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Summer 2013

INTOUCHThe National Audit Office Alumni Newsletter

It’s summer time

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Pop Quiz 2013This year’s NAO Pop Quiz will take place on Wednesday 17 July 2013. The theme is all things television… Dire Straits said back in 1985 “I want my MTV” so we’ll be honouring music programmes of the past and present, from Top of the Pops to The Tube and much more, with 10 rounds of questions about Top 40 songs from the 50s to the current day.

We have a new venue this year, which is bigger and better than the bar we have used in the last few years, so we hope to see as many of you there as possible. Get your teams of six together now and book your place.

• Date: Wednesday 17 July 2013, starting at 18:00.

• Venue: The Cape Bar (at the corner of Wood Street and Love Lane, between St Paul’s and Bank).

• Entry fee: £30 per team.

• Team members: Teams of six with up to two non-NAO staff (alumni count as NAO staff).

• Team names: You can choose any TV programme as your team name this year, as long as no one else has already chosen it. First come, first served!

• Fancy dress: Dressing up as your team name is encouraged as always and there will be a prize for the best dressed team, as voted by everyone on the night.

We are now open for bookings, on a first come, first served basis as always. If you want to enter a team please contact alumni@nao.gsi.gov.uk – but hurry!

Welcome

Design and Production by NAO Communications © National Audit Office 2013 Printed by SLS Print | DP Ref: 10192-001

In preparing for this editorial piece, I referred back to the June 2012 InTouch Magazine to see what I should write. This time last year, I wrote “I hope you have all had a great start to the year”. Please pardon the repetition but I really hope that 2013 has been good to you so far!

I personally have had a very memorable year to date in that I got married in March at Sandbanks, Dorset. It was simply perfect in every way and the weather managed to hold up for us too which was really lucky given that we dragged the majority of our guests down to the South Coast of England. We went to Cuba for our honeymoon and I have to say, it was absolutely incredible! We visited Havana, Cayo Largo and Trinidad over two weeks and would highly recommend it. It is such a fun, beautiful and vibrant country and I found the people to be really friendly.

Since returning from cloud nine, I have been promoted to Senior HR Advisor which will mean an exciting and challenging time ahead for me. And while I have thoroughly enjoyed being the Editor of InTouch, I have decided to step down to focus on my new role. I will still remain involved with Alumni activities but watch this space for details on the new Editor.

Right, that’s enough about me so moving on to business! We have prepared some interesting articles which I hope you enjoy reading. I have picked out a couple I would like to draw your attention to, starting with the announcement on the 2013 NAO Pop Quiz taking place on Wednesday 17 July 2013 (see right for details). There are a few team spaces left and Alumni members are welcome to form a team and come along to this event by emailing alumni@nao.gsi.gov.uk.

‘The ability to grow in new directions’ article by Gaby Cohen and Morwenna Stewart provides further insight into the NAO’s strategy and transformation project (page 6). Alumni member Joe Cavanagh shares his experiences since leaving the NAO in 2008, moving to Brazil and the power of audit (page 8). Lastly, having served the NAO and its predecessor the Exchequer & Audit Department for 36 years, we caught up with VFM Director Chris Shapcott on his very last day in the office and asked him about his plans for the future (back page).

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our contributors this issue: Phil Hyde, Henry Midgley, Gaby Cohen, Morwenna Stewart, Joe Cavanagh, Natalie Stewart, Dhruve Shah , Chris Shapcott and the Alumni Team. I would like to wish the next Editor of InTouch the best of luck, and our Alumni members well.

Tania Young (née Phillips)

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The killer questionIf you’ve ever explained to someone at a party that you work for the National Audit Office, you’ll know that the person will suddenly remember that they need another drink, or that their night-bus home is about to depart. But occasionally you’ll be met with a question instead. “Ah, who audits the auditors?” they will ask jauntily, while prodding you with an index finger. Then, when you’ve explained at length how we fit into the constitutional structure of this great nation, they will scratch their head and say, “So, basically, you’re a civil servant?”

We aren’t civil servants, of course. But most of the people we audit certainly are. And our pay and conditions would be very familiar to those working in government departments. So, for a number of reasons, we should be interested in the civil service as it currently operates, and perhaps in its history too.

The civil service website contains some pages that describe the origins of the institution. They paint a picture that appears to come, not just from a different era, but almost from a different planet. Take a trip with me now to that place.

