Report on Excess Votes (Northern Ireland) 2006-07 PDF Download

Author: Northern Ireland. Assembly. Public Accounts Committee
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780339602182
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 15

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Report 20/07/08R (Public Accounts Committee)

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Defence Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215038333
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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This report analyses the Annual Report and Accounts 2006-07 of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) (published as HC 697, session 2006-07, ISBN 9780102946369). The MoD's assessment of its expected achievements against its six Public Service Agreement (PSA) targets, which run until the end of March 2008, has deteriorated since the previous year's Annual Report and Accounts. At the end of 2007, the MoD did not expect to meet the target relating to generating forces and expects "only partly" to meet targets relating to recruitment and retention, and defence equipment procurement. The failure to meet the target for generating forces is a consequence of the continuing high levels of deployment of the Armed Forces. The Committee is concerned that the Armed Forces have been operating at or above the level of concurrent operations they are resourced and structured to deliver for seven of the last eight years, and for every year since 2002. Achieving manning balance in all three Service continues to be a challenge. Shortages remain within many specialist trades in all three Armed Services, but especially in the Army Medical Service. The report notes the failure to meet harmony guidelines in the Army and the Royal Air Force - another indicator of the pressure on the Armed Forces from the continuing high level of operations - and another target missed by all three services is for ethnic minority recruitment. The MoD continues to experience substantial forecast cost increases on equipment programmes, and the report notes delays in delivering equipment programmes to the planned in-service dates. The MoD faces difficult choices in the face of expected cuts in the defence programme and the management of a streamlining exercise to reduce civilian posts in the headquarters.

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215033796
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Combat identification is the way military personnel distinguish friend from foe and non-combatants during operations, thereby minimising the risk of deaths and injuries from friendly fire as well as damage to property and infrastructure, whilst maintaining operational effectiveness. It is a complex issue as it spans all the military environments (land, maritime and air), particularly when operations are conducted in coalition with allies, as this requires interoperability of equipment and harmonisation of tactics and practices. Following on from an NAO report (HCP 936, session 2005-06, ISBN 9780102937169) published in March 2006, the Committee's report examines three main issues: progress on equipment projects to improve combat identification; Operation TELIC and investigations into friendly fire deaths; and data collection of friendly fire incidents. Amongst its conclusions, the report finds that the MoD has failed to develop viable combat identification solutions to counter the risks of friendly fire incidents, despite their devastating effects and despite the recommendations made by the Committee in 1992 and 2002, with significant delays in equipment programmes such as the Battlefield Target Identification System. Given the considerable delays in the time the MoD took to conclude the investigations into friendly fire incidents and to make the findings publicly available, the report recommends that once investigations into friendly fire incidents are complete, the MoD should publish the findings of Boards of Inquiry within one month.

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215033208
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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The term 'civil society' covers aspects of society independent of the state and the private sector, and civil society organisations (CSOs) include large charities and NGOs, trade unions, faith groups and business associations. The Department for International Development (DFID) has increasingly worked with CSOs to help to reduce world poverty, and in 2004-05 channelled £328 million of its development aid expenditure through CSOs. These organisations play a variety of roles in development activities, including delivering services, giving a voice to the poor and helping hold governments accountable for poverty reduction. Following on from a National Audit Office report on this topic (HCP 1311, session 2005-06; ISBN 9780102939156) published in July 2006, the Committee's report examines how the DFID is engaging with CSOs, focusing on four themes: how and when to engage with CSOs; providing services targeted at the poorest people; measuring achievements; and improving value for money.

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215033932
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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The Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat) is the economic regulator of water services in England and Wales, with responsibility for setting price limits that allow the 22 main water companies to secure sustainable supplies at the lowest cost to the consumer. Following on from a NAO report (HCP 150, session 2006-07; ISBN 9780102944181) published in January 2007, the Committee's report finds that Ofwat needs to make changes to its regulatory system, in particular on water efficiency, data quality, and enforcement, given the increasing challenges to water supplies due to low rainfall and predictions of housing growth. Ofwat does not understand clearly how consumers use water and has not collected enough robust evidence on which water efficiency projects are most effective in helping consumers to use less water. Despite some progress, Ofwat still depends on unreliable data with regard to both supply and demand, and also needs much better data on per capita consumption. It has had some success in encouraging sustainable investment by companies, but needs to be more active in using sanctions against companies that under-perform against their commitments to meet all reasonable demands for water, while limiting environmental impacts. Ofwat should press companies to encourage more consumers to use meters by, for example, promoting the benefits of metering to consumers as well as routinely installing meters when there is a change of building occupancy.

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215033826
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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The current tax credit system was introduced in April 2003 with the aim of helping families with children and working people on low incomes. However it suffers from the highest rate of error and fraud in government. This is the Committee's fourth report on the system. It concludes that the cost in terms of the unforeseen level of overpayments and the scale of error and fraud continues to be significant and beyond the levels Parliament was lead to expect. The Department is now taking steps to reduce the level of overpayment but does not yet have an adequate response for error and fraud.

