employ enough staff with the appropriate commercial skills and ensure there is objective, quantified information on which to base decisions and there is effective intervention in poorly performing projects.

Auditor general Amyas Morse said it was too soon to judge whether the group was improving value for money, and that the NAO’s report, published today, would act as an ‘objective baseline’ against which the group’s progress could be judged.

‘The proof of the pudding is in the eating and we look forward to evaluating how these initiatives perform in practice,’ he said.

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