The need for reformThe modern civil service can be said to date from the mid-1850s. Before that time, departments of state recruited their staff mainly through aristocratic patronage or political favour rather than merit. Departments generally had a poor reputation and no unity of purpose. One senior official said that he had “… known many instances of individuals boldly stating that they were not put into the Service by their patrons to work.” Even more alarmingly, a parliamentary report noted that “there was a case in … the Board of Audit in which a gentleman was appointed who really could neither read nor write.”

In 1853, William Gladstone (as Chancellor of the Exchequer) commissioned Sir Stafford Northcote and Charles Trevelyan to review the operation and organisation of the entire civil service. Their report contained four key recommendations:• Recruitment should be entirely on the basis of merit by open,

competitive examinations.

• Entrants should have a good ‘generalist’ education, and should be recruited to a unified service to allow interdepartmental transfers.

• Recruits should be placed into a hierarchical structure of classes and grades.

• Promotion should be on the basis of merit, and not “preferment, patronage or purchase”.

The civil service examinationEmploying the precise and rather beautiful prose of the day, an 1855 Order in Council began with the words “Whereas it is expedient to make Provision for testing, according to fixed Rules, the Qualifications of young Men who may from Time to Time be proposed to be appointed to the Junior Situations in any of Her Majesty’s Civil Establishments… ” And so, the civil service examination was born.

The service was looking for young men of “superior education”. While not all departments demanded that candidates should “be unmarried and without a family”, most required a high level of proficiency in arithmetic, English grammar and composition, history and geography. They also made clear that candidates should have excellent handwriting and spelling. However, those seeking to join the Treasury were also expected

What the Dickens?The civil service in the Victorian era, by Phil Hyde

Hi … I work for the National Audit Office.

Swoon … Really!?

BACK OFF! I saw him first. So what’s your favourite VFM Methodology then?

to answer questions on the first three books of Euclid and translate a passage from Latin, French, German or Italian.

Leaving aside those picky Treasury folk, you might imagine that the questions would be pretty straightforward for a well-educated, worldly and thoroughly sophisticated person such as yourself. Well, if you have a spare moment over the lunch break, have a go at these sample questions:

Elementary arithmetic (remember, this is elementary …)• A person having £5,704.18s.4d lays out one third in good

which he sells for £2,316.5s.10d. How much has he at last, and how much has he gained?

History• What were, at different times, the titles of the Chief

Magistrates of Republican Rome?

• What were the Petition of Right, Instrument of Government, Act of Uniformity, Act of Settlement and Act of Navigation?

Geography (I love this category, because it really shows what Victorian Britain was all about)• Draw an outline map showing the overland route to India.

• Mention seven colonial possessions of Great Britain, specifying wherein their political and commercial importance to this country.

English grammar• Construct sentences exemplifying the use of the relative

pronouns in the possessive and objective cases.

So, how do you think you would have fared?

And in conclusion…Introducing stringent testing was a great success, and the civil service became very quickly professionalised. Indeed, by 1869, the Quarterly Review was able to announce that these new arrangements had “eliminated all dunces … while an entirely new spirit of economy and industry has been introduced.”

A spirit, I’m sure you’ll agree, which lasts to this very day.

(taken from the March issue of Green)

} They say that a picture paints a thousand words, and many of these photos will speak for themselves ~

Ye olde NAO News

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Henry Midgley goes back in time

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They say that a picture paints a thousand words, and many of these photos will speak for themselves. But some interesting textual morsels from the December editions include the following:

• In 1982, E&AD News carried the fi rst Christmas message from a C&AG (then Sir Gordon Downey). He said that he wished everyone a Merry Christmas, and that 1983 “could see even more dramatic changes”. It did – the creation of the NAO! Sir Gordon had also received the gift of a talking stick from the C&AG of Canada.

• In December 1985, NAO News reported that Bill Laws (who had left the NAO only very recently) had run the Canton of Geneva Marathon in a personal best time of 2 hours 38 minutes 08 seconds. That’s fast!

• In December 1986, in an article called ‘How Others See Us’, The Independent was quoted as giving the NAO the credit for helping Whitehall ‘on the way to greater effi ciency’.

• December 1986 also saw the Offi ce recruit new staff to the following roles – Assistant Librarian, Clerical Offi cer, Typist and Photoprinter (whatever that was).

• At Christmas 1987, NAO News carried a farewell interview with Sir Gordon Downey. He revealed that he had had discussions with Margaret Thatcher, and she agreed wholeheartedly with the way the offi ce was moving.

• Joan Ridley suggested in a letter in 1988 that, not only did the air conditioning system not work, but it actually piped tobacco smoke into the offi ce.

