Having published its departmental business plans – which the government wants to be held to account by – it is logical that ministers then identify and publish the information which shows if their plans are working.
The 'information plans' for each department set out what data they think relates to their targets, and is classed as either an 'input indicator' (ie how much money is spent on something) or an 'impact indicator' (ie what was achieved for the money spent).
One of the more interesting lines in any of the consultations comes in the document published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which says:
"Please note that we have been asked to only select an illustrative 'handful' of impact indicators so it may not be possible to cover all areas of business."
So we could almost begin by wondering how carefully selected the chosen indicators are and what has been left out, but that might be a little too cynical as there is some important data listed in them.
Targets or indicators?
Approaching the issue from another angle, we could ask why the government has 'impact indicators' at all given that Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin has said that one thing the government is not doing is targeting outcomes over which it has no direct control.
So if impact indicators fall into this category, it might suggest the business plans are really Labour-style 'public service agreement' targets but just at one step removed.
Instead of targeting outcomes over which it has no direct control and then getting people to try to implement them, as the current government says Labour did, ministers now want to incentivise people and systems to achieve outcomes over which the government has no direct control.
I suspect the government would argue the 'indicators' are (as the name suggests) not ends in themselves. Ministers may deserve the benefit of the doubt on that, but it still seems possible that these impact indicators could become targets in all but name with officials working to meet them as proof of systemic success.
A few problems
Reading through the business plans, it is hard to judge how useful some of the proposed input indicators are.
For example, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) plans to publish data on the cost of operations in Afghanistan (this was around £738m in 2006/07) per Service person deployed.
But if this figure goes down, does it mean the MoD is being more efficient? If I was a soldier, I suspect I would prefer to see the figure rising if it meant better equipment and facilities.
Similarly, the MoD also plans to use defence spending as a percentage of GDP as one of its input indicators. It might be considered good if the economy grows strongly and defence spending increases are as a result at a slower rate. On the other hand, if the spending grows faster than the economy then it might simply signal a stronger political commitment to security or a change in threat perceptions.
This issue arises with other departments. For example, is the Department for International Development to be praised or criticised if it keeps the 'cost per child supported in primary education' low.
And some departments won't be telling us anything new. For example, all the Department of Health's chosen input indicators are already routinely published.
The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), often referred to as a leader on the transparency agenda, will publish just two input indicators ('affordable housing grant per dwelling' and 'percentage of local authority revenue expenditure funded by central government grants') but will say nothing about its new regional growth funds (cost per project, perhaps?) or its plans for bringing empty homes into reuse (cost per home?).
On the plus side
But there should still be plenty of new information which will be useful to have.
The Department for Work and Pensions, for example, will publish details of the unit cost of Jobcentre Plus support per customer for different types of benefit (although unit costs per benefit office might have been more revealing). And the Treasury will report on the unit cost of supporting debt management and other core functions.
The Cabinet Office also plans to publish some interesting input data, including 'the cost to government for every citizen transaction on the internet, phone and in person' and 'the cost of managing the relationship with government suppliers'.
Still, if the input data is to be meaningful, it seems most logical to expect that it would have an equivalent output ('impact') data set.
That often doesn't seem to be the case, however.
Measuring impact
The Ministry of Justice input data sensibly includes the cost of each prisoner in individual prisons and the cost per sitting day of running individual courts.
Looking at the department's impact data proposals, there are plans to publish data on reoffending rates for each prison. This means it will be possible to compare how much is spent on each prisoner in different prisons and how effectively they each manage to 'rehabilitate' them for the money that it spent. This makes accountability simple, clear and effective.
Yet while there will be information on how quickly courts hear cases, this will be provided at a regional level which is a mismatch with the court-level input data that then makes it harder to judge how well run individual courts might be.
At the MoD, one of the impact indicators is the 'percentage of the UK population who believe that the Armed Forces do a good job'. This might be a 'quick win', but is essentially meaningless.
Meanwhile one of the Foreign Office (FCO) impact indicators is the 'trend in global low carbon investment', which is intended to measure its official goal of accelerating 'the global transition to a low-carbon climate-resilient economy'. Yet it seems likely that the FCO's ability to affect global investment rates is minimal, and neither does it have much control over the systems which might affect that investment.
And for the DCLG, one of the key aims of its business plan is to "reinvigorate local accountability, democracy and participation" yet it is scrapping the Citizenship Survey which provides some most important measurements of that kind of political engagement.
Strategic thinking
Having looked through these information plans, I'm reminded of the recent report by the Commons public administration committee which concluded that government has "lost capacity to think strategically".
"We have simply fallen out of the habit, and have lost the culture of strategy making."
The committee was referring more to defining UK national interests than to departmental business plans, but its hard not to wonder if some of the same weaknesses the MPs identified is not present in the information strategies too. They said:
"The single most important thing which can be done to restore our strategic capacity is to have a community of strategists, both inside and outside Whitehall. To foster such a community, government will need to look at its recruitment practices."
Perhaps the existence of such a community would have made for a more focused and coherent set of business and information plans, not just across departments but within them too.
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