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By Nick Heath, 22 April 2009 09:12

NEWS

The Operational Efficiency Programme report recommendations

Back Office

1. all public sector organisations employing more than 250 people must collect and publish data using the audit agencies' approved value for money indicators for back office operations with effect from June 2009 for central departments, agencies and NDPBs [non-departmental public bodies] and by December 2009 for the wider public sector. Benchmarking information from across the public sector should be collected, checked and published on a regular, consistent, auditable and transparent basis in order to drive improved performance;
2. introduce a system of Operational Reviews that examine performance on back office operations, the first of which should take place no later than April 2010;
3. take the estimated £4bn annual savings in the cost of back office operations into account when determining departmental settlements, taking note of savings already made where appropriate;
4. by the end of 2010-11, and thereafter at least every five years, public sector organisations with more than 1000 employees should conduct a systematic review of their functions, systems and processes to drive simplification and standardisation;
5. accelerate progress in central government shared services by consolidating existing shared back office centres to provide a robust shared services offer to central government (including agencies and NDPBs). A similar drive towards greater use of shared services should be encouraged across the wider public sector;
6. and enhance COINS [The HM Treasury system used to collect financial information relating to government accounts and resource budgets] functionality where possible to collect data on the cost of back office operations for all central government departments, executive agencies and NDPBs, centrally and seamlessly on a monthly basis as part of forecast outturn, using consistent definitions.

IT

1. take the estimated £3.2bn annual savings in the cost of IT into account when determining departmental settlements, taking note of savings already made where appropriate and any substantial concentration of major IT-enabled change projects in particular departments;
2. fully integrate management information on IT spend into departmental processes and ensure that this data and the associated benchmarking statistics are collected on a regular, consistent, auditable and transparent basis;
3. strengthen the governance of IT-enabled change projects (including the requirement that ministers and accounting officers are regularly updated on high-risk projects and briefed on projects where the delivery confidence is not high);
4. strengthen the existing Gateway assurance processes (including the introduction of "starting gate" reviews of all IT-enabled change projects);
5. implement portfolio management processes within departments to prioritise the most important IT-enabled change projects and resources and to reduce the overlap and duplication in IT-enabled change projects across the public sector;
6. give government Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and OGC Collaborative Category Boards the responsibility for achieving greater standardisation and simplification of IT systems, desktops, infrastructure and applications across the public sector; and
7. develop the internal IT capability within the public sector and continue to professionalise the IT function.

The full report can be read here.