House of Commons - Liaison Scrutiny Unit Review

Select Committee on Liaison Scrutiny Unit Review Memoranda

2 Good practice

19. While much of this report is concerned with highlighting areas in which departments have failed to either meet Treasury guidance on the presentation of information in their DARs or to adequately consider the needs of the reader, this section highlights examples of good practice entered into by some departments.

2.1 Linking expenditure to objectives

20. Treasury guidance calls for departments to detail separate lines in their financial tables showing what they are spending money on. While the Treasury suggests that these will usually be grouped by departmental objectives, it accepts that in practice they should be the most sensible categories to help explain where money goes.[3] Varying interpretations of this guidance means that departments all too often fail to adequately inform readers about how resources have been divided between their priority areas.

21. At their best, the core financial tables split expenditure by objective, thereby allowing the reader to directly map performance to spending. In the example of the Home Office (HO) provided in Box 1, reductions in expenditure on immigration and asylum can be compared with increases in spending on social inclusion. Such changes can, in turn, be considered in relation to the Department's progress towards its PSA targets.

BOX 1: BREAKDOWN OF SPENDING BY OBJECTIVE (HO)

Source: Home Office, Departmental Report 2004-05, June 2005, Table 6.1, p123

2.2 Assessments of progress towards targets

22. Part of the Treasury guidance to departments on DARs suggests that, where reporting against individual PSA targets has been dispersed throughout the report a summary table should be included bringing all the results together in an accessible manner. A section of the Northern Ireland Office's (NIO) credible effort to link its overall aim, objectives and targets as established under the 2002 Spending Review (SR02) is reproduced in Box 2.

BOX 2: SUMMARY ASSESSMENT OF SR02 PSA PROGRESS (NIO)

Source: NIO, Departmental Report 2005, June 2005, Appendix, Table A

23. Such summaries are not provided by all departments, and the quality of those that are is variable. It is not always obvious what assessment a department has made of progress against specific targets, particularly where a target is measured by means of a number of sub-targets or where inconsistent terminology is adopted.

24. The Department for International Development (DFID) attempts to overcome this problem by assigning a traffic light code to its targets, making it instantly obvious how they have assessed progress. Box 3 details the summary table as it appears in the DAR. In addition, the individual chapters include further tables showing the progress of each of the indicators monitored at sub-target level.

BOX 3: TRAFFIC LIGHT ASSESSMENT OF SR02 PSA PROGRESS (DFID)

Source: DFID, Departmental Report 2005, June 2005, Summary

25. In many of the DARs it is difficult for the reader to have confidence in the assessments of progress made by the department. This is primarily due to a lack of information, particularly in relation to the quality of the data. Where the reader cannot determine how the department has arrived at a final conclusion, it is unfair to ask them to take this supposition at face value.

26. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) report sets out a useful design to counteract such issues. Although there is still some absence of information, a systematic approach is adopted, with each target being broken down into its constituent parts. Box 4 outlines this approach with respect to PSA 2.[4]

BOX 4: SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO ASSESSMENT OF PROGRESS AGAINST TARGETS (DTI)

27. The Department for Transport (DFT) takes a similar approach in relation to its target on road safety. It adds further to the picture by producing charts which show the future trajectories needed to meet the target, as shown in Box 5.

BOX 5: CHARTS SHOWING REQUIRED PERFORMANCE OVER TIME (DFT)