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215034376
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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In January 2004, the Inland Revenue entered into a contract with Capgemini to provide IT services to support the Department's business. The contract, known as ASPIRE (Acquiring Strategic Partners for the Inland Revenue), replaced two previous contracts with EDS and Accenture and, following the merger of the Inland Revenue and HM Customs & Excise in 2005, the latter's IT services contract with Fujitsu was incorporated within ASPIRE in April 2006. This change from one supplier to another was the first of this scale in the public sector, and the contract provides wider lessons for the public sector in re-competing major contracts, particularly relating to the payment of transition costs. The cost of the contract has risen from £2.83 billion to £8.5 billion over the 10 year term. Following on from a NAO report on this topic (HCP 938, session 2005-06; ISBN 9780102939170) published in July 2006, the Committee's report examines the procurement process, the transition to a new supplier and the performance of the ASPIRE contract to date. Findings include: i) before concluding the deal, the Department should have evaluated bids against a range of demands for IT services and analysed the effect of different scenarios on suppliers' prices and profit margins; ii) it should have evaluated the performance of consultants and the lessons to be learned from their use, not only for their own benefit but for that of other departments; iii) by contributing to bid costs and paying transition costs to secure competition for the contract, the Department incurred a premium of £51.9 million; iv) it should set more challenging performance targets to impose sufficient discipline on suppliers; and v) the Government should not be placed in the invidious position of having to commission further work from a contractor in order to recover compensation for underperformance.

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215033338
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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An imbalance between the demand and supply of housing has resulted in recent years in increasing numbers of people finding it difficult to afford to buy their own home, with only 36 per cent of new households being able to afford to buy in 2005 compared to 46 per cent in the late 1980s. In 2004-05, the Government spent almost £470 million on two financial assistance schemes (shared ownership and interest-free equity loans through the Homebuy scheme) designed to extend the opportunity of home ownership to those who would not otherwise be able to afford it, including many key public sector workers. Following on from a NAO report on this topic (HCP 1086, session 2005-06; ISBN 9780102939347) published in July 2006, the Committee's report examines how better targeting and further refining of the low cost home ownership assistance programme could improve efficiency and help more people.

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215036179
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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The EU Single Payment Scheme replaced 11 previous subsidies to farmers based on agricultural production with one payment for land management. The European Commission gave some discretion to Member States over how to implement the scheme, and the Rural Payments Agency, which is responsible for administering the scheme in England, opted for the dynamic hybrid model which incorporates elements of previous entitlement and new regionalised area payments based on a flat rate per hectare. The Agency and Defra encountered severe problems in the implementation of the scheme in England, and by the end of March 2006, it had paid farmers only 15 per cent of the £1,515 million due, compared with its target of 96 per cent. This caused significant hardship to farmers and taxpayers will have to pay extra implementation costs. Defra has had to secure an extra £300 million to meet the potential cost of disallowance of expenditure by the European Commission arising on the problems in administering the scheme. Following on from a NAO report on this topic (HCP 1631, session 2005-06; ISBN 9780102943399 published in October 2006, as well as a report from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee (HCP 107-I, session 2006-07, ISBN 9780215033383) published in March 2007, this report by the Public Accounts Committee examines the impact of the payment delays on the farming sector, why implementation failed, the role of Defra and the changes being put in place to rectify the mistakes made. Lessons highlighted include: the Department made the scheme unnecessarily complex by choosing to adopt the most demanding implementation option; the Rural Payments Agency shed too many experienced staff at a key time; implementation of the project started before the scheme specification was finalised; and the IT system was introduced without adequate testing, a failure often seen with government IT projects.

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215033628
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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The National Programme for IT in the NHS ("the Programme") was set up to utilise information technology to help provide high quality services to patients, using centrally managed procurement to provide impetus to the uptake of IT and to secure economies of scale. Expenditure on the Programme is expected to be £12.4 billion over ten years to 2013-14. Following a National Audit Office report (HC 1173, session 2005-06, ISBN 9780102938289), the Committee examined progress made by the Department of Health in implementing the Programme, particularly the current status of the shared electronic patient clinical record; the costs of the Programme; the local management and implementation of the systems within the NHS; the extent to which clinicians were involved in developing the systems; the management of suppliers; and patient confidentiality. Four overall conclusions are drawn: (1) the piloting and deployment of the shared electronic patient clinical record is already running two years behind schedule and no firm implementation date exists; (2) the suppliers to the Programme are clearly struggling to deliver (one of the largest, Accenture, has now withdrawn), and the Department is unlikely to complete the Programme anywhere near its original schedule; (3) the Department has much still to do to win hearts and minds in the NHS, especially among clinicians, and needs to show that it can deliver on its promises, supply solutions that are fit for purpose, learn from its mistakes, and respond constructively to feedback from users in the NHS; (4) there is still much uncertainty about the costs of the Programme for the local NHS and the value of the benefits it should achieve.