Investigation into national security vetting
Published on:This investigation looks at the centralisation and performance of national security vetting services.
This investigation looks at the centralisation and performance of national security vetting services.
Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, today reported to Parliament the results of his examination of the 1998-99 Appropriation Accounts of the Ministry of Defence (the Department). The Department have worked hard in recent years to secure better control over their expenditure, and have introduced measures that have led to important improvements and […]
Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, reported to Parliament today on the risk of fraud in property management in the Ministry of Defence. Property management on the Defence Estate consists of maintenance work and minor new construction work up to a value of about £300,000 for each individual job, including VAT and […]
Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, today told Parliament that the Ministry of Defence (the Department) is introducing “Smart Acceptance”* procedures, which should, if applied with rigour, address weaknesses in existing processes for accepting equipment which have occasionally cost one or all of time, money and capability. For example, the report identifies […]
This briefing has been prepared for the Defence Committee of the House of Commons to provide an overview of the work and performance of the Ministry of Defence in the financial year 2009-10 and subsequent months.
The Ministry of Defence’s £2.4 billion programme to transform battlefield communications, command and control through the joint introduction of Bowman digital radios and the advanced Combat Infrastructure Platform (CIP) to an exacting 30 month timescale, has been recast. A revised programme and a further £121 million of funding have been approved to deliver the capabilities […]
The Ministry of Defence is at the forefront of best practice in some areas of contract negotiation but needs to achieve these high levels more consistently, the National Audit Office reported today. The report to Parliament by head of the NAO, Sir John Bourn, looks at the importance of good contract management and builds on […]
This landscape report aims to help Parliament better understand the complexities of the Defence Nuclear Enterprise by describing how the Ministry of Defence needs to bring together its programmes, including production of the new deterrent submarines, to provide a continuous at sea deterrent.
This report reviews whether the Ministry of Defence has an effective approach to developing the capability of its regular forces, and how it is adapting to meet the new challenges.
Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, reported to Parliament today that 23 per cent (over 14,000 houses) of the family quarters estate held in Great Britain by the Ministry of Defence (the Department) was vacant, costing some £39 milliona year in rent and maintenance. The Executive disposed of nearly 2,000 houses in […]
We investigated the performance of the MoD’s military flying training system
Overview The National Audit Office published today its “gold standard” for project control of major defence projects. This aims to help the MoD improve its performance in delivering projects on time and to budget. It forms part of a second in a suite of studies exploring key project success factors and how the MoD and […]
Equipment cannibalisation in the Royal Navy has doubled in the past 12 years. It can be effective to meet operational needs but can increase costs and create disruption.
The National Audit Office report on Urgent Operational Requirements (UORs), whereby the Ministry of Defence (MoD) uses a streamlined version of its procedures to support operations by buying equipment quickly, finds that UORs are a necessary and increasingly important feature of operations and that the Department has shown impressive ingenuity to deliver urgent requirements to […]
Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, reported today that the Ministry of Defence is successfully introducing new management and contractual arrangements to deliver a better quality estate and has embarked on a major programme of estate rationalisation. However, more needs to be done to ensure that the benefits of these changes are […]
Sir John Bourn, Head of the National Audit Office, told Parliament today that the Joint Services Command and Staff College was a success story and had obtained value for money when using the PFI to procure its permanent home. The Ministry of Defence did well to establish the College but there is scope to improve […]
Pooling the Royal Navy’s, Army’s and Royal Air Force’s battlefield helicopters has brought significant benefits, Sir John Bourn, the head of the National Audit Office, told Parliament today. Efficiencies have been produced through a joined up approach, by standardising procedures and removing duplication, but there is a large shortfall in helicopter capability and further improvements […]
Sir John Bourn, Head of the National Audit Office, told Parliament today that the costs of this project had risen from £650 million to an estimated £933 million. Although the Ministry of Defence originally considered that it had transferred the risk of cost overruns to the private sector, in the end it funded most of […]
The Ministry of Defence achieved a good price when they awarded the contract for a new Defence Fixed Telecommunication System to BT in 1997, Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, told Parliament today. The ten year contract let under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is expected to cost £612 million with a […]
This report examines the Ministry of Defence’s management of its large and complex infrastructure projects at nuclear-regulated sites.