Yesterday, the Committee for The Executive Office held a session with officials on the Programme for Government (PfG) and Delivery Unit which was established within The Executive Office to “provide support to the Executive to Reform and Transform our public services”. Some headlines from the evidence plus comments from Pivotal:
The PfG’s first annual report will be published in May this year. Pivotal has been calling for information about PfG reporting for some time, and so this is welcome news. It will provide an important opportunity to look back over the nine priorities, four missions, and wellbeing data and to see how progress is being made.
The PfG achievements listed in the evidence session yesterday were largely input focused, detailing funds, plans or strategies connected to the nine priorities. There were, however, some achievements which were more output and outcome focused (for example that 2,500 children have benefited from the Childcare Subsidy Scheme). Pivotal has previously argued that the Executive should focus much more on outcome targets which measure a positive difference being made across priority areas.
Public information about the Delivery Unit has been difficult to come by, so yesterday’s session was helpful in providing greater insight into its work. Due to the constitutional constraints of Northern Ireland’s system of government, the Delivery Unit has adapted elements of the Michael Barber model of “deliverology” to suit NI’s needs. (For a detailed look at the functions, benefits and challenges of other Delivery Units, see our research report, “Policy delivery in Northern Ireland”)
The Delivery Unit is a small team of four people and is focusing on three core areas: monitoring delivery of the PfG priorities; supporting public service transformation; and providing leadership and support for some cross-cutting issues where ownership is unclear.
It had previously been reported that the Delivery Unit would focus on cutting health waiting lists, a PfG priority. However, having reviewed the work being done in the Department of Health, they are currently focused on supporting the rollout of Multi-Disciplinary Teams (MDTs), a successful Transformation Fund bid made by the Department.
From yesterday’s evidence, it seems like much of the Delivery Unit’s work will be supporting public sector transformation, particularly the projects financed by the Transformation Fund. They will also work with Departments on longer term projects and seek to help solve problems in difficult areas (e.g. where responsibility falls between departments). There do not appear to be plans for detailed reporting and challenge of delivery of the PfG priorities along the lines of the Barber model; it seems that this is not going to be attempted given the nature of NI’s coalition government. Apart from waiting lists and public sector transformation, work on other PfG priorities was not mentioned in yesterday’s session, beyond reporting of the latest data.
The full Committee session can be found here (with this evidence beginning at 2hrs 40mins).
