FORMER government chief executive Charlie Parker’s OneGov reform programme failed to demonstrate it had led to a more efficient public sector, a States spending watchdog report has found.
In its performance management review of the ambitious modernisation drive, the Public Accounts Committee said that while ‘progress was made’, it had not been able to determine whether the changes OneGov introduced ‘have resulted in an overall improvement to performance’.
It added that a key concern was that the government had not put together a ‘single costed plan or business case’ for the target operating model restructuring process, which aimed to streamline the public sector by reorganising it into fewer larger departments.
In her forward to the report, Deputy Inna Gardiner says that the complexity of the target operating model was ‘underestimated’, lacked formal justification, and evidence suggested it had been unsuccessful due to the number of government employees increasing.
She said: ‘The programme was entered into without a single explicit business case. We found no evidence of baseline costings, efficiency or performance targets for tracking the impact of changes to individual departmental TOM programmes.
‘Although most of the TOMs have now been implemented, we had difficulty identifying how successful the transfers have been in some departments and we could find no criteria to establish when the successful transfer to the OneGov reform programme was completed.
‘We have found no formal evidence to demonstrate savings or whether the changes represented value for money. In fact, the number of full-time equivalent personnel within government has grown, particularly in the more senior roles, between 2017 and 2021.
‘This data does not match up to the government’s aim of creating a more effective and efficient public service.’
The PAC also found that there were shortcomings in the government’s IT framework and financial reporting.
‘There is no overall IT strategy for the States of Jersey which shows how technology investment will support and impact services,’ it said.
‘The committee has suggested that, in delivering the OneGov vision of a joined-up, modern and efficient public service for Islanders, there should be clear responsibility and reporting lines between modernisation and digital and departments, including non-ministerial.’
It added: ‘The committee is of the view that there needs to be a clearer link in financial reporting between money spent on the government and the performance of the public service. While the majority of performance-related changes have been implemented, the impact of these changes is yet to be determined.’
