Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
Accountability For Public Money Progress Report
Download Accountability For Public Money Progress Report full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Accountability For Public Money Progress Report ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215043740 Total Pages :82 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (437 download)
Book Synopsis Accountability for public money - progress report by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Accountability for public money - progress report written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-04-17 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report is a follow-up to the Committee's report on Accountability for Public Money (HC 740, session 2010-11 (ISBN 9780215559029)) an issue at the core of the relationship between Parliament and government. Accounting Officers remain accountable to Parliament for funds voted to their departments but the policy intention is that local bodies will have significant discretion over the services they deliver. In the Government's response, 'Accountability: Adapting to Decentralisation', Sir Bob Kerslake drew a distinction between those services that government delivers directly and those that it may fund but are delivered in more decentralised arrangements. He proposed that Accounting Officers set out, in Accountability System Statements, the arrangements they have in place to provide assurance about the probity and value for money of funds spent through devolved systems. All departments are expected to produce Statements by summer 2012. Departments have made a genuine effort to develop arrangements which reconcile accountability and localism but the Statements so far are unwieldy and considerably more needs to be done to improve their clarity, consistency and completeness. There is concern that accountability frameworks must drive value for money and, critically, are sufficiently robust to address the operational or financial failure of service providers. Departments are placing increasing reliance on market mechanisms such as user choice to drive up performance and value for money, but there are limits to what these mechanisms can achieve. The Treasury needs to take ownership of the system and ensure that the Comptroller and Auditor General has the necessary powers and rights of access to examine the value for money of funds spent through devolved systems
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215044075 Total Pages :48 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (44 download)
Book Synopsis Department for Education by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Department for Education written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-11 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department for Education is distributing £56.4 billion in 2011-12 to schools, local authorities and other public bodies for the delivery of education and children's services in England. The Department has set out how it intends to provide Parliament with assurance about the regularity, propriety and value for money in an Accountability System Statement (the Statement) of which the Committee has now seen three drafts. Responsibility for value for money is shared by the Department with schools, academy trusts, local authorities, the Young People's Learning Agency and the Department for Communities and Local Government. However, the Statement does not yet clearly describe the specific responsibilities of each body, how these will interact, or how the Department will assess value for money across the entire education system. The Department relies on local authorities and the YPLA to exercise financial oversight over local authority maintained schools and academies respectively. However, oversight by some local authorities is currently weak and could worsen as many authorities reduce the resources they devote to overseeing their schools. There are also concerns about whether the YPLA will have the right skills, systems and capacity to oversee the rapidly increasing numbers of academies expected in coming years. More consistent requirements for data and data returns must be applied to all schools so that academic and financial performance can be benchmarked, and all schools can be held accountable. The Department needs to enforce these requirements more stringently, particularly given previous problems with lack of compliance
Book Synopsis Funding for Local Transport by : Great Britain: National Audit Office
Download or read book Funding for Local Transport written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-10-25 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this report the National Audit Office identifies issues and risks which may arise as the Department for Transport devolves more control over funding and delivery of transport services to local bodies. The Department has recently announced proposals to devolve funding for major transport schemes to new local transport bodies and is also consulting on devolving bus funding and some responsibilities for rail services to local authorities. The spending watchdog is calling on the Department to clarify its approach as it implements these changes and moves into the new ways of working. This includes being clearer on who is accountable for local transport funding and how they will be held to account. The Department has already said it will assess whether local transport bodies have appropriate systems and processes in place. But it should clarify how it will check that these devolved arrangements continue to meet its standards and what action it will take if standards are not met. In the context of increasing pressure on local budgets, the Department should clarify how local transport data can be better used to judge value for money and to compare performance between local areas. It also needs to identify areas and activities most at risk of a drop in performance and clarify under what circumstances it would expect to intervene.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215058744 Total Pages :56 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (587 download)
Book Synopsis Department for Communities and Local Government by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Department for Communities and Local Government written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-06-07 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central government grant funding to local authorities is being cut by over a quarter in real terms (£7.6 billion) between 2011 and 2015. The Department for Communities and Local Government is also introducing fundamental changes to the local government finance system with reforms to business rates and council tax benefits, so the pressures on the sector are set to increase. The Department does not properly understand the overall impact on local services that will result from the funding reductions, nor has it modelled how funding changes may adversely affect other areas of the public sector. It must improve its ability to foresee what effects the full package of funding reductions and reforms will have on local authority areas, particularly for those authorities which face higher deprivation levels. Local authorities' statutory duties have stayed broadly the same, and in some areas, such as adult social care, the demand for services is increasing. There is a risk that the worst-affected councils will be unable to meet their statutory obligations, threatening their viability. The Department must clarify its plans to respond if councils become unviable. More information is needed to understand councils' spending and performance. The Department did not make clear how it will monitor councils' ability to cope with funding changes, or the extent to which they are able to do this by increasing efficiency rather than reducing services. Neither has it demonstrated that the information published is sufficient to provide assurance on the value for money with which councils spend their resources.
