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Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102951479
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
Corporate services provide often vital support to the delivery of effective and efficient public services, and cover such areas as finance and accounting, human resources, procurement, information technology, facilities and estates management. Sir Peter Gershon's review of public sector efficiency (available on the HM Treasury website, http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/C/A/efficiency_review120704) identified benefits from shared services, but found that departments' efficiency targets did not include savings specifically from shared corporate services. This NAO report has been conducted to take account of developments between the 2004 Spending Review (Cm.6237, ISBN 9780101622728) and the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review (Cm. 7227, ISBN 0101722729) on shared services and focuses mainly on finance and human resources, which are generally the more developed areas of shared service in the public sector. The publication is divided into four parts, and looks at general and specific areas, including: the potential of shared services in the public sector; the problems of customer satisfaction experienced by the NHS and HM Prison Service with shared services; the variable progress across government; the lack of a clear overview from the Cabinet Office on shared services. The NAO has also set out 9 recommendations, including: public bodies should streamline their corporate service processes in line with best practice; they should also improve how they analyse the performance of their corporate services and whether there are more cost-effective ways to obtain such services; Departments should increase public transparency of corporate service performance.
Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102951479
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44
Get Book Here
Book Description
Corporate services provide often vital support to the delivery of effective and efficient public services, and cover such areas as finance and accounting, human resources, procurement, information technology, facilities and estates management. Sir Peter Gershon's review of public sector efficiency (available on the HM Treasury website, http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/C/A/efficiency_review120704) identified benefits from shared services, but found that departments' efficiency targets did not include savings specifically from shared corporate services. This NAO report has been conducted to take account of developments between the 2004 Spending Review (Cm.6237, ISBN 9780101622728) and the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review (Cm. 7227, ISBN 0101722729) on shared services and focuses mainly on finance and human resources, which are generally the more developed areas of shared service in the public sector. The publication is divided into four parts, and looks at general and specific areas, including: the potential of shared services in the public sector; the problems of customer satisfaction experienced by the NHS and HM Prison Service with shared services; the variable progress across government; the lack of a clear overview from the Cabinet Office on shared services. The NAO has also set out 9 recommendations, including: public bodies should streamline their corporate service processes in line with best practice; they should also improve how they analyse the performance of their corporate services and whether there are more cost-effective ways to obtain such services; Departments should increase public transparency of corporate service performance.
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215514851
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
Corporate services provide vital support to the delivery of effective and efficient public services. They include activities such as finance and accounting, human resources, procurement, information technology, facilities management and estates management. Shared services are designed to improve efficiency and service quality by combining such activities across different parts of an organisation, or across separate organisations. The Cabinet Office has estimated the cost of finance and human resources functions across government as £7 billion a year. It believes there is scope to save in the order of £1.4 billion annually through the use of shared services. This report examines the Cabinet Office's efforts to improve corporate functions using shared services, as well as the impact of two of the more established public sector shared services in the NHS and the Prison Service. NHS Shared Business Services is a joint venture between the Department of Health and Xansa PLC selling procurement, finance and accounting services to 89 NHS organisations out of a total of 416 potentially eligible NHS bodies. It is not yet making a profit and has paid no dividend to either the Department of Health or Xansa. It needs to attract a further 22 customers simply to break even, and approximately 180 more customers to deliver its forecast savings to the taxpayer of £250 million by 2014-15. HM Prison Service's Shared Services Centre provides finance, procurement and human resources services to all 128 Prison establishments, and the system is now working well.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215046710
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
Since 2004, central government has sought to reduce the cost of administering finance, human resources and procurement services through sharing back-office functions. In previous examinations the Committee found that the Government had not yet realised the potential to save taxpayers' money. The renewed focus on improving shared services is welcomed. The Committee expects the Cabinet Office to engage constructively with their recommendations. This report considers five of the eight shared service centres. Whilst performing adequately, they had cost £1.4 billion to build and operate compared to an expected cost of £0.9 billion. These five centres were also expected to have saved £159 million by the end of 2010-11. In the event, the Ministry of Justice centre broke-even, the Department of Work and Pensions and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs centres did not track their total savings, and the Department for Transport and Research Councils UK, have reported a net cost to date of £255 million. The current strategy will only be effective if the Cabinet Office demonstrates strong leadership. So far it has been left up to individual departments and their arm's length bodies to decide whether they use shared service centres leading to low take-up. Those bodies which have become customers of shared service centres have retained their own processes resulting in over-complicated systems which also undermine the scope for efficiency. The Cabinet Office should also develop comparable data on the cost and quality of services provided by the shared services centres and should consider whether it can extend its shared services strategy to include other common functions needed by central government departments
Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102975451
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 60
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Book Description
In 2004, the Gershon Review recommended that the Government pursue the sharing of services, including human resources, finance, procurement and payroll, to achieve cost savings. It has been up to individual departments to establish their own arrangements and, between 2004 and 2011, eight major shared service centres emerged. The five centres examined by the NAO were expected to cost £0.9 billion to build and operate but, to date, they have cost £1.4 billion. They were also expected to have saved £159 million by the end of 2010-11. While, in one instance Government has achieved break-even in a time consistent with the private sector, its overall performance has been varied and the two centres that are still tracking benefits report a measured net cost of £255 million. Most departmental customers have not acted as 'intelligent customers' and they will need to build in-house capability with enough business and technical understanding to manage the services and work with the centres to achieve efficiencies. Among other findings are that the software systems used in the centres have added complexity and cost; and that, as the use of the centres has been voluntary, departments have struggled to roll-out shared services fully across all their business units and arm's length bodies. The Cabinet Office has recently gained approval for a new strategy and business case. The NAO considers the approach is ambitious and has challenging timescales. The Cabinet Office is actively working with departments on its implementation.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215521576
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 52
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Book Description
Benefit fraud is a crime and undermines public confidence in the benefits system. In 2006-07, the Department for Work and Pensions estimated that it spent some £154 million on tackling fraud, identifying £106 million of overpaid benefit, against total benefit expenditure of £120 billion. The Department estimates that fraud fell from £2 billion in 2001-02 to £800 million in 2006-07, which is 0.6% of benefit expenditure. But the Department must do more to reverse the rise in official and customer error. Estimated error rose from £1 billion in 2001-02 to £1.9 billion in 2006-07. Benefit complexity is believed to be a major cause of error. Increasing the volume of pre-payment checks and encouraging customers to receive benefit payments directly into their bank accounts has prevented some fraud. The Department now works closely with the police, the Serious Organised Crime Agency and local authorities to prevent, identify and act against fraud. But it could make more effective use of its powers and resources. While the Department successfully prosecutes 90 per cent of the cases it takes to court, the Prosecution Division has lost 17 per cent of its staff since 2003. Debt recovery is an essential part of tackling fraud, yet in 2006-07 the Department only recovered £22 million of fraud debt out of a known fraud debt stock of £339 million. The Department has been slow to improve its management information systems, hampering its ability to measure the cost-effectiveness of counter-fraud activities. It has taken from 2003 until February 2008 to roll out a new national management information system, known as FRAIMS, at a cost of £65 million.
Author: Anthony Douglas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134385188
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
Joint working is recognised as the most effective way of improving social care and the government's aim to provide a seamless service of care. Written by an experienced director of social services, this text provides a detailed introduction to joint working.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215521842
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
The Single Payment Scheme replaced previous European Union production-based agricultural subsidy schemes from 2005. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, through the Rural Payments Agency, had chosen to implement the most complex option for reform in the shortest possible timescale, and the Agency had badly underestimated the scale of the task. This led to delays in making payments to farmers, erroneous payments and additional project and administrative costs, as reported in the Committee's earlier report (55th report session 2006-07, HC 893, ISBN 9780215036179). The Agency has estimated that there were £20 million of overpayments for the 2005 Scheme, and £17.4 million for the 2006 Scheme. The Agency has taken little action to recover the identified overpayments, with the risk that farmers may have unknowingly spent the money in the interim. Of 19 overpayments in excess of £50,000 paid in August 2006, the Agency had started the recovery process with only two of the farmers affected. Major changes made to the Agency's IT systems have enabled most farmers to receive payments earlier under the 2006 Scheme than for the 2005 Scheme. There has been a substantial impact on the costs of the business change programme to improve the Agency's efficiency, and the total project cost is now likely to exceed £300 million. In mid 2007, staff numbers in the Agency peaked at 4,600 and are not expected to reduce to 3,500 until 2010. The Agency is still not able to offer adequate advice to farmers on the progress of their claim. It was reluctant to specify targets by when such information would be available and when payments would be made under the 2008 Scheme.
