Managing change in the Defence workforce

Managing change in the Defence workforce PDF Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102975390
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
The Department's approach to reducing its headcount has been largely in accordance with good practice and, up to now, it has acted in a way that is consistent with value for money. However, the urgent need for the Department to cut costs means it is having to cut its headcount in advance of planning in detail how it will operate in the future, thereby risking making current skills shortages worse. The Department plans to cut its civilian workforce by 29,000 and its armed forces by 25,000. To meet these targets, the MOD has started a redundancy programme and a Voluntary Early Release Scheme, both of which run in several tranches. The most recent estimates by the Department are that the process will cost £0.9 billion and produce £4.1 billion in cost reductions (just over £3 billion net). The potential savings fluctuate with the timing of the redundancy tranches (a delay of three months to the second military tranche has reduced savings from this tranche alone by an estimated £100 million to £138 million to 2015). The Department now has to reduce the numbers in the Army by a further 5,000 by 2015 but has not worked out in detail how it will do this. Delays to the process erode the level of potential savings as the Department continues to pay salaries, benefits and contributions to pensions. Without real changes to ways of working, cutting headcount is likely to result in the Department's doing less with fewer people or, alternatively, trying to do the same with greater risk

Managing change in the Defence workforce

Managing change in the Defence workforce PDF Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102975390
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 42

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Department's approach to reducing its headcount has been largely in accordance with good practice and, up to now, it has acted in a way that is consistent with value for money. However, the urgent need for the Department to cut costs means it is having to cut its headcount in advance of planning in detail how it will operate in the future, thereby risking making current skills shortages worse. The Department plans to cut its civilian workforce by 29,000 and its armed forces by 25,000. To meet these targets, the MOD has started a redundancy programme and a Voluntary Early Release Scheme, both of which run in several tranches. The most recent estimates by the Department are that the process will cost £0.9 billion and produce £4.1 billion in cost reductions (just over £3 billion net). The potential savings fluctuate with the timing of the redundancy tranches (a delay of three months to the second military tranche has reduced savings from this tranche alone by an estimated £100 million to £138 million to 2015). The Department now has to reduce the numbers in the Army by a further 5,000 by 2015 but has not worked out in detail how it will do this. Delays to the process erode the level of potential savings as the Department continues to pay salaries, benefits and contributions to pensions. Without real changes to ways of working, cutting headcount is likely to result in the Department's doing less with fewer people or, alternatively, trying to do the same with greater risk

Managing the Defence Inventory

Managing the Defence Inventory PDF Author: Great Britain. National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102975529
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
The Ministry of Defence is buying more inventory than it uses and not consistently disposing of stock it no longer needs. Between the end of March 2009 and the end of December 2011 the total value of the inventory held by the armed forces and in central depots of non-explosives increased by 13 per cent, from £17.2 billion to £19.5 billion. The Department estimates that for raw material and consumable inventory, such as clothing or ammunition, it has spent £4 billion between April 2009 and March 2011, but did not use £1.5 billion (38 per cent) worth. The NAO estimates that the costs of storing and managing inventory were at least £277 million in 2010-11. Furthermore, over £4.2 billion of non-explosive inventory has not moved at all for at least two years and a further £2.4 billion of non-explosive inventory already held is sufficient to last for five years or more. During 2010 and 2011, the MOD identified inventory worth a total of £1.4 billion that could either be sold or destroyed, but it was unable to information on the value of the stock that had been destroyed. MOD has already introduced improvements but strategies and performance reporting do not yet focus on effective inventory management. There are also few targets for monitoring the efficiency of inventory management. The Department has commissioned a review to establish and sustain more cost effective inventory management and plans to implement its recommendations by March 2013

