The Government has not in general measured the benefits delivered by its two central internet services Directgov and Business.gov, and the infrastructure service Government Gateway, which together cost some £90 million a year.
In this guide we highlight National Audit Office reports which illustrate the different approaches departments take to initiating projects. We show how they develop a realistic understanding of the risks, benefits and deliverability of projects.
The report examines the system protecting consumers from scams, unfair trading, and unsafe goods. BEIS has made progress since our 2011 review, but needs to do more, particularly in the context of the growth of e-commerce.
This toolkit is designed to guide those overseeing public service markets or assessing the effectiveness of these markets in terms of value for money and user outcomes. It helps government address a set of new challenges around its use of markets to deliver public services, including oversight, consumer protection, regulation and helping to achieve effective competition and innovative delivery.
Ahead of the government’s Immigration White Paper, the NAO has examined the Home Office’s management of the Skilled Worker visa route.
Explore examples where local public bodies have tried to make it easier for voluntary, community and social enterprises to bid for contracts.
This study examines whether the government and Network Rail are in a position to deliver the Transpennine Route Upgrade successfully.
The programme to increase online filing of tax returns has made significant progress, but HMRC needs a better understanding of the benefits and costs to customers and how its online filing costs compare to those for paper returns.
Homelessness has increased across all measures since 2010, with many local authorities now seeing it as a risk to their financial sustainability.
The environment for government borrowing has become more challenging in recent years, a new National Audit Office (NAO) report finds. The independent public spending watchdog’s report Managing government borrowing examines how public bodies are pursuing the government’s debt management objectives, and how they manage the risks of borrowing1. The report found that government’s borrowing needs […]
The Department for Education should set out the planned overall impact of the programme on productivity and growth.
The head of the NAO’s annual speech will focus on the challenges of rising demand for public services and stretched resources.
Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, reported today on the complexity of the benefits system, which he considers is one of the most important issues affecting the performance of the Department for Work and Pensions. According to the report to Parliament, tackling the problems associated with a complex system requires a systematic […]
Overall spending on discretionary local welfare support by central and local government has reduced since April 2013. The consequences of this gap in provision are not understood.
This report examines the evidence base supporting the decision to proceed with the Thames Tideway Tunnel, a tunnel running 25 kilometres from Acton to Abbey Mills, as well as progress achieved to date.
HMRC’s flagship tax transformation programme is now expected to cost five times the original forecast in 2016 (in real terms) following repeated delays.
The Ministry of Defence (the Department) has committed itself to annual rental bills of nearly £200 million and lost out on billions of pounds of asset value as a result of selling and leasing back the majority of its married quarters estate to Annington Property Limited in 1996 because of the subsequent steep increase in house prices and rents.
Used appropriately, GPC can be a cost-effective way for government to procure goods and services. However, there is no up to date value-for-money case quantifying the benefits of the cards. There has also been a lack of clear central guidance on when the cards are the most appropriate way to procure goods and services.
A series of lessons and recommendations for tackling fraud and protecting propriety when spending public money during a national emergency.
The Department for Work and Pensions has introduced the Work Programme quickly, in just over a year, and this has had benefits, but the speed with which it was launched has also increased risks. The Department and providers have made assumptions about how many people the Programme will get back into work but there is a significant risk that they are over-optimistic.