The silos of Westminster and Whitehall are not impregnable. Hard-won lessons from the Total Place initiative point the way to improved public service alignment
Views from the 2015 CIPFA CFO Summit which considered challenges for public services around the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review and the need for service transformation.
There have always been fraudsters who targeted the public sector at every level. Today, digitisation of public services is increasing the opportunities for criminals. And counter fraud experts...
Amy Armstrong describes how organisations can foster a culture of compassion to help managers support employees with dignity and care when they have to cope with bereavement, critical illness or...
Technology is removing the barriers of location, expense and speed to collaboration. Imaginative ideas – think Airbnb and taxi apps – don’t have to be confined to the private sector
Built upon equal sharing of profit and loss as well as other ethical principles, Islamic finance is prospering in the UK and could provide an alternative approach to managing public funds
By 2030 most men and women can expect to live into their mid-80s. That will bring extras bills for health care, pensions and perks such as free bus passes. But isn’t it unfair for the burden to...
Savings from IT are obvious when the criminal courts and CPS devour 15 times the height of Snowdon in paper every year. But legal processes must be updated too, or the result is ‘mess for less...
The public sector is spending far more than private firms on outsourced services, despite a very patchy history of delivery. What can be done to promote better outcomes, particularly in value for...
Five years of radical changes in education policy have created thousands of academy and free schools. But have financial management and governance kept pace?
Gangs have moved online and globalised to commit the biggest ever bank robbery. So how can the public sector defend its networks from the ‘spear phishers’ of 21st century Crime Inc?
The National Infrastructure Plan is the £466bn pipeline that underpins the Treasury’s growth strategy. It enjoys bipartisan political support but something is missing. Does the...
When the Audit Commission was founded in 1983 its earliest staff members were excited by the opportunity to standardise and professionalise public sector audit, in a climate of independent scrutiny....
Smart technologies can make our cities work better. But to face the challenges ahead, including population growth and transport, we also need our towns and villages to become ‘smart communities’
Public Health England now distributes the £2.8bn grant to councils as they work to improve the health of the people. Everything from planning to parks, and education to employment, can play a role.
Delivering world-class public audit in changing circumstances demands that we think differently and experiment. Scotland is pointing the way, writes Caroline Gardner
Public audit needs to shape up and become more interventionist, writes Sir Derek Myers. The economic climate demands that it’s in the front seat, driving change
Public audit requires a different set of skills and experience from the private sector, writes Rob Whiteman. This is one of many issues that the new assurance arrangements fail to address
As the Audit Commission finally shuts its doors, there are a host of outstanding questions about practicality, cost and the value of public audit, writes Marcine Waterman
The forces of austerity and marketisation are sweeping through the English public sector, writes Gareth Davies. What must public auditors do to keep up?
The trebling of tuition fees appears unlikely to produce expected savings for the Exchequer. And graduates will repay twice as much, nursing debts well into their 50s. So what’s gone wrong?
Public workers' pay remains under pressure as the deficit stubbornly refuses to shrink. But what counts as public sector pay in a world of outsourcing to the private sector and what does the...
Councils have borne the brunt of the coalition’s public spending cuts, and lost nearly half their core funding in five years. Torn between raising council tax and losing their ‘freeze...