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215521279
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
The Department for Culture, Media & Sport and the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform are jointly responsible for digital switchover, the programme to convert over 1,100 tv transmitters to ditigal and switch off analogue signals by 2012. The Departments have passed to the BBC responsibility for funding the public information campaign and delivering the help scheme, and set aside £803 million of licence fee money to pay for these activities. The BBC is accountable to the BBC Trust for the value for money with which it uses the licence fee, not the Departments. Therefore the Departments have no means of holding the BBC to account for this use of licence fee money. To data, take-up of the help scheme has been significantly lower than the Departments expected. If help scheme take-up rates experienced in Copeland, the first area to switch, were replicated across the country, there would be a £250 million surplus in the licence fee settlement. The Departments have not decided how any surplus would be handled and it is felt generally that the Departments have not taken effective action to protection consumer interests.
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215521217
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 52
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Book Description
Budget support is aid provided directly to a partner government's central exchequer, and aims to reduce poverty through helping to fund the poverty reduction strategy of the beneficiary country. DFID's use of budget support has risen to £461 million, representing nearly twenty per cent of bilateral expenditure. Budget support has been designed to improve aid effectiveness by reinforcing developing country policies and systems, and reducing transaction costs. Despite having provided budget support in some countries for many years, however, the Department has not established whether it is in practice cost-effective. DFID's main criterion for providing budget support is that benefits must outweigh the risks, a judgement which is assessed subjectively by country teams. DFID assesses weaknesses in financial systems but rarely estimates the associated risks of corruption or waste of UK funds. DFID's monitoring has basic weaknesses in specifying suitable indicators and tracking progress against objectives. Bodies such as Parliaments, State Audit Offices and civil society organisations can provide effective challenge to governments and ensure that the poor benefit from budget support funding. DFID has not historically paid sufficient attention to strengthening domestic accountability. DFID also has a responsibility to UK stakeholders to demonstrate that funds have been spent effectively.
Author: Andrew Muras
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 146280084X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
Can you get rapid results and still be effective? Where do you begin and what techniques should you use? What have others done and what were their lessons learned? Andrew Muras and Glenn Goodnight answer these questions and many more based on years of experience in implementing and teaching at both commercial and government organizations. Filled with case studies, this book highlights techniques that are effective in the real world. Whether practitioner, manager or executive, youre sure to gain the insights needed for program success. I find their approach to foundational aspects both structurally sound and engagingand critical for sustaining cost and quality performance improvements. Dr. Penny Weller, Hackett Group FastTrack is easy to use, easy to understand, and easy to communicate. Billie Gayle Lewis, LSS Blackbelt Ive been working with Andrew and Glenn for many years their workshops and trainings are typically our best attended and highest rated events. Guy Clayton, Director, IQPC Table of Contents Chapter 1: The FastTrack Approach for Rapid, Cost Effective Implementations Chapter 2: Shared Services Chapter 3: Chargebacks, Service Level Agreements and Service Catalogues Chapter 4: Information Technology Chapter 5: Product & Customer Profitability Chapter 6: Capacity Analysis Chapter 7: Performance Management, Metrics and Scorecards Chapter 8: Enterprise Wide Implementations Chapter 9: Benchmarking Chapter 10: Outsourcing Chapter 11: Government Chapter 12: Business Transformation: Linking ABC/M with Lean and Six Sigma
