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 Reorganising central government bodies written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-01-20 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the Public Bodies Reform Programme, run by the Cabinet Office, departments are taking over the functions of 65 public bodies and transferring those of another three to local government. They are also abolishing more than a half of their advisory bodies to strengthen ministers' ultimate responsibility for policy decisions. Departments propose to abolish 262 bodies, by such means as mergers, transfers out of government and ceasing functions. It is also intended to secure a reduction of £2.6 billion over the spending review period 2011-12 to 2014-15 in ongoing funding for administration in public bodies. A third of this (34 per cent or £0.9 billion) comes from just two changes: the closures of the Regional Development Agencies and the education body Becta. Annual estimated savings achieved by 2014-15 are likely to continue at between £800 million and £900 million. According to the National Audit Office, however, departments' estimates of £425 million for transition costs will actually be at least £830 million. Departments will therefore need to find gross savings of around £3.5 billion. There is also concern that there is an insufficient grasp of the ongoing costs of functions transferred to other parts of government. A third of all money spent by bodies in the Programme (£20.6 billion) will be subject to greater accountability to elected politicians, but most (£43.2 billion) will remain at arms-length. Despite greater accountability being the Programme's primary intended benefit, only one of the six departments examined had proposals for a well-defined, though basic, measure of success for it

Download or read book Reorganising central government bodies written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the Public Bodies Reform Programme the Government is reducing the number of its arm's length bodies from 904 to between 632 and 642 by the end of the current Spending Review period and will have a substantial and lasting impact. The Programme is intended to improve accountability for functions currently carried out at arm's length from Ministers. The Cabinet Office says it is on track to make £2.6 billion of administrative savings by 2015. However there are substantial reservations about the robustness of this claim. Key concerns are that: there is a risk departments are claiming savings which are actually cuts to services, when they should be including only genuine savings arising from administrative reorganisations; estimates of transition costs such as redundancy and pension costs are incomplete; the savings estimate does not fully take account of the ongoing costs to other parts of government of taking on functions being transferred from abolished bodies and some departments have wrongly included wider savings from bodies being retained, rather than just administrative savings from bodies being abolished or substantially reformed. The Cabinet Office has accepted that its savings estimate needs to be reassessed and has undertaken to 'rebase' it. Focus now needs to be on managing the Programme effectively. Departments have decided on the form of individual reorganisations themselves without clear direction from the centre, leading in some cases to inconsistent treatment of bodies with similar functions. Furthermore, departments may not be getting the best value for money from the sale or transfer of assets of bodies being abolished

Download or read book The Reorganisation of British Central Government written by James Radcliffe and published by Dartmouth Publishing Company. This book was released on 1991 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The White Paper, Cmnd 4506, published in 1970 on the reorganization of central government, declared an intention to create a new style of government. This text examines the implementation of this aim through the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of the Enviroment.

Download or read book National Audit Office Department for Communities and Local Government Department for Business Innovation and Skills Funding and Structures for Local Economic Growth HC 542 written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-12-06 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2010, the Government set out a new approach for local economic growth, in the White Paper Local growth: realising every place's potential. This involved the closure of the Regional Development Agencies and their replacement with new local growth organizations and funds, such as Local Enterprise Partnerships and the Regional Growth Fund. Three years on from this initial announcement, the new Local Enterprise Partnerships and Enterprise Zones are taking shape. However, Local Enterprise Partnerships are making progress at different rates. The Growing Places Fund, Enterprise Zones and the Regional Growth Fund have also been slow to create jobs and face a significant challenge to produce the number of jobs expected. The estimate of jobs to be created by Enterprise Zones by 2015 has dropped from 54,000 to between 6,000 and 18,000. There is also no plan to measure outcomes or evaluate performance comparably across the range of different local growth programmes. Departments cannot therefore show value for money across the programme of local growth initiatives or be sure about where to direct their resources. The new local programmes were not established in time to avoid a significant dip in local growth funds and jobs created. Direct central government spending on local economic growth through the initiatives fell from £1,461 million in 2010-11 to £273 million in 2012-13, but will rise to £1,714 million in 2014-15. Central government needs to plan such reorganizations more effectively, to ensure that sufficient capacity is in place both centrally and locally to oversee initiatives and that accountability is clear

Download or read book A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less written by Christopher Hood and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-04-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The UK is said to have been one of the most prolific reformers of its public administration. Successive reforms have been accompanied by claims that the changes would make the world a better place by transforming the way government worked. Despite much discussion and debate over government makeovers and reforms, however, there has been remarkably little systematic evaluation of what happened to cost and performance in UK government during the last thirty years. A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less? aims to address that gap, offering a unique evaluation of UK government modernization programmes from 1980 to the present day. The book provides a distinctive framework for evaluating long-term performance in government, bringing together the 'working better' and 'costing less' dimensions, and presents detailed primary evidence within that framework. This book explores the implications of their findings for widely held ideas about public management, the questions they present, and their policy implications for a period in which pressures to make government 'work better and cost less' are unlikely to go away.

Download or read book Local Government in Britain Since Reorganisation written by Alan Alexander and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-01 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1982, this book was the first comprehensive, critical assessment of the outcome of the controversial reorganisation of British local government outside London which took place between 1973 and 1975. The book deals with the new systems in England, Wales and Scotland, drawing upon the results of almost 100 in-depth interviews with leading members and officers from Shetland to Cornwall, from major cities to rural districts. Liaison between the tiers, the effects of corporate management, the spread of the office of chief executive, the increasing levels of partisanship and the changing face of central-local relations are examined on the basis of close observation and practical experience rather than theoretical preconceptions.

