"Tight public funding means that departments must find
ambitious new ways of working to maintain and drive up levels of
performance. Key elements of success will be knowing what skills
are needed and which staff have them, and then deploying those
staff to where they are most needed. These key elements are not
presently in place in many departments and need to be driven
urgently to be in step with major change programmes."
Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office 13
July 2011
Despite major expenditure by central government departments on
developing the skills of their staff, government does not know how
much is being spent and has rarely evaluated its impact on
performance. Government’s estimate of £275 million (or £547 for
each civil servant) in 2009-10 is a significant
underestimate. In addition, only 48 per cent of civil servants
said that the learning and development they received in the last 12
months had helped them to be better at their job.
Today’s report by the National Audit Office notes that, while
the picture is not uniform, weaknesses in departmental strategies
and governance arrangements for identifying and addressing skills
needs have limited the effectiveness of skills development
activities in meeting departmental business needs. Management
responsibilities have been complicated and unclear, leading to
incomplete and unreliable information on what skills development is
being undertaken, by which members of staff and at what cost.
Insufficient standardisation across departments and limited use
of central government’s buying power to cut costs have undermined
value for money. At one stage, there were over 250 different
leadership courses in use across government, with charges for
management and leadership training varying four-fold between
suppliers. There has also not been enough attention to on-the-job
learning, with unnecessary costs incurred through over-reliance on
more expensive forms of training and poor management of attendance
rates.
Government has recognized some of these issues and has recently
introduced major changes to the way departmental HR functions
operate, designed to achieve efficiencies and better alignment with
departmental business needs. A new cross-government learning
and development service called Civil Service Learning became
operational in April 2011. While these changes are designed to
address some of the weaknesses identified by the NAO, it is too
early to say if they will be implemented consistently and
effectively across departments.
Publication details:
HC: 1276, 2010-2012
ISBN: 9780102969863