When compared to a reference group of other OECD countries, the UK government has a relatively weak functional leadership model.” The Treasury will complete an affordability assessment before any project is permitted to make any tender or contracting decisions. The Chief People Officer should have the power to insist on the standardization of definitions, data and HR practices across government. The Chief Commercial Officer should submit to the Minister for Efficiency a plan for completing the assessment and accreditation process for current contract managers.

SROs should be offered a retention bonus if they stay the length of their agreed contract, providing that contract is longer than a certain time period. This bonus option must also include a requirement that they have been successful in managing the project. The government property function should undertake an assessment and accreditation process for property professionals across government, and the head of the organisation should be the central actor in the appointment of heads of the property function in departments and other central government entities.Notwithstanding the existence of a partial digital pipeline, the digital spend control should be operated rigorously real time, with the Minister for Efficiency making decisions with the advice of the GCDO. There need to be standard definitions for cost codes across Government to record in the same way all these items of expenditure. This will help to reduce non-compliance. Facilities Management The head of finance should be mandated to enforce universal accounting and reporting standards across the whole of government. Government communications has grown significantly. Smaller more flexible departmental teams focusing on what is agreed by the centre are their specialty areas, while the centre coordinates larger campaigns. This would be a small fast moving data-driven central HQ comms function that can deliver key cross-government campaigns while providing oversight and support across the rest of the government. The case for a coordinated and holistic approach to debt management is obvious. There are many debtors who have creditors in different parts of the public sector. Some can’t pay, and some won’t pay. In both cases, it makes sense to manage the debtors holistically. This is both more effective and kinder to those in genuine difficulty. The Debt Market Integrator (DMI) was set up in 2014 to analyse debts provided to it by government departments and other parts of the public sector, and to commission outside agencies to collect the debt, operating holistically. I recommend:

Once the central organisation has gained sufficient capability, it should begin to work with the commercial function to operate the facilities management spend control and build oversight of all government facilities management contracts. Speed, based on the number of sheets you can feed through the shredder, one after another, is important. So is the feeder capacity (how many sheets you can shred at once) and the size of the basket where the shredded paper ends up. Run time—the length of time you can continuously feed paper through the shredder before it needs to cool down—and the length of the cooling-down period are other factors. The I-G should have the power to require a fraud risk assessment on each major new spending proposal to ensure that the fraud risk is understood and capable of being managed. In the 10 years since the function was created, the team has struggled to get the attention it deserves from across government. Despite this, it has delivered significant benefits to the Exchequer in the prevention of financial loss. Fraud and Error An excellent recent development is the creation of a cross-government “analysis function”, headed by the National Statistician. This function encompasses a number of occupations, including statisticians, economists and actuaries. I recommend:

The best paper shredders for 2023 are:

Government should re-boot its open data programme. There are public benefits too numerous to describe here from this: real time accountability for the government; stimulating improvements in data quality and accuracy; providing raw material to the UK tech sector and making the UK a magnet of data entrepreneurs and developers. The UK at one time led the world on transparency and open data. I recommend:

If there were a strong and unified Financial Management function across the whole government, and if the internal audit service were genuinely a service that is internal to the whole of government, the fraud, debt, error and grants function would probably not need to have been created. It was brought into existence in 2010 because although it was well known that tens of billions were being lost to the Exchequer through fraud, error and uncollected debt, there was no coordinated cross-government approach to reduce the losses. Grants came into the picture later when it became clear that many different parts of central government were issuing tens of billions in grants to numerous organizations, again without any coordination. It was obvious that there was huge scope for duplication, fraud and error.I completed the review and submitted my report in the autumn. I have made a number of recommendations, and it is for Ministers to decide which should be adopted. I have concluded that there are very substantial further efficiency savings that can be made. It is worth noting that the key to success in delivering these savings lies in the detail of how any of my recommendations are implemented.