Download or read book The Politics of Public Sector Reform written by M. Burton and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-11 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive 'bird's eye' account of public sector reform supported by references from over 400 official sources, this book is an invaluable guide to all those in the public, private and voluntary sectors grappling with the twin challenges of managing public spending austerity and the pressure in response to transform public services.

Download or read book Cost reduction 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 2012-04-27 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Audit Office report on this topic published as HC 1788, session 2010-12 (ISBN 9780102975376)

Download or read book Smaller government written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Public Administration Select Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-01-07 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Government review of public bodies focused on whether a body's functions were necessary, and if it thought they were, whether it had to be delivered at arm's length from Government. The review was poorly managed: no meaningful consultation; the tests used were not clearly defined; and no proper procedure for departments to follow. The Bill giving the power to bring about these changes was equally badly drafted. Now the Government faces the much larger challenge of successfully implementing these reforms. The Cabinet Office should issue clear guidance on how to manage this transition. The Committee has developed, with the National Audit Office, its own guidance which departments could use. The Government wanted to increase accountability by bringing functions previously discharged by public bodies back in to central departments, thus making ministers directly responsible for the decisions taken. But stakeholders and civil society play an important role providing challenge and criticism to public bodies on a day to day basis and it is easiest for them to perform this role when they have a clearly identified body to engage with, not a homogenous central department. There is a way to meet both demands: set these bodies up as executive agencies. There is a need for a simplified system for public bodies so that it is clear to everyone who is responsible for what, and how much input it is right for the Government to have. The review represents a missed opportunity to reassess what functions public bodies are needed to perform.

Download or read book OECD Public Governance Reviews Chile s Supreme Audit Institution Enhancing Strategic Agility and Public Trust written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This review focuses on advancing the performance-management vision of the Comptroller General of the Republic of Chile (Contraloría General de la Republica, CGR) with a view to enhance the relevance and positive impact of its work on accountability ...

Download or read book Memorandum on the 2012 Civil Service Reform Plan written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Reorganization of the Government Agencies written by United States. Congress. Senate. Select Committee on Government Organization and published by . This book was released on 1937 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Managing staff costs in central government written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-03-11 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The total costs of central government staff grew by 10 per cent in real terms in the ten years to 2009-10, with current costs totalling £16.4 billion. Over the same period, staff numbers fell by 1 per cent, from 497,000 full time equivalents to 493,000. The growth in staff costs is largely the result of an unplanned increase in the number of staff in higher grades. Between March 2001 and March 2010, the number of administrative grade staff declined. But all higher grades grew in number, with Civil Service management grades 6 and 7 showing a 67 per cent increase (around 14,000 posts). This change in grade mix accounts directly for approximately 50 per cent of the staffing cost increase. Some 35 per cent of the real terms increase in staff costs is due to increases in salaries and performance-related pay. A range of immediate central actions in response to spending pressures has been announced, including freezes on pay and recruitment. But the longer term reductions in staff costs required by the 2010 Spending Review will be the responsibility of departments and agencies, and many do not have a comprehensive understanding of their own staff costs or skills in order to support this cost reduction activity adequately. The scale of staff cost reductions is unlikely to be achieved by natural turnover alone. Despite proposed changes to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme, the up-front costs of voluntary or compulsory redundancy schemes and early retirements will be significant.

Download or read book Public Sector Management written by Norman Flynn and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seventh edition of the bestselling Public Sector Management is a rich and insightful description, analysis and critique of the management of the public sector by the UK government. NEW to the seventh edition: Now set in an international context with comparative global examples throughout Three new chapters covering: strategy and planning in the public sector; transparency, accountability and ethics; and non-profit management, including the role of social enterprise and the voluntary sector Examines the impact of the continuing financial crisis on public spending An updated companion website with tutorial videos, free access to full-text journal articles, policy documents, links to useful websites and social media resources Public Sector Management is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying public sector management as part of a business, management or politics degree.

Download or read book Rethinking policy and politics written by Ayres, Sarah and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2014-07-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years the nature of policy and politics has witnessed significant transformations. These have challenged perceptions about the ways in which policy is studied, designed, delivered and appraised. This book –the first in the New Perspectives in Policy and Politics series - brings together world-leading scholars to reflect on the implications of some of these developments for the field of policy studies and the world of practice. First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, the book offers critical reflections on the recent history and future direction of policy studies. It advances the debate by rethinking the ways in which scholars and students of policy studies can (re)engage with pertinent issues in pursuit of both scholarly excellence and practical solutions to global policy problems.

Download or read book The Cracker General Awareness MCQ eBook for RRB JE NTPC SSC and other Exams 2019 English Edition written by Adda247 Publications and published by Adda247 Publications. This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “The Cracker General Awareness ( History,Geography,Polity,Economics & Miscellaneous Multiple choice questions Book ” covers the new pattern multiple choice questions along with the previous years' questions that are expected to be repeated in the upcoming examinations 2019 like RRB JE, NTPC,RRC Group D SSC JE, SSC CGL and others. In this book, we provide you all with detailed explanations of each and every question of History, Geography, Polity , Economics & Miscellaneous. It will help the students analyze what is being asked in these examinations so that they prepare accordingly. Salient Features of "The Cracker General Awareness (History, Geography, Polity, Economics & Miscellaneous) Multiple Choice Questions Book": 3500+ Questions of History, Geography, Polity, Economics & Miscellaneous Previous Years' Questions Detail Explanation of History, Geography, Polity, Economics & Miscellaneous. Based on latest Pattern