Download or read book The Cabinet Office and the centre of Government written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Lords: Select Committee on the Constitution and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010-01-29 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The House of Lords Constitution Committee have today published their 4th report of the 2009-10 session on 'The Cabinet Office and the Centre of Government' (HLP 30, ISBN 9780108459320) in which they suggest that power within the cabinet has become increasingly centralised to the Prime Minister and recommend that structures of accountability should be reformed to mirror that change. The Committee expresses support for the principles of collective responsibility but recognise that increasingly the Cabinet Office has become responsible for overseeing the delivery of government policy across departments. They stress that accountability mechanisms within the UK constitution are not set up to reflect this new reality with parliamentary and select committee scrutiny based on individual Ministers reporting to Parliament for activities within their departments. The Committee also considers the role of the Minister for the Cabinet Office, and state that the responsibilities of the post are currently poorly defined. They recommend that the Government reassess the functions of the Minister for the Cabinet Office to ensure that the postholder's responsibilities accurately reflect the strategic role the Cabinet Office plays in delivering government policy. The report goes on to consider the approach taken to changes to the machinery of government and the change in the role and function of the Lord Chancellor which took place during Tony Blair's time as Prime Minister. The Committee states that the process of change involved ’wholly inadequate' consultation both within government and with the senior judiciary, and further states that there was "no justification for failure to consult on these important reforms". The Committee recommends that in future the Cabinet Office should play a formal role in investigating any machinery of government changes, particularly those with constitutional implications.

Download or read book Electronic service delivery in the driver vehicle and operator agencies in Great Britain written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2008-01-16 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, the Driving Standards Agency and the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency provide services for 42 million drivers, the keepers of 36 million vehicles, 100,000 commercial vehicle operators and 19,000 authorised MoT businesses in Great Britain. The services include issuing driving licences and vehicle registration documents and conducting driving and Heavy Goods Vehicle and Public Service Vehicle roadworthiness tests. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is also responsible for collecting Vehicle Excise Duty, which raised £5 billion in 2006-07, working with a range of stakeholders, such as the police, to enforce collection of this Duty. The Agencies handled some 124 million customer transactions in 2006-07 for the range of services which could be made available electronically. This report examines six of the 15 services available electronically, in which the Agencies have invested at least £60 million to improve access and service delivery. The services accounted for 12.6 million electronic transactions in 2006-07: applications for provisional driving licence; booking of driving tests (both practical and theory); taking driving theory tests; upgrading from a provisional to full driving licence; buying car tax or making a Statutory Off-Road Notification; and changing commercial vehicle operators' records. The Agencies' investment of some £60 million in new technology to improve access and delivery of five of these services, and their further investment in the services for booking and taking the driving theory test, have made the services easier and quicker for customers to access and less burdensome to use. After taking account of the development cost, the services should also lead to savings of at least £33 million but to achieve these take-up must increase and some aspects of the services must improve.

Download or read book Reorganising central government written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010-03-18 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between May 2005 and June 2009, there were over 90 reorganisations to central government. This report finds that these cannot demonstrate value for money, given that most had vague objectives and that costs and benefits were not tracked. The average annual cost of reorganisations is almost £200 million, around 85 per cent of which is for the reorganisation of arms length bodies. Since 1980, 25 central government departments have been created, including 13 which no longer exist. By comparison, in the United States only two new departments have been created over the same period. Central government bodies are weak at identifying and securing the benefits they hope to gain from reorganisation. There is no standard approach for preparing and assessing business cases setting out intended benefits against expected costs. More than half of reorganisations do not compare expected costs and benefits of alternative options, so there can be no certainty that the chosen approaches are the most cost effective. Furthermore, no departments set metrics to track the benefits that should justify reorganisation - making it impossible for them to demonstrate that the eventual benefits outweigh costs. There is no requirement for bodies to disclose the costs of reorganisations after they happen - meaning the true cost of reorganisation is often hidden. The decisions to reorganise departments and arms length bodies are often taken at short notice and with inadequate understanding of what could go wrong.

Download or read book The management of staff sickness absence in the Department for Transport and its agencies written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2007-06-08 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ministers have challenged all Departments to reduce their 2004 sickness rates by 30% by 2010. This report looks at the sickness levels in the Department of Transport and its seven executive agencies, which average 10.4 days sickness for each full-time employee (compared to a Civil Service average of 9.8 days). However the performance is varied. The central Department and four agencies have sickness levels at or below comparable organisations but three agencies have higher levels and the Driving Standards Agency and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency have absence rates of 13.1 and 14 day respectively. If there is going to be a significant change there needs to be action at the corporate and individual business level. Corporately there needs to be: targets for each part of the Department, tailored to circumstances; quality standards for recording sickness with the provision of management information; a consistent framework for evaluating initiatives and sharing good practice. At a business level more could be done to ensure that line managers were aware of their responsibilities and improve intervention in long-term cases.