• The December 1989 edition of NAO News included an article on ‘Low Fliers’. Hey Management Accountants were claiming that “The day of the highly paid, go-ahead high fl ier is drawing to a close… being replaced by a generation of low fl iers who are solid, dependable, cheaper…”

• In 1990, we noted this from a DTI report: “All authorised businesses are able to carry on forms of investment business without committing the criminal offence of carrying out an authorised business without authorisation.” So that’s clear then.

• In 1991, we reported on a defeat to Ipswich British Telecom in a Civil Service football competition. The piece wryly refl ected that the NAO were the better team, but “if BT can rob the country of £100 a second, they’d have little diffi culty robbing us of a Lewis Cup tie.”

• The C&AG’s driver wrote in the Christmas 1992 issue about how he used to drive ambulances. Apparently he had delivered six babies and dealt with several drunk Tottenham Hotspur fans.

• In December 1993, we proudly announced that Desktop Publishing (‘or DTP, as it is known’) had reached the NAO. Apparently, until March 1993, the proofi ng and editing of all text through to printing was done on something called ‘Uniplex’. The article concluded that a publishing function within the NAO would be here ‘for a long time to come’.

• 1994’s Christmas edition also covered some items from Audacity including the Defence section not conducting a study on ‘Is Europe safe?’ because the study question was too specifi c, and a defi nition of statistical sampling (a way at last of proving beyond all doubt that what you didn’t do last year, you don’t need to do this year).

(taken from the December issue of Green)

Back in the day, there was an offi cial publication called NAO News, and before that, E&AD News. In parallel, staff sometimes published an irreverent take on offi ce life called Audacity. We recently stumbled upon some back issues of these titles. So, come with us and take a trip back to when Green was a mere glint in an AAG’s eye.

MS: Firstly, why do you think the NAO needs to change? GC: Because we have an amazing opportunity to increase the relevance and impact of our work. The needs of our key stakeholders, Parliament and the bodies we audit, have changed. Parliament, the PAC in particular, wants to work much more in the moment and is taking issues surfaced by our work and moving the public debate forward, tax avoidance being a case in point. Those we audit are being stretched and quite understandably are more demanding of us and of the need for the audit process to add value. To do this, we need to be sure we really understand their business and their strategic environment and we need to be sure we can speak with authority on issues within our competence.

MS: What different outputs are we considering? GC: In the past year we have produced different types of outputs: some work that started as improvement work, rather than as a value-for-money study, has found its way to PAC and the Committee has held sessions with only an NAO brief to support them rather than a full report. We want to build on this flexibility, so that for each assignment we consider how best to report our findings. This approach will span across all our work. We need to develop a notion of ‘fit for purpose’ in our outputs. Some topics will continue to merit a full value-for-money study, but others may lend themselves to memoranda or briefings. This will allow us to produce a greater quantity of outputs.

Let’s cuddle up and get closer MS: How else can we work better and smarter, not just across the new teams but between them, and between VFM and financial audit? GC: Integrated planning will be key to better working. From the autumn, VFM and financial audit will plan together – to create one programme of work based on our full client understanding. This will be designed to address the strategic concerns of each department, but also to develop our knowledge of the strategic issues around which the cluster is formed. Each cluster will develop a centre of excellence on a strategic issue and will plan a significant programme of work around that issue, drawing on examples across the office as needed.

MS: What behaviours do you think we need, to make sure we work well in the new structure?GC: There will be more collegiate working, and working across clusters. This is a big change in culture and working practice. There will be more consistency, more common standards but also more opportunity for innovation. We are aiming for a culture of ‘Why not?’ rather than ‘Why’. We will create more personal accountability, more earned autonomy and people will be judged on their outputs, impact and influence. We will aim to minimise central processes. There will also be higher expectations of staff, to achieve more influence and impact.

MS: How can we best increase client knowledge? How can we encourage staff to take secondments?GC: We have significant client knowledge already but it’s dispersed between financial and VFM teams at present and we hope that integrated planning will encourage better sharing – it will capture what we already know. We will make sure that we really draw on the right people for each project. The new model will have more joint working between VFM and financial audit staff. Our financial audit gives us a cross-organisational perspective on our client and our VFM approach gives us deep insight into specific programmes. We need to be better at bringing this knowledge together and combining with it our increased expertise in the strategic issues. Then we will be far better placed to produce more meaningful analysis quickly and to have a better idea of what action we would recommend. In this connection, we will be encouraging more secondments, so that we gain insight into the operational environment in which our recommendations are made. We would also encourage our people to take secondments so they gain experience of other organisational cultures and bring this learning back to the NAO.

