This good practice guide aids improvement in performance measurement and reporting by regulators and other organisations seeking to deliver outcomes through third parties. It has been developed in collaboration with regulators and includes the NAO’s experience from working with them and examples of regulators’ good practice. It’s complemented by ‘Performance measurement: Good practice criteria and maturity model’.
The incentives on government Accounting Officers to prioritise value for money are weak compared to those associated with the day-to-day job of satisfying Ministers.
This paper sets out how we constructed a counterfactual to establish how much water customers in England and Wales could have benefited from an alternative charging system between 2010/11 and 2014/15.
The Cabinet Office estimates that government commits around £130 billion to grants each year – nearly 20% of all government spend. Grants are an important delivery mechanism for policy across government, not just centrally but also in agencies, local authorities and other bodies across the public sector.
This briefing gives a high-level overview of the range of metrics that government uses to assess and report on sustainable development and environmental protection, and how these compare with good practice principles for a performance management framework.
We present here what we’ve been learning about the problems government faces in managing its business operations, the actions taken to address them, and our analysis of what government needs to focus on to get this right.
This series of papers summarises the methodological approaches we have taken in carrying out innovative or novel analysis. Such analysis is conducted under our statutory authority to examine and report to Parliament on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness with which government departments and other bodies have used their resources.
The Audit insights papers are methodological summaries and do not make new observations about value for money.
This paper sets out how we used an analytical technique called multilevel regression modelling to investigate the factors affecting levels of attendance at accident and emergency (A&E) departments by patients registered at a GP practice.
This paper explores the principles departments should use to manage provider failure. There is room for improvement in the way failure of providers is considered and managed.
The government continues to lose large amounts of money through fraud and error overpayments and many vulnerable people get less support than they are entitled to.
Payment by results (PbR) schemes are hard to get right, and are risky and costly for commissioners. Credible evidence for claimed benefits of PbR is now needed.
It is important that the DWP use the hard lessons it learned from implementing its recent programme of welfare reforms to improve how it manages change and anticipates risk.
The NAO publishes a briefing paper considering capital investment by government and how it chooses to finance it.
This paper sets out how we used a modelling technique called ‘discrete event simulation’ to investigate a local maternity service.
This paper sets out how we created look-up files to map between different commissioning geographies. This enabled us, for example, to estimate overall health funding at an area-level despite the different geographical bases of the various commissioners. We provide links to these look-up files.
This report outlines the importance of recognising and adequately managing conflicts of interest.
Fiscal pressure on government departments is set to continue through the next Parliament, with citizen expectations continuing to rise. With the ‘more for less’ challenge continuing indefinitely and an increasingly complex public sector landscape, a strong and integrated finance function across government is crucial.
Our new guide is aimed at helping non-accountant readers of government’s accounts understand better what is being reported in them and what it means.
Inadequate forecasting is an entrenched problem for government departments, leading to poor value for money and increased costs for the taxpayer.
This report provides the context around whistleblowing and examines the procedures in place for whistleblowing within government departments.