Download or read book Managing Early Departures in Central Government written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2010 Spending Review required most departments to make cost savings, which would require staff reductions. Departments have reduced their number of employees to around 35,000 in 2011, nearly 18,000 of which have been achieved through early departures. If these staff reductions achieved and planned, are to be sustainable then they will need to be supported by a redesign of the way business is carried out. The Committee is not convinced that all departments are putting in place the fundamental redesign in working practices that is needed to operate permanently with a lower number of staff and this with the pace and scale of reductions means that there is a real risk to departments' ability to deliver services. And there concern about the lack of clear information to track the extent to which this risk is materialising. Without this information it is difficult to know to what extent services are being adversely affected by staff departures. The efficiency of early departures has been hampered by poor management information. Departments are considering individuals' performance when making decisions on staff departures. But the quality of data in performance appraisals has not been detailed enough to support this decision-making. The Committee considers that improving the quality and consistency of performance appraisal arrangements would bring both efficiency savings and better decision-making about the management of the workforce. The Treasury is responsible for signing off any individual exit payments that exceed the terms of the compensation scheme. It was discovered that the Treasury does not keep proper records of such requests and the Committee expects to see this rectified. The Cabinet Office estimates that around half of the required headcount reduction is yet to come and this is likely to be more challenging as the more achievable cuts have already been made and future cuts are likely to involve more compulsory redundancies.

Download or read book Parliamentary Debates Hansard written by Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 1132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Public Sector Management written by Norman Flynn and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2012-03-26 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The highly-anticipated sixth edition of Norman Flynn's Public Sector Management continues to provide students with an insightful, jargon-free description, analysis and critique of the management of the public sector by the UK government. New to the sixth edition: Fully updated to take account of the coalition government and the impact of the financial crisis on public spending. Four new chapters on managing public finance, e-government, regulation and public-private partnerships. Expanded learning features including:, additional boxed examples, annotated suggestions for further reading and suggestions for discussion topics and references to journal articles. New companion website with free access to full-text journal articles, policy documents, links to useful websites, and relevant multimedia and social media resources. www.sagepub.co.uk/flynn6 Public Sector Management will prove invaluable reading for students studying public sector management as part of a business, management, social policy, politics or sociology degree.

Download or read book Procurement Reform written by Bernard L. Ungar and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2001-03 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How foreign governments perform procure. activities that in the U.S. fall under the responsibility of the Gen. Serv. Admin's. Fed. Supply Serv. (FSS) and Fed. Tech. Serv. (FTS). FSS and FTS act on behalf of Fed. agencies as central buying agents for a wide range of goods and services. This report focuses on Canada, Australia, the UK, and New Zealand because they had made a major commitment to procure. reform, and some of the reforms were in activities similar to those carried out by FSS and FTS. The objective was to identify the org's., policies, and programs that these countries had in place to assist agencies with the procure. of supplies, vehicles, telecomm., and IT.

Download or read book The performance of the Department for Transport written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Transport Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010-03-04 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this report the Transport Committee calls on the Government to implement the vision for transport - including improved traffic flows on motorways, rail electrification and high speed rail, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transport - that has been established under the current Secretary of State, Lord Adonis. The Department has made progress in a number of important areas, both recently and over the past decade, and has also established a new sense of direction, despite a too-frequent change of ministers. The Committee reviews progress against the Government's integrated transport plan, 'Transport 2010', which was adopted in 2000. Whilst much has been achieved, the ambition to build up to 25 light rail lines has not. It calls on the Government to publish a comprehensive progress report against the targets that it set itself. It also calls for strong action on local bus services which, outside London, are still not integrated with other local transport services. Bus use outside London continues to decline, apart from a slight increase after the introduction of free bus travel for older and disabled people. The Committee calls for full implementation of the Local Transport Act which gives local authorities powers to introduce bus quality partnerships and quality contracts; and for the Traffic Commissioners to be given adequate resources to carry out punctuality monitoring.

