Commercial

A new network of research centres providing independent evidence to inform decision making in key policy areas will help to improve policy making in the civil service, according to Will Cavendish, executive director of the Cabinet Office's implementation unit.

Organisations providing employment support through the Work Programme are failing to support people from the hardest-to-help groups, despite financial incentives set up to encourage contractors to focus on these claimants, according to a Public Account Committee (PAC) report published today.

Reforming the civil service won’t “in itself make a dramatic difference to government effectiveness,” former cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell told the Public Administration Select Committee today. Instead, government needs to ensure it is clear about what it wants to achieve, he added.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) should set out an explicit industrial strategy for defence procurement, the Commons’ Defence Committee said in a report published yesterday. Such a strategy would ensure that procurement decisions take account of their likely impact on British businesses, rather than simply pursuing value for money.

Commissioners from across the public sector can now apply to join a virtual Commissioning Academy, launched last week.

The chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Sir Christopher Kelly, has warned in an article written for Civil Service World that new ways of providing services – including academies, clinical commissioning groups, and increasing delivery by the private and voluntary sectors – will place extra pressures on ethics in public service delivery.

The lack of a senior responsible owner for the West Coast Rail franchise project was the “biggest problem” behind the failure of the bidding process, Sam Laidlaw told the House of Commons Transport Committee yesterday.

A set of new ‘masterclasses’ that aim to help the voluntary and community sector (VCS) to secure public sector contracts were announced by the Cabinet Office  last week.

HMRC’s customer services operations have improved from their low point of 2010 but still represent poor value for money to the taxpayer, a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) concluded yesterday.

A new Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is to become fully operational in April 2014, under plans to merge the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission.

The government is looking to establish joint ventures so that some of its intellectual property businesses can enter international markets, Stephen Kelly, government’s new chief operating officer, has told CSW.

The Ministry of Defence’s procurement arm – Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) – can only continue to offer current levels of service for the department if some jobs are outsourced, its boss Bernard Gray, chief of defence materiel, told the Commons’ Defence Committee yesterday.

Never mind the NAO; ministers too hate a risk gone wrong

The Department for Transport’s decision to publicly suspend three officials last month when it reopened bidding for the West Coast Mainline franchise was “immoral”, former Labour transport secretary Lord Adonis said last week.

Efforts by the Treasury to incorporate long-term analyses into its budgetary calculations are being hampered by the political calculations of successive governments, Nick Macpherson, permanent secretary at HM Treasury, said on Monday.

The development of new ICT procurement frameworks by the Government Procurement Service (GPS) has been “paused” while a review is undertaken to ensure they’re offering the best value for money.

Five government departments will be required to provide clearer guidance and complaints procedures for staff keen to set up public service mutuals, under new proposals designed to maintain the momentum behind the government’s public service reform agenda.

Just 16 per cent of civil servants are interested in exploring the idea of launching a ‘mutual’ organisation, with 69 per cent dismissing the idea, a CSW survey has found.

Fraud is widespread at government contractors A4e and Working Links, their former head of audit, Eddie Hutchinson, has said.

Three ground-breaking ‘carbon compacts’ have been signed, bringing together the spending power of departments and private businesses in a bid to push suppliers into cutting carbon emissions.