Gareth Davies, head of the NAO – National Audit Office – recently highlighted ‘profligate waste‘ found in the UK public sector – for example, he cited:
- Procurement – A third of contracts worth some £100bn are not subject to competitive tendering
- Infrastructure projects – Billions have been wasted on HS2 and building 40 new hospitals by 2030
- Fraud – Billions are also being lost in the tax and benefits systems
Davies claims that, overall, there’s scope for £20bn savings across government, by such action as employing competitive tendering, updating IT systems rather than patching up old ones, employing AI across the board and ministers thinking long term for national rather than political gain
Given such claims, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt presented his budget last week and announced that his Tory government, after 14 years in power, is to conduct a productivity review of public services – his target is: “A £36bn productivity boost via a £4.2bn digital transformation plan, with most of the cash focused on digital initiatives in the NHS“
- Making the NHS App the “single front door” for accessing healthcare plus prevention and early intervention services
- Delivering a “radically improved online experience” for patients
- Transforming the use of data to reduce time spent on administrative tasks
- Ensuring all NHS trusts are using electronic patient records
- Using artificial intelligence (AI) to automate back-office functions
- Accelerating data analytics across the NHS
Civil Service job proliferation
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Professor Parkinson concluded:
“In the Civil Service, far more people now take far longer to produce the same result – no one has been idle – all have done their best”