Senior Whitehall finance officials have been made responsible for how their department collects and uses data, after an independent review found that central government lacked a coherent management information strategy.
The Cabinet Office and the Treasury asked Dr Martin Read, former Logica chief executive and a member of the government's efficiency and reform board, to examine how departments' use of management information could be improved, so as to drive improvements in operational efficiency.
The Read report, Practical steps to improve management information in government was completed last year, but only published this week. Read found there was no overall strategy and requests for information were uncoordinated and place an unnecessary burden on departments, while a lot of the data was collected and presented on an inconsistent basis.
Read said there was no clear, single point of accountability for departmental management information, and that while departments now provided a quarterly data summary (QDS), these were not reviewed or used in any meaningful way. He also criticised the poor use of technology to automate data collection, and said the variable quality of internal reporting made comparisons between departments and across common areas of spend and operational performance difficult.
Cabinet Office Minister Chloe Smith said the government has now implemented many of Read's recommendations, including making senior financial officers responsible for management information in their department. The QDS system has been simplified and strengthened, and the government has published rigorous, clear data standards for all departments to follow when reporting on common government operations.
A quality assurance regime for management information has been put in place, along with a cross-government management information profession to share knowledge and best practice. There are also plans to introduce a new tool for QDS data which will make information on government spending more accessible to the general public.
'In the past, government never had a proper handle on how different parts of Whitehall spent public money. Yet improving how we collect, scrutinise and use data is vital in our efforts to strip out waste and work more efficiently. By regularly publishing data showing how we're spending taxpayer money, departments and individuals can be held to account for the delivery of their objectives,' Smith said.
In his report, Read stressed there is no 'perfect' solution to implementing a management information framework across government, but that 'this is an area where the 80% plus solution will deliver 80% plus of the benefits.'
In his response to the actions the government has taken as a result of his findings, Read said: 'I welcome the steps the government is taking to tackle this issue. Implementing the recommendations of my report will help senior ministers and civil servants set numerical objectives, hold management to account and drive operational improvements across government to the benefit of all.'
