Commercial

Unacceptable IT is "pervasive" across government and some people in the profession don't have the capability to bring about the changes required, the retiring head of the government's G-Cloud programme, Chris Chant, has written in a blog post on a government website.

The government wants to legislate to give citizens a right to choose their public service provider, it said last month in an update to its Open Public Services white paper.

Last July, I helped to launch the Open Public Services white paper alongside the prime minister. The CBI welcomed the government’s pledge to open up every public service to new providers, but warned that the government would have to be bold to make its ambition a reality.

The Cabinet Office is to run a central academy to train civil servants and local government employees in commissioning and procurement, the department has told CSW.

Ten councils have signed up to a new payment-by-results scheme that rewards councils for helping ‘troubled families’ by sharing with them the savings created as the demands on social services, criminal justice and other services decline.

Central guidance and oversight of government procurement cards (GPCs) is inadequate and inconsistent, increasing the risks of wasteful spending, the National Audit Office (NAO) said in a report last week.

The launch of the Cabinet Office’s flagship public sector mutual, My Civil Service Pension (MyCSP), has been repeatedly delayed and it will now have to spin out from the public sector in the next financial year, CSW has learned.

Departments have spent billions on shared services schemes but have failed to reap the benefits, with projects often over-budget and over-customised, the National Audit Office says in a report today.

Robert Devereux has defended plans to charge single parents for work carried out by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (CMEC).

Public service targets still have a role to play in improving outcomes, Sir Suma Chakrabarti, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Justice has said.

The recently published Cabinet Office tender to procure digital identity assurance (IDA) services for the DWP is to be used across the whole of government, Mike Bracken, executive director of digital at the Cabinet Office has said.

Departmental select committee chairs have provided mixed reviews of the departments they scrutinise for a Civil Service World Special Report, which has found that 40 per cent of them are dissatisfied with departments’ responses to their reports.