Gaby Cohen talks to Morwenna Stewart about the NAO’s strategy and transformation project

New directionsThe ability to grow in

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There is a scene in the Iron Lady where Margaret Thatcher is shown weeping. She is writing to the families of the 255 soldiers who were lost on HMS Sheffield during the Falklands War, telling them that she is a mother and she, like no Prime Minister before her, can understand their loss. This, for me, sums up the dichotomy of Thatcher’s femininity as is portrayed in the media, and indeed by Thatcher herself. A few scenes earlier she was shown locking horns with Alexander Haig, American Secretary of State as she famously compared the Falkland’s to Hawaii. This was decisive, masculine Thatcher, willing to shoulder the weight of war, not Thatcher the mother, openly weeping for the war dead.

Thatcher was the Female Prime Minister. She was as often pictured in the kitchen of her home as she was pictured wagging her finger and emoting in her deep, masculinised voice. For all the talk about deepening her voice, being female served her, as much as it defined her.

Becoming Prime Minister is a huge personal achievement. I guess we forget this, because most Prime Ministers are defined by what they do after the election, not before. This is the case unless in becoming Prime Minister you have some defining characteristic which is seen to leave a legacy in itself – like being female. When Ed Milliband spoke about Thatcher in the House of Commons he opened with “the journey from child of a grocer to Downing Street is an unlikely one. And it is particularly remarkable as she was the daughter, not the son, of a grocer”. But did this achievement leave a legacy for women?

Thatcher was born the daughter of a grocer, but she married a wealthy man and her personal wealth allowed her to excel in her chosen career and be a mother. She, unlike many women, didn’t need to worry about the cost of childcare or the impact of part-time work upon her career. We are not reminded often enough that it is women, as the primary carers of children, who bear the biggest cost of cuts to social welfare. But Thatcher, being a social conservative, would have seen family rather than society as an enabler of progress for men and women.

Part of Thatcher’s legacy is a divisive inheritance about whether this ‘liberal’ approach to economic progress merely served to entrench privilege and patriarchy, rather than furthering the progress of women as independent economic agents.

(taken from the June issue of Green)

The grocer’s daughterClaire Hardy on our first female PM

Greater opportunityMS: What opportunities for staff will the new ways of working bring?GC: A larger and broader range of outputs will require us to be better at delegating; more junior staff need to be willing to rise to the challenge. There will be greater personal responsibility and accountability as well, with individuals being judged by the outcomes they achieve. We want to create a more permissive culture, which rewards initiative and encourages all our staff to develop their skills. We also need to be more systematic and consistent across the office so that we avoid reinventing the wheel and make the most of our knowledge and our skills. Ultimately we want to be more expert and speak with sufficient authority to secure lasting change in public services and for all our people to be confident in what the NAO can offer.

MS: When is this all going to happen?GC: 2013 is bringing big challenges – it will be a transformational year. The clusters are meeting now to decide how best to operate. But we must also maintain business as usual. By the autumn we will have fully integrated planning and from next April we expect to be fully implementing our new approach.

} We want to create a more permissive culture, which rewards initiative and encourages all our staff to develop their skills ~

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When I left the NAO in the summer of 2008 I thought I’d be spending most of my time doing next to nothing. Colleagues and friends told me “no way, you’ll carry on working in some way”.

At that time, it was hard to believe they could be right – after all, I was leaving the NAO some years past my prime (ahem) and moving to Brazil where I was unlikely to look for or find work. So my idea was to focus on making our new home, help raise our teenage daughter, improve my Portuguese, chill out a lot, and finally get our large collection of pre-digital photographs into a digital archive.

How wrong can you be? Friends were right, and I was wrong (not for the first time). But work came looking for me and not the other way around. This work has taken me in new directions, which might be of interest to NAO staff past and present.

While at the NAO I’d done various international assignments, including heading up a Quality Assurance Group for the development of government financial systems in Mozambique. After leaving the NAO, I received a request to do another QA mission in Mozambique, and then a separate invitation to do similar work in Rwanda. From there, I’ve continued to do other missions as an independent consultant in Mozambique and Rwanda, as well as Malaysia, Barbados, the Philippines and even in Rio de Janeiro (just across the bay from where we now live).

Over the next few months I’m scheduled to be doing missions in St Lucia, Nepal and probably another visit to Mozambique. The bulk of this work is for the International Monetary Fund, with some for the World Bank. For my sins, I’m now on the Fund’s roster of international experts (don’t laugh!).

I’ve been involved in reviewing major IT systems for public finances; advising DfID on its future support in Mozambique; helping Mozambique produce a first State Account compliant with IPSAS; reviewing Malaysia’s progress towards fiscal transparency; helping with consolidation of national accounts from both an accounting and statistical perspective, improving internal control in Brazilian state administration; and giving presentations to 200 or more Brazilians about public audit and accounting in the UK.

