2 How the centre works with departments
11. In some areas, departments are not acting quickly
enough to implement central measures intended to improve overall
efficiency and save taxpayers' money. Such measures include cross-departmental
initiatives on financial management in government, civil service
reform, 'The Whole of Government Accounts', shared back-office
services and debt collection. The permanent secretaries accepted
it was the role of the centre to enforce implementation of cross-government
priorities, but acknowledged that this sometimes did not happen
as fast as they would want.[18]
12. The centre could be more active in challenging
departments over their slow progress in implementing cross-government
initiatives, through stronger performance management and incentivising
the right behaviour. Sir Nicholas Macpherson recognised that:
"The centre has a critical role in both encouraging them
but also to sort of kick them, occasionally, to ensure they do
get better".[19]
In particular, the centre could hold permanent secretaries more
strongly to account for their department's performance. The centre
has substantial powers to do so, including the Treasury Permanent
Secretary's ability to remove Accounting Officer responsibility
from permanent secretaries.[20]
13. The permanent secretaries told us they believed
the centre does intervene when projects are at risk of failure;
questioning whether Senior Responsible Owners are up to the job
and whether the centre needs to provide further support to the
project. These actions tend to be more in private. Sir Nick Macpherson
told us that, "When projects fail or are running into difficulties,
there is a huge amount of activity in the centre, often led by
my friend the Cabinet Secretary, where capability and capacity
are at the heart of the conversation."[21]
14. Sir Jeremy Heywood told us that the Major Projects
Authority, the Treasury and the Government Digital Service had
all played a clear assurance role in bringing to the Secretary
of State's attention that the Universal Credit project was significantly
off track. The centre then provided support, which included seconding
the then head of the Major Projects Authority to help re-programme
the project, the Government Digital Service's help with the project's
digital underpinnings, and the Crown Commercial Service's help
with commercial renegotiations on the contracts.[22]
However, Sir Bob Kerslake told us that the project business case
had not been signed off.[23]
15. The centre is able to gather intelligence about
strategic risks from a number of sources, such as information
from Major Projects Authority assurance reviews, Implementation
Unit stocktakes, and Treasury spending team data.[24]
However we are concerned that the centre does not take an overall
strategic view of risks at an early enough stage, as we have seen
in the cases of NHS reform and Universal Credit.[25]
Sir Nick pointed to the structures now in place such as the MPA
and the role of the Cabinet Secretary in chasing progress, and
stated his ambition that after the next election, "we will
have really good processes to ensure that we do not end up as
we have with Universal Credit."[26]
Sir Jeremy Heywood told us that they have introduced regular (monthly
or once every 6 weeks) departmental stock-takes looking at the
whole portfolio of a department's projects. He said that these
will often flag up issues which may then lead to a more intensive
discussion about that particular project, and a follow-up meeting
with a broader set of departments if the issue is one of wider
applicability.[27]
16. The centre needs to ensure it also learns the
lessons from past experience of project failures or poor performance.
Sir Nicholas Macpherson agreed that the centre of government needs
to learn lessons from contracts that fail, and accepted that it
needs to make progress in this area. However, in letting recent
renewable energy contracts, government appears not to have applied
lessons from its previous experience of PFI contracts. For example,
the contracts did not include provisions to enable government
to claw back excess profits from contractors.[28]
17. The permanent secretaries recognised that many
governments have struggled with how to ensure departments take
forward cross-departmental issues with the same vigour as issues
that fall to one department.[29]
Sir Jeremy Heywood acknowledged that the centre was making less
progress in finding a "magic bullet" to get cross-departmental
working in place right through departments. He considered that
this was dependent upon Ministers working co-operatively together,
and on permanent secretaries coming together to agree to bring
together teams from within their departments. Sir Jeremy also
considered that there remained a cultural problem, as people within
each department were inclined to defend a departmental line.[30]
18. The Troubled Families programme is an example
of where a cross-departmental approach has been adopted, as a
result of strong political commitment from the centre to get departments
to work together on a big cross-cutting issue.[31]
Sir Bob Kerslake highlighted several further conditions for effective
"whole-of-government" working. These included setting
up a dedicated central team, clearly stated expectations, and
a shared commitment to a common cause.[32]
Sir Nicholas Macpherson signalled that the cross-departmental
approach of programmes such as Troubled Families would inform
the next Spending Review in 2015.[33]
19. Sir Bob Kerslake considered that local growth
deals with local enterprise partnerships were one of the most
powerful examples of effective cross-government working. He emphasised
that the centre created a single local growth team which brought
together staff from the departments linked to economic growth,
such as the Department for Business, Industry and Skills and the
Department for Communities and Local Government, alongside the
Cabinet Office. Local growth deals were negotiated by a team working
on behalf of government, not just on behalf of individual departments.[34]
- The different parts of the centre also need to
work together more effectively, particularly in presenting a coherent
"united front" to departments. The permanent secretaries
considered that the Cabinet Office and the Treasury were now "better
coordinated and more capable" than in the past, with greater
alignment between them.[35]
Sir Jeremy Heywood described the Implementation Unit and Major
Projects Authority, as "almost joint units", and noted
that the Efficiency and Reform Group has been led by a combination
of Cabinet Office and the Treasury Ministers from the outset.
Sir Jeremy added that, "Part of the reason why it is working
is that we have got a very clear trajectory of savings that just
have to be delivered. That is a jointly owned path."[36]
However, there are some areas we have examined, such as government
debt collection, where the Cabinet Office and the Treasury have
not always aligned their efforts. Sir Nicholas Macpherson acknowledged
that from the perspective of an individual department, it was
"irritating" to have separate conversations with different
bodies at the centre, and reiterated that the Cabinet Office and
the Treasury needed to work in a very integrated way.[37]
18 Qq 13-14 Back
19
Q 22 Back
20
Qq 41, 45 Back
21
Qq 28-30 Back
22
Q 32 Back
23
Qq 39-40 Back
24
Q 57, 81 Back
25
Qq 43, 57, 81 Back
26
Q 43 Back
27
Q 81 Back
28
Qq 102-105 Back
29
Qq 60, 79 Back
30
Q 97 Back
31
Qq 58, 60 Back
32
Q 58 Back
33
Q 83 Back
34
Q 59 Back
35
Qq 30, 85 Back
36
Q 91 Back
37
Q 97 Back
|
