Speaking at Civil Service Live last month, cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood told an audience that officials are examining “whether we can make more use of joint budgets and outcome-based commissioning, to get away from departmental silos.”
Coalition government involves greater use of cabinet committees, he added, and “we’re doing a bit of thinking now in the light of the next spending review as to how you could use that to drive a bit more collaboration through joint budgets.”
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said that “we are looking at making the next spending review much less down stovepipes,” suggesting that he’s trying to change Treasury attitudes: “In the Cabinet Office we tend to look at things that are cross-cutting, while the Treasury tends to look at things vertically.”