24 May 2011
The government needs to make a ‘robust assessment’ of Whitehall departments’ ability to achieve its planned reforms, the Public Accounts Committee said today.
In a report, Departmental business planning, the MPs also call on the government to develop effective plans to deal with any gaps in skills that are found as departments undertake reforms and implement cuts.
The report considers the 17 departmental business plans developed to provide accountability for implementation of the coalition’s programme, including plans for localism. They were published in November last year and revised this month.
More than 1,200 government reforms are outlined in the plans, with more than 600 milestones against which to measure progress. The PAC says that although the plans contain key indicators of what the government intends to do, including the allocation of resources within a department, more detailed operational planning and information is necessary for the plans to be effective at holding government to account.
It notes that in evidence to the committee, Sir David Normington, then permanent secretary at the Home Office, said that each department was preparing operational plans to provide more details. These would set out a ‘broader range of indicators’, to manage departments and any agencies within them. The government would ‘look to disclose as much of departmental planning as possible’, Normington said.
The reportalso finds that any progress on the plans would cover only some departmental spending.
The business plans only match government reform activities with priorities. They do not include the ‘input’ and ‘impact’ indicators that are used by departments. Therefore only parts of their work will be monitored using the Departmental Scorecard developed by the Cabinet Office.
Launching the report today, PAC chair Margaret Hodge said: ‘The business plans set out how departments will implement the Coalition Agreement and deliver the cuts required in the 2010 Spending Review. The published plans are intended to serve as a basis for the public to hold government to account for the delivery of its reform programme.
‘However, planning is at different stages in different departments, and much of the detail is still being developed. To achieve its aim of empowering local people, government must put much more of the detail behind departmental plans into the public domain.’
