We start north of the border, with news that the SNP has already described as “extremely disappointing”. Kate Devlin of the Herald has seen correspondence between Sir Jeremy Heywood and Nicola Sturgeon, effectively ruling out pre-election access to Whitehall for the nationalists, or indeed Plaid and the DUP. The party demanded inclusion in talks on its policy priorities ahead of the May vote (see our story here), arguing that it could hold the balance of power in a hung parliament.
But in a letter to the Scottish first minister, the cabinet secretary says David Cameron “does not want to extend the offer more widely to parties, for example, that are fielding candidates in only some parts of the country".
Off a 'roll
The Telegraph's Peter Dominiczak has a scoop on off-payroll earnings this morning. He reports that chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has fined the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Health some £1.5m – now earmarked for health and military charities – for allowing staff to be paid through companies.
The Lib Dem says: “I've levied fines on two departments because they have not been complying with the rules as they should. Whilst most of the public sector is now complying with this, we have had examples where individuals have had their contracts terminated because they weren't able to provide reassurances".
Maude to the Lords?
When Francis Maude used the announcement that he was quitting as an MP to say public service continued to exercise "great appeal", he must have known he'd be inviting speculation on his post-Commons plans.
And so it goes. Buzzfeed's Emily Ashton is the latest to offer a theory. She cites a “well-placed” Conservative source who says of Maude: “He’s keen to rise the ranks in the upper House. With so many high-profile figures choosing to stay on the back benches, he thinks he would be a big fish in a small pond.”
Ashton posits that Maude is looking to become leader of the Lords “within a year”.
No more IT woes?
Speaking of Maude, a few of the technology titles pick up on his speech to the TechUK Public Services 2030 conference yesterday. He talked up the Government Digital Service as key to ending the "era of bespoke solutions commissioned with extortionate costs by individual departments".
"That combination of words – British, government, IT project – was a pretty catastrophic one five years ago," he added. "It isn't now."
Despite that optimistic tone, Charlotte Jee at ComputerWorld highlights Maude's acknowledgement that Whitehall still has "huge amounts of legacy IT" to modernise and replace. Indeed, as Mike Bracken wrote in a piece for us recently, four years of "extraordinary hard work" on the digital transformation of Whitehall doesn't mean the job's done.
"The next stage – and the one that will bring the real savings – is to coordinate our efforts across government, and reduce needless duplication," the GDS executive director said in his recent CSW column.
And finally...
The Independent's Oliver Wright is downbeat on the future of the Major Projects Authority.
While the Indy's Whitehall editor praises the MPA, set up to properly scrutinise big central government projects, as "a really good idea", he says "senior figures in departments" are voicing doubts about its future.
"They claim that, far from being a supportive, nimble organisation designed to help departments avoid pitfalls of major project planning, it has simply become a 'tick-box auditor' that is less well informed than the National Audit Office, which should be doing that job".