Lack of information about heavy-duty transports on federal long-distance roads - number of closed bridges increases
Information on heavy-duty Transports The Bundesrechnungshof of Germany revealed that the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure does not know which routes are particularly affected by heavy-duty transports, since it has not obtained comprehensive information from the state authorities about the heavy-duty transports.
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Homelessness
Homelessness grows despite increased spendings to reduce it British NAO analyses the root-causes of unsuccessful effort to reduce homelessness in England. They point at a side effect of the Goverment reform of welfare reform and at lack of full impact assessment.
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Digitisation of municipal services
The purpose of digitisation is to increase the quality and efficiency of public services. It is a goal to make online services the norm for public administration's communication with citizens ... and the private sector. The municipal sector is a significant provider of public services, and digitisation of municipal services is therefore essential for achieving this goal.<br/>The audit surveyed the status ... , assessed the significance of and possible obstacles to digitisation of municipal services. The audit examined how the Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation's use of policy instruments contributes ... ... Municipalities have not digitised their services to any extent ... Digitisation increases the quality and efficiency of public services and municipal sector is a significant provider of public services. Report of Riksrevisjonen of Norway shows however ... , that municipalities need a substantial support to execute this demanding task. To provide them with help, the central government has to coordinate own efforts first.
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Maintenance efficiency in the rail network
The primary objective of railway politics is to contribute to ensure that users of the transport service have good railway options. The Norwegian National Rail Administration is organised under ... the Ministry of Transport and Communications, and its responsibilities include operation, maintenance and development of the State's railway infrastructure. The maintenance activities must safeguard safety ... , fixed assets and operational stability of the railway system. The most important objective for the maintenance is to reduce the scope of operational interruptions, and to facilitate better punctuality ... ... Rail network maintenance - negative balance of costs and results ... SAI Norway evaluated efficiency of the railway maintenance and found that its costs increased nearly 110 per cent in years 2006–2014. Negative development in uptime and regularity dominated the first ... part of the examined period, from 2006 to 2011. It turned positive from 2011, but in 2014 results were still worse than in 2006. The results have lagged behind the Ministry's target figures for most ... of the period.
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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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VETERANS’ HEALTH CARE - Preliminary Observations on VHA’s Claims Processing Delays and Efforts to Improve the Timeliness of Payments to Community Providers
Due to increases in expenditures and utilization of VA care in the community services in recent years, VHA has had difficulty processing claims in a timely manner. In planning to consolidate its ... existing VA care in the community programs, as required by law, the agency said it will examine strategies for improving the timeliness and accuracy of its payments to community providers.<br ... /> This statement, which is based on ongoing work, summarizes GAO’s preliminary observations about (1) VHA’s, Medicare’s, and TRICARE’s claims processing timeliness in fiscal year 2015; (2) factors that have impeded ... Data processing hold back by technology limitation, workload and administrative burden ... US GAO analyzed all factors of slower processing and user unfriendliness that occur sometimes to the veterans healthcare. The main focus is data processing - and it has been proved that it can ... be failing not only because of technology, but also because of work-process design, staff and organisation.
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The Shared Services Centre
The necessary environment for the efficient management of the Shared Service Center is lacking The department's administration of the Shared Services Centre (SSC) has been effective for sharing resources between the departments and delivering selected back-office services to a small client base. However, the governance arrangements established to oversight the SSC have not positioned it well for the future and the departments have not yet determined if the arrangement is efficient and resulting in savings. ANAO found instances where the advisory board of SSC was not consulted or involved in decisions relating to the strategic direction, financial arrangements and expenditure priorities. Information reported to the board did not focus on areas of strategic importance and the quality and completeness of this information could be improved. The mechanisms established for setting out responsibilities and obligations and ensuring transparency for services delivered by the SSC was weak. Service standards and levels were not fixed and can change. The delineation of responsibilities between the SSC and its clients was not clear and there was no commitment by the SSC to certify the quality of its control framework.
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Federal Agencies Need to Address Aging Legacy Systems
Be aware of legacy IT risks The US government spends about 75 percent of the total amount budgeted for information technology on operations and maintenance. GAO reviewed Office of Management and Budget and 26 agencies, covering years 2010 through 2017 and recommends to develop a goal for spending measure and finalize guidance to identify and prioritize legacy IT needing to be modernized or replaced.
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Incorrect payments in social insurance - Control activities of the Swedish Social Insurance Agency
In 2014 the social insurance system accounted for six per cent of GDP. The long-term sustainability of a system of that magnitude requires that the public perceives its purpose to be important ... , that it is well administered and that it is as free of abuse as possible. It must also be financially stable over time, since major fluctuations impact other areas of the central government budget. When ... these things function as they should, the system is perceived to be legitimate and enjoys public confidence.<br/> According to available estimations, almost SEK 20 billion had been paid out incorrectly from ... Balance of priorities needed to reduce incorrect payments ... Role of social insurance in public finance is so substantial that reduction of incorrect payments' volume is matter of huge savings. The Swedish NAO noted positive initiatives by the Social Insurance ... Agency in this regard. However they found also, that serious problems can stem from giving higher priority to the speed of payment and customers satisfaction. They both are undoubtedly important features ... of each system, still, the prevention of incorrect payments needs strategic support to be really effective.
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The National Government Service Centre – Has administration become more effective?
The purpose of this audit has been to investigate whether the Service Centre has made administrative operational support functions taken over from client agencies more effective, and to find ... explanations for the results so far achieved by the Service Centre. The audit has also aspired to illustrate how agencies that do not subscribe to the services regard their potential for doing so ... . These viewpoints have been analysed with a special focus on the conditions that applied to the Service Centre when it was formed and the measures taken by the Government and the Service Centre in the first years. ... ... Has Swedish public administration become more effective? ... The Service Centre – payroll and financial administration IT system for Swedish public agencies under the government – has achieved the target of a subscription rate of 25 per cent of the total ... number of state employees. However, subscription to the Service Centre was initially slower than the Government had predicted and meant lower revenues than expected in autumn 2013. The Service Centre ... then introduced a rigorous review of its expenditure, for example for some planned development initiatives for internal procedures and support systems.<br/>The Swedish NAO noted that the Government’s steering
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