Central government provides many services directly to large numbers of customers, eg benefit payments. Government needs to make sure that its standards of service are good, especially where customers have no choice - such as paying taxes. Customers need convenient, reliable and flexible services; rapid responses to their queries; and the belief that they are being kept fully and accurately informed. To meet these needs, government has to know when customers' circumstances have changed, it must be able to measure how well it's meeting customers' expectations, and it needs processes that support good customer service.
Departments also have to be sure that taxpayers are getting value for money from services, that they have the funding to keep up the level of services, and that they understand and manage new risks. There are many lessons to be learnt from the implementation of recent major programmes, such as Universal Credit and the Work Programme. Digital service delivery, customer protection, and fraud and error management are further key aspects of customer management.
Key NAO publications: The quality of service for personal taxpayers (May 2016); and Welfare reform - lessons learned (May 2015)
The report examines whether to inform decisions across the BBC, the Corporation efficiently, effectively and economically understands how people use and respond to the full range of its services.
Regulators and government need to work together better to ensure that vulnerable consumers get the support they need.
HMRC aimed to move more customers online thereby reducing staff costs but significant numbers of staff were let go before technical improvements were completed leading to a collapse in service quality in 2015. Services have since improved.
We present here what we’ve been learning about the problems government faces in managing its business operations, the actions taken to address them, and our analysis of what government needs to focus on to get this right.
It is important that the DWP use the hard lessons it learned from implementing its recent programme of welfare reforms to improve how it manages change and anticipates risk.
HMRC has made good progress towards maximising revenue and making cost savings but also needs to do much more to improve its customer service.
The DWP has reset Universal Credit on a sounder basis but at significant cost, by extending the time for implementation and choosing a more expensive approach.
HM Treasury and HMRC do not keep track of tax reliefs intended to change behaviour, or adequately report to Parliament on whether tax reliefs work as expected.
After a poor start, the performance of the Work Programme is at similar levels to previous programmes but is less than original forecast. The Department has struggled to improve outcomes for harder-to-help groups. The Programme has the potential to offer value for money if it can achieve the higher rates of performance the Department now expects.
The DWP has simplified the way it administers child maintenance and is approaching expected levels of performance. But overall objectives might be at risk if the number of people using family-based arrangements does not increase.