Lessons from Cancelling the InterCity West Coast Franchise Competition

Lessons from Cancelling the InterCity West Coast Franchise Competition PDF Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102980523
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
The Department for Transport competition to let the Intercity West Coast franchise lacked management oversight and the governance of the project was confused, according to the National Audit Office. The full cost to the taxpayer is unknown but likely to be significant, with at least £1.9 million in staff and adviser costs, £2.7 million in legal costs and £4.3 million on external advisers for the reviews that it has commissioned. The refranchising process was a major endeavour, with considerable complexity and uncertainty. The objectives of the Department for Transport were insufficiently clear during the franchise competition. The Department delayed the issuing of the invitation to tender by eight months because it had not finalized how it would implement recent policy changes. There was also confusion among Department staff about some aspects of the process. The subordinated loan facility was a particular area of confusion. A subordinated loan is capital provided by the parent company which guarantees franchise payments will be made to the Department should the franchisee get less passenger revenue than expected. However, there were significant errors in the tool the Department used to calculate how big a loan it would require bidders to have. The competition lacked strong project management and there was no clear route for the project team to get approval for major issues. No one person oversaw the whole process or could see patterns of emerging problems.

Making British Defence Policy

Making British Defence Policy PDF Author: Robert Self
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000600238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
This book explores the process by which defence policy is made in contemporary Britain and the institutions, actors and conflicting interests which interact in its inception and continuous reformulation. Rather than dealing with the substance of defence policy, this study focuses upon the institutional actors involved in this process. This is a subject which has commanded far more interest from public, Parliament, government and the armed forces since the protracted, bloody and ultimately unsuccessful British military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. The work begins with a discussion of two contextual factors shaping policy. The first relates to the impact of Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the United States over defence and intelligence matters, while the second considers the impact of Britain’s relatively disappointing economic performance upon the funding of British defence since 1945. It then goes on to explore the role and impact of all the key policy actors, from the Prime Minister, Cabinet and core executive, to the Ministry of Defence and its relations with the broader ‘Whitehall village’, and the Foreign Office and Treasury in particular. The work concludes by examining the increasing influence of external policy actors and forces, such as Parliament, the courts, political parties, pressure groups and public opinion. This book will be of much interest to students of British defence policy, security studies, and contemporary military history.

Financial management in government

Financial management in government PDF Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102983715
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
The Government's fiscal consolidation programme is now expected to last longer than originally planned, and wide-ranging service reforms are being implemented. The role of financial managers is therefore critical to ensuring that opportunities to improve value for money are realized. The Finance Transformation Programme has been set up to develop the skills and capabilities of finance professionals, and qualified professionals are better represented at senior levels. However, given the importance and urgency of the challenges presented by fiscal consolidation and public service reform, further improvements will be needed to support sustainable public service delivery with fewer resources in the longer term. Government is a long way from ensuring that decision-making is routinely based on robust information. Departments often do not integrate financial management with their strategic and operational planning. Departments and other public bodies have generally managed within reduced spending limits up to now, but some of the savings they have made are more sustainable than others. In order to respond to financial and demand challenges, government needs to go further than controlling spending, by redesigning public services so that they operate permanently at lower cost. The NAO recommends that the Treasury ensure a more effective leadership to better enable and incentivise the finance profession to confront the challenges it faces. The Government's Finance Leadership Group should take responsibility for diagnosing the key current financial management challenges facing the finance profession and the wider civil service, and for addressing them quickly

Managing early departures in central government

Managing early departures in central government PDF Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102975468
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
This report finds that central government departments have spent around £600 million gross on the early departures of 17,800 staff in the year from December 2010. These costs are around 45 per cent lower than they would have been under the previous Scheme. After meeting the initial costs, departments will save an estimated £400m a year on the paybill. The time it takes departments to start seeing these savings depends on how quickly they can eliminate headcount-related costs, such as on IT and property. The net present value of the early departures to the taxpayer will be between £750 and £1,400 million over the spending review period, depending on the ability of departments to eliminate costs. This figure will also be affected by whether those leaving find comparable work and pay tax, or claim benefits. Of those departments that are reducing staff numbers, the proportion of staff released ranges from less than 1 per cent at the Department of Energy and Climate Change to around 16 per cent at the Department for Communities and Local Government. Departments used large-scale open voluntary exit schemes to release staff as quickly as possible, though this meant departments could not predict accurately which staff would leave. Older, more senior staff are leaving in the first tranches. This is partly because of deliberate restructuring, but also because those staff who have worked in the civil service for longer, or who are over 50, gain more financially from taking voluntary exit or voluntary redundancy.