Book Synopsis A History of British National Audit by : David Dewar
Download or read book A History of British National Audit written by David Dewar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The core theme of the book is the importance of an independent state audit to ensure that the Executive is held accountable to Parliament. Instilling effective financial control and accountability for the use of public funds and the proper conduct of public business has been an incremental process that has taken centuries. This book provides a detailed history of the forces and personalities involved in the development of public sector audit, including the battles which extended well into the 20th century to establish a public sector audit that was constitutionally and in practice independent from the influence and control of the Executive. It identifies key themes that have emerged and re-emerged in these developments, and the challenges and obstacles faced and overcome over the years to arrive at today's modern audit framework and to establish current principles and practice in accountability to Parliament and the public. The book charts the movement of public sector audit from a focus on the presentation and accuracy of accounts to the introduction of the added dimension of ensuring that funds are spent only for purposes approved by Parliament and that resources have been used efficiently, effectively and with economy. It explores the seminal relationships of the NAO and its predecessors with the Treasury, spending departments and the Public Accounts Committee; and it deals with the impact of major changes still taking place in the objectives, management and delivery of government programmes and services, including the growing involvement of outside agencies and the private sector. The book reviews the NAO's current achievements, continuing challenges, developments in the range and nature of its work, and future priorities. Importantly, it provides an authoritative source of reference for professionals and academics, while remaining accessible to readers with a more general interest in the developments and issues examined.
Book Synopsis Memorandum on the 2012 Civil Service Reform Plan by : Great Britain: National Audit Office
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 Managing Public Money written by and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Author :Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :0215085779 Total Pages :41 pages Book Rating :4.2/5 (15 download)
Book Synopsis HC 1141 - The Work of the Committee of Public Accounts 2010-15 by : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book HC 1141 - The Work of the Committee of Public Accounts 2010-15 written by Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2015-03-28 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215045300 Total Pages :60 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (453 download)
Book Synopsis Mobile technology in policing by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Mobile technology in policing written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-30 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mobile Information Programme ran between 2008 and 2010. The Home Office (the Department) distributed £71 million of central funding through the National Policing Improvement Agency to police forces to enable them to buy over 41,000 new mobile devices (such as Blackberrys and Personal Data Assistants). There are significant gaps in accountability for value for money where the Department devolves responsibility for expenditure on a national programme to local police forces. Future accountability will be maintained locally through Police and Crime Commissioners, nationally to Parliament and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary will collect data to examine value for money of police forces. The Committee is not convinced this will be sufficient. The Department did not consider properly how the mobile devices could be used to improve ways of working and make efficiency savings. The Programme is forecast to contribute £125 million to cashable police service savings, yet so far police forces have declared cashable savings of just £0.6 million, less than 1% of the amount invested in the Programme. The Agency estimates that some £1.5 billion is spent annually on police ICT, 10% of total annual spend on policing. Reductions in central funding for police forces mean that collaboration and use of technology to make savings is essential. The Agency is being closed down this year, so progress on this will depend on the success of the new company, which aims to allow forces to respond to local IT requirements collaboratively but is based on voluntary cooperation.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215045256 Total Pages :48 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (452 download)
