John Suffolk (Government CIO) expects a
fun year ahead. I have tried to do some back of the envelope calculations based on his items and numbers in the OEP. My italics, all errors mine.
- HR must move to 1 HR person
to 77 FTE from a median of 1:44 (Guesstimate saving on £4.1bn spend is
£1.75bn) - Finance to reduce its
cost to 1% of operating cost from a median of 1.4% (Guesstimate saving
on £3.5bn spend is £1bn) - Marketing and
communications to reduce their costs by 25% (Guesstimate saving on £2.5bn
spend is £625m)
- Consultancy costs
should be reduce by 50% (Guesstimate savings on £2bn spend is £1bn)
- ICT had to reduce its
cost by reusing its systems - We should reduce
occupancy to 10 square metres per FTE (almost half the current mean value of 19.1; estimated running costs are currently £25bn, so there should be at least £5bn savings here) - Reduce the cost of the
senior civil service by 20% (I don’t think this was a large number to begin with: c. £500m, so £100m savings. But needs to be done if you are to cut elsewhere)
There is £4bn in “other” back office: what on earth is all that
covering? Marcomms and Consultancy combined are targeted to save £650m, but that isn’t
borne out by the
figures in OEP as shown above.
So why the focus on consulting when the real savings are in estates rationalisation and back office improvements? Because they are hard. Really hard.