The Routledge Companion to Organizational Change

The Routledge Companion to Organizational Change PDF Author: David Boje
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 113668090X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 625

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Book Description
Organizations change. They grow, they adapt, they evolve. The effects of organizational change are important, varied and complex and analyzing and understanding them is vital for students, academics and researchers in all business schools. The Routledge Companion to Organizational Change offers a comprehensive and authoritative overview of the field. The volume brings together the very best contributors not only from the field of organizational change, but also from adjacent fields, such as strategy and leadership. These contributors offer fresh and challenging insights to the mainstream themes of this discipline. Surveying the state of the discipline and introducing new, cutting-edge themes, this book is a valuable reference source for students and academics in this area.

Sessional Returns

Sessional Returns PDF Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215048387
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
On cover and title page: House, committees of the whole House, general committees and select committees

HC 1141 - The Work of the Committee of Public Accounts 2010-15

HC 1141 - The Work of the Committee of Public Accounts 2010-15 PDF Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215085779
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 41

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Book Description
This report summarises the key areas of the Committee's work over the past five years. It draws out the areas where progress has been made and where their successors might wish to press in future. The Committee has assiduously followed the taxpayer's pound wherever it was spent. Since 2010 they held 276 evidence sessions and published 244 unanimous reports to hold government to account for its performance. 88% of their recommendations were accepted by departments. In many cases they successfully secured substantial changes, for example with the once secret tax avoidance industry. They secured consensus from government and from industry that private providers of public services do have a duty of care to the taxpayer, and in pushing the protection of whistleblowers further up the agenda of all government departments. By drawing attention to mistakes in the Department for Transport's procurement of the West Coast Mainline, more recent procurements for Crossrail, Thameslink and Intercity Express have all benefited from more expert advice and a more appropriate level of challenge from senior staff. After discovery in 2012-13 that 63% of calls to government call centres were to higher rate telephone numbers, the Government accepted our recommendation that telephone lines serving vulnerable and low income groups never be charged above the geographic rate and that 03 numbers should be available for all government telephone lines. They also secured a commitment to close large mental health hospitals.

Memorandum on the 2012 Civil Service Reform Plan

Memorandum on the 2012 Civil Service Reform Plan PDF Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102980639
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
The government published its Civil Service Reform Plan (the Plan) in June 2012 (www.civilservice.gov.uk/reform). It followed the publication of the 2011 Open Public Services White Paper (Cm.8145, ISBN 9780101814522) which called for a smaller, more strategic civil service that does less centrally, and commissions more from outside. The Plan has many themes in common with previous initiatives that attempted to reform the civil service, and adapt it to the changing needs of governments and public service users, but is arguably the broadest such reform programme since 1968. This Memorandum is intended primarily to inform the Committee's discussions with the leadership of the civil service about the Plan. Given that the Plan is less than a year old, it is not an evaluation of the reforms in the Plan, the progress made against them, or the implementation arrangements in place. It is designed to support the Committee to engage with the breadth of the Plan, so that they can use their influence to help ensure that its implementation improves efficiency, reinforces Parliamentary accountability and protects value for taxpayers and citizens. The Civil Service, in its present form as of 2012, employs 459,000 people across 106 departments and other bodies. The annual spend on Civil Service pay is £16 billion. The projected cost reduction for the Civil Service, between 2010 to 2015 is £80 billion and the projected reduction in the number of full-time equivalent civil servants over the same period is 110,000 representing about 23% of total staff.