Operational Delivery

Audrey Collins, a record specialist at The National Archives, looks back at the impact of the First World War on the civil service

The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) launched the Global Fraud Risk Register, its new global initiative for tackling fraud across the public sector.

Outsourcing group Serco is selling off the majority of its private sector business process outsourcing (BPO) companies to raise funds and focus on supplying for governments, according to a stock exchange announcement by the firm earlier this week.

Government’s flagship mutual, MyCSP, has failed to pay some retired civil servants their pensions on schedule, after a shift to bring its payment functions in-house hit an IT problem, the Guardian reported on Saturday.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) have now moved their digital Vehicle Management service to private beta.

Changes were made last month to how civil servants give evidence to select committees.

The way arm’s-length government is structured and held to account was branded “confused” and “opaque” in a Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) report today, and the Cabinet Office was called upon to bring clarity to how these bodies and organisations work within the civil service.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra’s) flood defence resources are limited and current spending is “insufficient to meet many of the maintenance needs” identified by the Environment Agency (EA), the National Audit Office (NAO) said today.

Katherine Kerswell has criticised the Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG) for attacking local authorities over parking fees.

Tax evasion is the biggest cause of the UK tax gap, not big-business tax avoidance, and it needs to be tackled, director of Tax Research UK Richard Murphy said yesterday at a conference on taxation.

The government needs to bridge the tax gap and collect what it’s owed from tax-avoiding big businesses, Margaret Hodge MP said today.

The Home Office’s system of recording and assessing immigration and customs allegations is improving Home Office results but needs further work, said the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration’s report last week.