Book Synopsis Ministry of Defence by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Ministry of Defence written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-25 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ministry of Defence announced in the summer of 2010 that it had a funding gap of £38 billion over the next ten years. As part of the Government's efforts to reduce the deficit, the Department also needs to reduce its annual spending by 7.5% in real terms by 2015. It intends to achieve a significant proportion of its required savings by reducing its civilian personnel by 29,000 and its military personnel by 25,000, which it estimates will save £4.1 billion between 2011 and 2015. The Department is currently enacting a transformation programme to change its way of working in order to deliver on the Strategic Defence and Security Review priorities with fewer staff. However, the Department has put plans in place to implement reductions in its workforce before it has finalised its new operating model. The operating model will set out how the Department will meet its objectives in the future, but its reductions in workforce will be well advanced before the model is agreed. There is concern that plans to reduce the workforce have been determined more by the need to cut costs than by considering how to deliver its strategic objectives and that there is a risk of further skills gaps developing. This could make the Department increasingly reliant on external expertise with consultancy expenditure having already grown from £6 million in 2006-07 to £270 million in 2010-11.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215045195 Total Pages :44 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (451 download)
Book Synopsis HM Revenue & Customs by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book HM Revenue & Customs written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-24 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HMRC estimates that the tax gap - the difference between taxes due and the amount actually collected - stood at £35 billion (7.9% of tax due) in 2009-10, although other estimates suggest the figure is much greater. The Compliance and Enforcement Programme brought in £4.32 billion of tax revenue over the five years to 2010-11and is expected to generate a further £8.87 billion by 2014-15. However, in shedding more than 3,300 staff, the Department lost £1.1 billion in potential tax revenue: about £10 in tax lost for every £1 in running costs saved. The Committee is also not confident that the Department is sufficiently clear about the marginal rate of return it could achieve from different levels of spending. In order to live within funding limits, the Department had to defer the introduction of new systems or reduce their scope. In particular, by delaying implementation of its new Caseflow and Spectrum systems, the Department reduced the expected additional tax revenue of £743 million by 2010-11 to £547 million by 2014-15. In this Spending Review period £917 million has been allocated to further activities to tackle tax evasion and avoidance, and to collect more debt. This investment is more than double the money spent on the Programme over the last five years, and is expected to generate an additional £7 billion a year by 2014-15. It is therefore essential that the Department learns and applies lessons learnt. There was also alarm at reports that the Department had advised that the use of managed service companies to avoid tax could ever be appropriate for full-time employees of public bodies
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215045102 Total Pages :48 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (451 download)
Book Synopsis The free entitlement to education for three and four year olds by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book The free entitlement to education for three and four year olds written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-22 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department for Education provides funding for local authorities to pay for three and four year olds to receive their entitlement to 15 hours of free education each week. The Department devolves delivery to local authorities and providers but it is responsible for the overall value for money from the system. In 2011-12 the Department's estimated funding for the entitlement of £1.9 billion provided over 800,000 three and four year olds with access to free education; an estimated annual allocation of approximately £2,300 per child. While the Department and local authorities have focused on ensuring places for children are available, there has been less attention on how value for money can be secured and improved. While there is evidence of educational improvement at age five, the evidence that this is sustained is questionable. The Department needs to do more to understand how educational benefits can be lasting. There is not enough good information for parents to make informed choices and there is concern at reports that some families are still not receiving the entitlement free of charge. It is important that all parents know what the entitlement is and that it should be provided completely free. Early years education has the greatest benefit for children from disadvantaged backgrounds however these children have the lowest levels of take-up and deprived areas have the lowest levels of high quality services. The Department needs to identify and share good practice from those local authorities which are having the most success.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215045041 Total Pages :64 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (45 download)
