The Efficiency Team and What We Do

The SR04 Efficiency Team will assist central departments and the wider public sector to deliver the Government's Efficiency Programme. The aim of the Programme is the transformation of public service delivery; delivering efficiencies so that additional resources can be made available to the front line.

The Programme is to:

• Ensure that annual gains of £21.5bn are achieved by March 2008
• Instil a culture of efficiency across the public sector

Departments and front-line delivery agents are first and foremost responsible for the delivery of their efficiency commitments but the Sr04 Efficiency Programme, run from HMT, helps realise those aims through the SR04's Efficiency Team's Account Managers, Change Agents and Measurement experts.

Account Management

A team of Account Managers provides the primary link between the central Efficiency Team and the departments. Account managers have experience of programme and project management and provide professional support and advice to departments. Account Managers:

• Are a designated single point of contact for information exchange
• Identify innovative ideas and promote these to workstreams
• Provide a co-ordinated opinion from the centre avoiding duplication and reduce the burden on the department
• Have developed a detailed understanding of the issues faced by the department to enable them to help remove blockers and resolve issues
• Work with departments on joint action plans, as a mechanism for continuous improvement, to identify and implement appropriate corrective actions
• Ensure departments are aware of the capabilities and capacity of change agents as a means of supporting delivery of their efficiency gains
• Identify and provide support to departments or across departments where capacity is weak involving other parts of OGC and others as appropriate
• Define SR04 Efficiency Team priorities for delivery and agree milestones and announcements with departments, against which progress can be tracked
• Agree progress on delivery and programme status with departments, as an assessment for regular upward reporting

Workstream Co-ordination

Change Agents are specialists in the workstream areas identified in Sir Peter Gershon's Efficiency review and are Corporate Services, Transactional Services, Procurement, Productive Time and Policy Funding and Regulation. A further workstream for the Lyons relocation programme was added. All Change Agents will:

• Develop networks for discussion of common problems and successes, information sharing, best practice transfer, success stories
• Provide toolkits, including analytical frameworks for addressing issues
• Support development of professional skills - assisting departments to recruit people with the right skills, set up brokering network with the CBI, Intellect, suppliers and others to provide short-term secondees
• Bring in private sector and wider public service experience
• Provide tailored support for individual programmes, where appropriate

Metrics and Benchmarking (M&B)

The M&B part of the SR04 Efficiency team has had the aim of developing a culture where effective measurement is recognised as a key enabler to realising departments' efficiency gains and informing departmental decisions as part of a continuous process of performance improvement. It:

• Has provided guidance and sought best practice in measurement
• Reviews the data received and creates an opportunity to discuss local measurement issues
• Validates progress made towards agreed efficiency gain targets through analysis of data supplied by departments.
• Promotes good measurement practices by assisting in and supporting effective measurement and benchmarking across the public sector
• Works with Account Managers and departments to agree in detail what data will be provided in order to demonstrate progress towards efficiency targets and against trajectories
• Identifies measures that could be used by departments as a basis for informing their own decisions e.g. benchmarking for HR and Finance

Annex A - Central Government Units

There are a number of central government teams with an interest in efficiency which are listed below. Follow the links to their websites to find further information on their work.

• HM Treasury Performance and Efficiency Team and Spending Teams
• Civil Service Delivery and Reform Team
• The Prime Minister's Delivery Unit (PMDU)
• The E-Government Unit (e-GU)
• The Corporate Development Group (CDG)
• The Performance Partnerships Team