The Audit Committee checklist is based on the Treasury’s Audit Committee Handbook and on feedback from staff and Audit Committees. Audit Committees can assess their performance against best practice using the checklist.
With charities such as museums and galleries relying increasingly on donations to supplement public grant funding, this report summarises the issues faced and best-practice management of the risks associated with donations as a source of income.
The Building Public Trust Awards recognise outstanding corporate reporting that builds trust and transparency. This interactive document illustrates a range of good practice examples in public sector reports.
The Department for Work & Pensions is not doing enough to find out how sanctions affect people on benefits.
This toolkit is designed to guide those overseeing public service markets or assessing the effectiveness of these markets in terms of value for money and user outcomes. It helps government address a set of new challenges around its use of markets to deliver public services, including oversight, consumer protection, regulation and helping to achieve effective competition and innovative delivery.
This interactive publication draws on our audits of government contracts and engagement with government to provide practitioners with insights on the new, emerging higher standard for government contracting.
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.
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 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.
The NAO publishes a briefing paper considering capital investment by government and how it chooses to finance it.
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.