Download or read book The management of staff sickness absence in the Department for Transport and its agencies written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2007-11-20 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department of Transport and its seven executive agencies average 10.4 days of sickness for each full-time employee (compared to a Civil Service average of 9.8 days). However the performance is varied. The central Department and four agencies have sickness levels at or below comparable organisations but the Driving Standards Agency and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency have absence rates of 13.1 and 14 day respectively. On the basis of a Comptroller and Auditor General's report the Committee have examined current sickness levels in the Department and actions being taken to meet their 2010 targets. They conclude that the Agencies need a better understanding of why some staff take so much sick leave. Although there appears to be a correlation with low paid repetitive administrative jobs there are also concerns about leadership within the Department. Measures have therefore been taken to strengthen management in areas involving repetitive work.

Download or read book The Work of the Department for Transport s Agencies Driver and Vehicle Operator Group and the Highways Agency written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Transport Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-07-27 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Driver and Vehicle Operator (DVO) Group is part of the Department for Transport and is made up of four agencies: the Driving Standards Agency, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA) and the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA). It was established in 2003 to promote closer collaboration between the agencies and to develop modernised co-ordinated services in order to deliver improved customer services and value for money. The Highways Agency is an executive agency of the Department for Transport and is responsible for operating, maintaining and improving the strategic road network in England. Issues considered in the Committee's report include how the agencies contribute to departmental objectives and policy, issues of accountability and transparency, agency funding and accounts, shared systems and co-ordination.

Download or read book The Impossible Office written by Anthony Seldon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-14 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 300 years, fifty-seven individuals have held the office of British Prime Minister - who have been the best and worst?

Download or read book Managing Research written by Bushaway, Robert and published by McGraw-Hill Education (UK). This book was released on 2003-05-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research is one of the most important functions of universities & colleges, presenting particular problems from the managerial perspective.

Download or read book Institutionalised Dissent written by Nigel Fletcher and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive analysis of a peculiar but now firmly established British institution— the Official Opposition— tracking its development since 1935. Despite its inherent importance to the conduct of politics and government, the Official Opposition as an institution remains poorly understood. The concept of ‘Loyal Opposition’ has become so entrenched in the Westminster parliamentary model that it is now taken for granted that the principal challengers to the government of the day are given significant official recognition by the state. Political dissent has become institutionalised and legitimised. Using previously unpublished archive material and candid interviews with former Leaders of the Opposition and their staff, the book examines the constraints and dilemmas facing the Official Opposition. Detailing the way successive opposition leaders have organised their staff and Shadow Cabinets, it highlights the practical difficulties they face in holding the government to account and preparing for government. The study concludes by arguing that the role of the Official Opposition is vital but ill- defined, that the inadequacy of its resources has impacted on its effectiveness, and that there are potentially serious challenges to it as a model. The book will be of key interest to scholars of British politics, British history, parliamentary and legislative studies, and government and democracy more generally.

Download or read book Reducing costs in the Department for Transport written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-12-14 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2010 spending review set a transport budget that is 15 per cent lower in 2014-15 compared with 2010-11. All areas of spending are affected by reductions, but the Highways Agency sees the biggest reduction, with a budget falling from £3.2 billion in 2010-11 to £2.1 billion in 2014-15. The Department felt constrained in altering some areas of spending, most significantly excluding from consideration the current grant to Network Rail. In a sample of 73 per cent of the Department's budget, over half of the reductions, compared to planned spending, are the result of cuts, delays to new investment or higher fares rather than new approaches to delivering the same services for less. The Department had a good understanding of the relationship between costs and benefits regarding specific transport projects such as Crossrail and national road schemes. Information was less good in other areas, the weakest being in rail. The Department commissioned work to improve its information on the costs and benefits from grants to Transport for London and local authorities. There is a risk now that a proportion of the budget reductions in road maintenance and rail budgets may not be financially sustainable. Budget reductions of £1.23 billion will be made to national and local road maintenance; however, this includes £223 million of unspecified efficiencies, risking deterioration in road quality and higher long term costs to the Department or local authorities. One year after the spending review, it is too early to assess with confidence progress on the major cost reduction measures, as most of the critical milestones against which progress can be judged lie ahead

Download or read book State written by and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Automotive Industry and the Environment written by Paul Niewenhuis and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2003-08-15 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building on a wealth of research, The Automotive Industry and the Environment addresses current challenges in the automotive industry and how they can be met. The authors discuss the development of the automotive industry and the problems it currently faces and consider possible solutions. The book reviews trends in more environmental-friendly technologies, such as the use of more sustainable fuel sources and new types of modular designs with built-in recyclability. The book also describes new models of decentralized production, particularly the micro factory retailing (MFR) model, that provide an alternative to volume production and promise to be both more sustainable and more profitable.