Departments had aimed to complete 892 actions during the year, of which they undertook 803. However, the Cabinet Office admitted that 10 per cent of these actions were undertaken late, with many outstanding targets running overdue.
Meanwhile, ministers have changed the format of 2012’s business plans to what the Cabinet Office calls a “streamlined” model focused on each department’s structural reforms. Other goals classified as “important but not structural reforms” have been moved to an annex – allowing tasks running late or abandoned to be separated from the business plan itself.
According to the latest plans, published on May 31, the government “will not report systematically” against activities shifted to these annexes, but will report progress “through other publications”.
In its own business plan, the Cabinet Office lists eight projects as “overdue”. Among these are the publication of a first annual report on government-funded major projects, which is running six months late; the modernisation of the contractual offer for new entrants, promotions and transfers in the civil service; and an action plan aimed at ensuring at least half of new appointees to the boards of public bodies are women.
HM Treasury lists six targets set out in its 2011 business plan as “overdue”, including phase one of Project OSCAR: the development of a replacement for the COINS database. Both the Cabinet Office’s civil service contracts target, and the Treasury’s Project OSCAR, have been shifted into annexes.
Minister for government policy Oliver Letwin said the new business plans set out the coalition’s ambitions clearly: “Instead of announcing ambiguous goals and far-away targets, we have set out exactly what we are going to do and by when, channelling our efforts to those areas where government has the most influence.”