Stephen Kelly (pictured above, bottom left), the government’s chief operating officer, said that the overall number of civil servants is now 411,000 – down from 497,000 in 2010 – and estimated that numbers will fall to around 400,000 next year.
In the Cabinet Office report, published on Tuesday, efficiency savings in 2013-14 were put at £14.3bn, against a 2009-10 baseline. In 2012-13, efficiencies saved £10bn.
The largest single saving came from procurement and commercial activity, where the government saved £5.4bn over the year – up from £3.8bn in 2012-13. Reducing project costs contributed £3.3bn: a rise from £1.7bn during the previous year.
However, transformation savings through property rationalisation and digital services saved £800m – down from £1.1bn the previous year. Digital saw a drop from £500m to £200m.
Speaking at the report’s launch, chancellor George Osborne announced that he’s asked the Cabinet Office to draw up a refreshed efficiency savings plan to cover government spending from 2016-17. The savings plan will be unveiled with this year’s Autumn Statement, he said.
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude (pictured above top left) made clear that the pressure for savings will continue. “Some people still ask me: ‘When will this all be finished? When can we relax?’ – as if there will come a time when I’ll stand before a ‘mission accomplished’ banner and declare the job done, and everyone can go back to business as usual,” he said. “But it can never end. The business of reform from now on has to become business as usual. This will always be a work in progress.”
Maude pledged that the government will reach £20bn of efficiency savings next year – a rise of 40% on this year’s figure. When departments “work with the centre of government from the outset, proactively and positively, then we don’t have to say no; because we can work together to look for ways to deliver the same service – or better services – for less money,” he said.
Asked why digital savings have fallen, Kelly told CSW: “In the first half of the Parliament, there were some low-hanging fruit, including some big IT projects, which enabled some big savings during those years.”
Maude added that savings enabled by digital often show up in procurement and commercial budgets. And Kelly pointed out that many of the non-digital savings were made possible by “moving government services online, which enables savings through staff costs.”
Speaking to CSW, government chief technology officer Liam Maxwell (pictured above bottom right) said that many savings from digital projects are still to come, as services continue to shift online.
Mike Bracken (pictured above top right), executive director of digital in the Cabinet Office, said that £62m was saved in 2013-14 purely through moving services to the .gov.uk single platform for central government.
According to Maude, the government is also on track to meet its target of ensuring that 25% of government contracts go to small and medium sized enterprises by next year.
Of the £4.7bn saved in staff costs, £2.3bn was saved by reducing the size of the civil service, while a further £2.3bn came from increasing staff contributions to public sector pensions. The government added that it was not including £1.1bn in its figures which, it said, had been saved through constraining pay rises.