Book Synopsis Department for Work and Pensions by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Department for Work and Pensions written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Work Programme, designed to help long-term unemployed people into sustainable employment, started in June 2011, replacing virtually all welfare to work programmes run by the Department for Work and Pensions. Over the next five years, the Programme is expected to help up to 3.3 million people at a cost of £3-5 billion. 18 prime contractors, each with sub-contractors, are contracted to deliver the Programme across England, Scotland and Wales. The Department has done well to introduce the Work Programme in 12 months. Prime contractors receive the majority of their payments once a participant has stayed in a job for a set period of time, with the length of time varying according to claimant group. Although some financial risks have been transferred to the providers, the test of whether the Programme is achieving value for money will be whether more people are in work as a result of the Programme than would have been if it had not existed and that the wider social benefits which underpin the cost benefit analysis are delivered in practice. The Department should seek assurance on a range of issues: that sub contractors are treated fairly, not misled into accepting inappropriate contracts, and receive the number of cases and funding they were promised; that harder to help claimants are not parked and ignored; and ensuring proper value for money. The Department relies on contractors to set minimum standards of service but has no measurable indicators against which the quality of service can be judged
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215045072 Total Pages :52 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (45 download)
Book Synopsis Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-18 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around half of all children in the UK from separated families are being brought up in poverty. In 2010-11 the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission collected and transferred £1.1 billion to parents caring for more than 880,000 children. Nevertheless significant, all too familiar and recurring challenges remain: parents are frustrated with the standard of support received from the Commission. Maintenance payments totalling some £3.7 billion are outstanding, but the Commission estimates that only £1 billion of this is collectable; and costs remain high. The Commission also faces further significant challenges in introducing its new child maintenance scheme. In particular, it will need to respond to substantial cost reductions and successfully implement a new system of charging fees to parents who choose to use the Commission's services. The Commission needs to deliver acceptable standards of service at a reasonable cost. The new child maintenance scheme should improve efficiency, but further changes are needed to streamline existing processes. The Commission has to deliver cost reductions of £117 million by 2014-15 and its plans are currently £16 million short of this target. Its cost reduction plans depend in part on a new IT system which is already late. To meet the current timetable critical testing will have to be undertaken in parallel with development work, mirroring poor practices that have contributed to the failure of a number of government IT projects. Each month of delay will increase the Commission's costs by at least £3 million and may delay planned income from fees.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215045058 Total Pages :56 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (45 download)
Book Synopsis Adult apprenticeships by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Adult apprenticeships written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-17 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills works with the Skills Funding Agency (the Agency) and the National Apprenticeship Service (the Service), to deliver the Apprenticeship Programme. Adult apprentices represented 325,500, or 71%, of the 457,200 apprentices who started their apprenticeship in the 2010/11 academic year. During the 2010-11 financial year the Department spent £451 million on adult apprenticeships. The Programme has been a success more than quadrupling the number of adult apprenticeships in the four years to 2010/11 and the proportion of adult apprentices successfully completing their apprenticeship has also risen, from around a third in 2004/05 to over three-quarters in 2010/11. Further work, however, needs to be done to maximise its impacts. The Department should improve its understanding of which apprenticeships offer the biggest returns. The Service should give both employers and individuals better information about the benefits arising from different types of apprenticeship, as well as about the quality of the many training providers. The Service should do more to increase the number of employers offering apprenticeships, and to increase the proportion of advanced skill level apprenticeships achieved, moving England closer to the levels delivered in other European countries. Importantly, around one in five apprenticeships lasted for six months or less. The Service accepts concern that apprenticeships lasting for such a short period are of no proper benefit to either individuals or employers. The Service says it is tackling the problem but it needs to do more to guarantee the length and quality of training -especially the off-the-job training apprentices receive
Author :United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Publisher : ISBN 13 : Total Pages :72 pages Book Rating :4.:/5 (319 download)
Book Synopsis Progress Report on Public Transportation Under MAP-21 by : United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Download or read book Progress Report on Public Transportation Under MAP-21 written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Audit, Accountability and Government by : Fidelma White
Download or read book Audit, Accountability and Government written by Fidelma White and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text explains the constitutional purpose and significance of audit, and aspects of accountability in the British system of government. It suggests that audit delivers managerial accountability. It explains the basic concepts of accounting and audit, and sets audit in its historical context.
