Personal Independence Payment: early progress
Published on:The DWP has had to delay the Personal Independence Payment programme’s roll-out and reduce expected savings during this Spending Review period.
The DWP has had to delay the Personal Independence Payment programme’s roll-out and reduce expected savings during this Spending Review period.
Two government programmes aiming to help families with multiple challenges, such as unemployment and anti-social behaviour, are starting to provide benefits but considerable challenges remain.
MyCSP has the potential to be good value for money with a projected saving of 50 per cent on costs, but the Cabinet Office and MyCSP still face many large challenges in transforming the service.
Older ICT systems critical for the delivery of key public services (‘legacy ICT’) expose departments to risks which must be understood and managed.
Universal Credit plans were driven by an ambitious timescale, and this led to the adoption of a new approach. The programme suffered from weak management and ineffective control.
In our June 2012 report for the Department for Work and Pensions we recommended ways in which it could strengthen its oversight of the contract.
This NAO impacts case study represents one example where there has been some beneficial change, whether financial or non-financial, resulting from our involvement.
Government is continuing to make extensive use of higher rate telephone numbers for customer telephone lines, despite efforts by departments to reduce their use.
The Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) are the consolidated financial statements for the whole of the UK public sector, showing what the UK Government spends and receives, and what it owns and owes.
Measures to encourage people to save for retirement are not being managed by Departments with enough coherence or accountability.
The Comptroller and Auditor General’s audit of the DWP’s Social Fund White Paper Account for 2012-13 has revealed substantial improvements in many areas over which he had previously expressed concerns.
The government now accepts the urgent need for a skilled cross-departmental leadership group – but this requires changing the long-standing culture of the Senior Civil Service.
Stronger financial management will be needed in departments if they are to speed up the restructuring of service delivery.
The Institute of Internal Auditors and the NAO released a set of case studies illustrating some of the key principles of effective internal auditing, taken from a range of public and private sector organisations (including British Telecom, Department for Work and Pensions, EDF etc).
Our financial audit reports contain audit opinions on accounts across the public sector.
The jobcentre network has coped well in the economic downturn, but must improve performance measures if it is to support claimants effectively.
Amyas Morse, the Comptroller and Auditor General, has refused to sign off fully the 2011-12 Civil Superannuation accounts.
This commentary, on the first set of Work Programme data, has been produced for the Committee of Public Accounts.
The Comptroller and Auditor General has qualified his opinion on the regularity of receipts and payments because of the level of error in maintenance assessments. He has also given an adverse opinion on the truth and fairness of the outstanding maintenance arrears.
DWP is working to manage the introduction of the housing benefit reforms and has a critical role to play in anticipating adverse consequences.
The Better Regulation Executive is currently reviewing controls on regulation. This document is the National Audit Office’s submission to that review. It is based on a combination of our previous work and new work with five case study departments earlier this year.