WRITTEN ON January 12th, 2008 BY Alex Stobart AND STORED IN Uncategorized

To proceedings at the Public Accounts Committee on December 12th 2007 and with thanks to Richard Bacon, MP. We had previously missed this in the middle of the datagate scandals.

Before Christmas, Alexis Cleveland, Director of Transformational Government at the Cabinet Office found herself the subject of some difficult questioning. This centred on the £7bn estimate of annual expenditure on HR and Finance across government that her organisation had made as the “prize” for shared services, and the £4m that her team had spent on obtaining this estimate, of which £2m had gone on consultants whose work had been ” mislaid “.

The exchanges can be found here.

Q71 Mr Bacon: How long did it take to come up with the £7bn figure?

Ms Cleveland: I do not know how long. I know when it was produced, I do not know how long it took.

Q72 Mr Bacon: It would be quite interesting to know how long it took. Was it done following a fairly detailed survey across the whole of the public sector in central government or was it done in the Dog and Duck and written up on a beer mat?

Ms Cleveland: It was certainly not the latter.

Q73 Mr Bacon: We had a space shuttle on which the Government spent £45m that was designed on a beer mat.

Ms Cleveland: I was not aware of that.

……………..

Q76 Mr Bacon: What? My next question was going to be can you send it to us, please [the £7bn estimate]. You have not got it?

Ms Cleveland: We have not been able to track down the details.

Q77 Mr Bacon: So for all you know it was done on a beer mat?

Ms Cleveland: I know it was done through a survey process – this is what has been reported to me – and that this was then used to produce this figure.

Q78 Mr Bacon: There must be emails. This is extraordinary, you have got no way of finding out – this is what you are saying – how you got the £7bn figure?

Ms Cleveland: I do not know how we got the £7bn figure.

Another interesting take on shared services customer service, in light of the National Consumer Council’s report this week on how poor it is, is revealed by the opening remarks on the same day

Chairman [Edward Leigh]: John Pugh and myself travelled up to Leeds yesterday to look at NHS Shared Services and the management told us that they were passionate about improving this, and they were very impressed with it. We walked in and there was a large room full of people working away. The effect was slightly spoiled by the very first person who was playing Patience on their computer screen, but we will leave that to one side!

Mr Bacon: Did you get his name?

Mr Williams: Was he winning?