Use of consultants and temporary staff
New skills needed in a longer term UK NAO: Used well, consultants and temporary staff can be an important source of specialist skills and capabilities that are uneconomic for departments to maintain in their permanent staff. Since 2009-10, the government has used spending controls to reduce its use of consultants and temporary staff, and by 2014-15 spending had fallen by £1.5 billion. However, spending has increased by between £400 million and £600 million since 2011-12, suggesting that this was more of a short-term reduction than a sustainable strategy. In the longer term, departments will need to develop workforce, skills and capacity plans to reduce their dependence on external skills. They will need to improve their strategic workforce planning to determine where they can deploy existing staff, where they need to recruit, and where they need to engage temporary resources. Without this, departments cannot demonstrate that they are achieving value for money from the use of consultants and temporary staff.
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Digital transformation in government
Support exemplars, provide consistent guidance... and do not lose focus As the NAO states: Government faces significant challenges in providing public services. While many government services are now available online, public administration is struggling to manage more complicated programmes and to improve the complex systems and processes that support public services.
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Results of the development of the state’s information systems
The National Audit Office has repeatedly audited the management and development of the state’s information technology (IT) area in the last ten years. The last audit was performed in 2005. After that ... , several measures have been implemented in the state to organise the development better and to guarantee that the systems are compatible. This audit gives an opinion of the results of development project ... management and the state’s coordination mechanism in this process. ... ... Success and failure depend on preparation ... Conclusions of performance IT audit based on a sample of government projects: business portal, land register, e-police, fire safety monitoring system, childcare information system and the document ... management system of the Defence Forces. Key problems and discussion with auditees are presented.
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Does the Admin PKI correspond to the original objectives and the needs of the Federal Administration and the Cantons?
The SFAO has audited the Admin PKI, the basic infrastructure and offering for the issuing of digital certificates within the Federal Office of Information Technology, Systems and Telecommunication ... (FOITT). The examination concentrated on assessing the development and current operation as well as future prospects. Admin PKI refers to all processes and the hardware and software needed for issuing ... certificates of different grades. ... Internal coordination can be more difficult than the external one ... A successful project of digital certificates distribution had difficult time when main Government players disagreed.
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Lessons learned from government ICT-projects
This audit has been performed on request of the Dutch parliament. Some newspapers mentioned government losses of four to five billion euro's on a yearly bases. These news items caused the parliament ... to request this audit. The audit has been performed in only 5 months time and consisted of the re-use of earlier performed audits. We have 'recycled' earlier findings about ICT-projects. ... 'Expensive' does not always mean 'High Quality', so... do not feed the spiral ... Excellent analysis of systemic errors commited when designing Government IT projects. The report aims at the essence of problems which are encountered far from information technologies - in: politics ... , business, psychology... Do not be mislead by date of report, it is evergreen for all who really want to know why IT projects fail.
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Use of European Union funds in promoting information society
The National Audit Office audited the use of the aid allocated from the structural funds of the European Union (hereinafter EU aid) in the information technology (IT) area of the state. The National ... Audit Office checked whether the distribution of funds for the development of the information society has been balanced and transparent, and whether the distribution of aid is adequately supervised ... . Balanced distribution of aid means that development of the information society entails paying attention (and ideally providing proportional funding) to information systems aimed at the public sector, private ... Riigikontroll auditeeris Euroopa Liidu struktuurifondidest ehk tõukefondidest eraldatud toetuste (edaspidi ELi toetusraha) kasutamist riigi infotehnoloogia (IT) valdkonnas. Uuriti, kas raha jagamine ... infoühiskonna arendamise eesmärgil on olnud tasakaalustatud ja läbipaistev ning kas toetuste jagamise üle tehakse piisavat järelevalvet. Riigikontrolli hinnangul on riik infoühiskonna arengukava rakendamiseks ... toetuste jagamisel keskendunud liiga riigile suunatud IT-arenduste rahastamisele ning jätnud tagaplaanile ettevõtete konkurentsivõime parandamisele ja kolmandale sektorile suunatud IT arendusprojektide ... Balance needed for success of Information Society Development Plan ... 50% of aid has been granted primarily for the development of information systems of state agencies, i.e. as much as the other two target groups - business and citizens - put together. Information ... , true suppervision and measurement of progress are listed by the Estonian SAI as next key elements necessary to keep balanced development of strategy for Information Society.
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Quality of public services in information society in 2010
The National Audit Office found that irrespective of a few positive changes, the quality of provision of public services in information society has not improved significantly in comparison to 2007 ... . Information about the services is still difficult to find on websites and people who use public services must still submit unjustified documents, proof of facts or go to administrative agencies in person ... . A positive example is registration of a person’s place of residence, which has become considerably easier and user-friendlier than in 2007 as a result of the development of the state portal. <br/> 2007 Audit ... ... The quality of public services has been improved but still isn’t good enough ... Irrespective of a few positive changes, the quality of provision of public services in information society has not improved significantly in comparison to 2007. Information about the services ... is still difficult to find on websites and people who use public services must still submit unjustified documents, proof of facts or go to administrative agencies in person.
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Management of IT security in systems outsourced to external suppliers
Security to be improved in IT processes outsourced to external suppliers When IT processes are outsourced to external suppliers, the authorities no longer have direct control of the IT security, but remain responsible for managing the security of the IT. Authorities that fail to manage IT security actively based on risk assessments, and omit to monitor the implementation of these requirements, will not be able to determine if the level of IT security in the outsourced systems safeguards their systems and data. This is how the conclusion of the Rigsrevisionen starts. The Danish auditors noticed improvement in the audited entities, but they add that tha majority of the auditees: can refine their requirements for and follow-up on access control and logging practices
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Usability of public digital services directed at businesses
G2B - in search of user friendliness Danish Rigsrevisionen finds that the digital services directed at businesses, examined during this audit, are not sufficiently user-friendly from start to finish, and the authorities need to focus more on ensuring that relevant solutions are interlinked in a userfriendly manner.
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