Little of this work is directly audit-related but there is no doubt that a long career in audit has helped. Technically my new field is called ‘Public Financial Management’ (or PFM in the new lingo I’m having to learn). The field spans all the disciplines associated with managing public money, but tends to focus on the holy trinity of “Budget, Treasury and Accounting”. What strikes you on entering this field is just how much we take these things for granted in the UK and other developed nations. But in developing nations, they’re vital steps on the road to greater control and transparency in public finances, the better use of limited public resources, and the fight against corruption. So they matter. You’ll notice that ‘audit’ is not in the holy trinity, but it is very definitely not forgotten. And there’s no doubt that international institutions

and donors are rapidly waking up to the power of good public audit as well as governance more generally.

The importance of being an auditorThe majority of the people working in this field are economists (reflecting the focus of the IMF and the World Bank, and the Finance Ministries which represent the biggest source of recruits to these two organisations). In this environment, therefore, accounting and auditing skills are much in demand, and sometimes needed as a pragmatic antidote to the stance taken by non-accountants. One example of the potential for different opinions is programme-based budgeting, where (many) non-accountants tend to the purist view that high-level programmes should be the principal axis for budgeting, control and accountability, whereas the more pragmatic accountant and auditor would favour retaining the Ministry or Agency as the main axis but with programmes as the second level of disaggregation. Exciting stuff, eh?

Seriously, though, disagreements about these sorts of matters can delay or divert much-needed financial management efforts by years, with the waste of precious resources. Similarly, many countries are looking to move from old colonial administrative systems, based on cash accounting, ‘budget execution’ and heavy but ineffective internal controls, to more ‘Anglo-Saxon’ models based on international accounting standards, a move towards accruals and greater reliance on external audit. And they need financial systems to support those reforms. Again, poor decisions and choices can cost years and significant scarce resources. You’ll also be struck by how these challenges now facing developing countries are ones which the UK and other developed countries faced only in the last few decade (or indeed still face today).

Joe Cavanagh on moving to Brazil

Busy doing nothing

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This second career of mine has taken me to new places and into new fields. I’ve had to learn or relearn lots of stuff about budgeting and accounting. I’ve had to remember and update my knowledge of financial IT systems. And I’ve had to learn a whole new vocabulary and set of abbreviations from the world of development assistance – PEFA, ROSC, MTEF, CPAR, FRA anyone? But there’s not much I’ve come across which is totally new to me, and the very varied experience you get with a career in the NAO has really helped. The disciplines of managing VFM studies and writing reports has also helped – it’s not always possible to work with the quality or depth of evidence that we might expect in the NAO, but it at least helps to differentiate between what is fact and what is supposition or surmise. In a two-week mission, you can’t always rely on hard evidence – and your impressions and judgements as a ‘seasoned’ professional are all you have to go on. Working with other professionals, from different fields and different countries, is also a learning experience.

The flip sideIf all this sounds great, then remember too that there can be drawbacks – not just being away from home for weeks, sometimes in places where you need to be conscious of security, possibly working alone, and sometimes also working with reluctant clients and difficult colleagues. Diplomacy and flexibility are very definitely needed. The work can be very intense when on mission – from breakfast to bedtime generally, since most days are meeting-oriented and the evening spent discussing or writing reports. For example, IMF missions tend to be two weeks’ long – one week fieldwork and most of the second week spent writing and discussing the report with the authorities: the Fund likes to leave their report with the government on the final mission day. We’re not talking five-page reports here – they can be 30–60 pages long. All that NAO training and practice at writing reports comes in very handy.

In line with my original objective of stopping full-time work, I’ve limited myself to doing about 10 –12 weeks a year on missions and maybe another five working at home, so I still get plenty of time to do other stuff.

MultilingualSo what about my other plans? Yes, my Portuguese has come on a lot – I now speak and work in Brazilian Portuguese, but I can also write reports in Brazilian or the Portuguese of Portugal (think of the difference between English and American and you get the idea, with similar scope for confusion). And in Rwanda, I ended up in unscheduled meetings which had to be conducted using my schoolboy French (it’s amazing what you can drag out of the recesses of memory when you have to). Spending more quality time with my teenage daughter has morphed into spending more time having quality arguments with her (many of you could probably have told me this would be the outcome). Digitizing our family archive is about 25 per cent complete (anyone else thinking of doing something similar should know that negatives or slides begin to deteriorate after a few years so it’s best done sooner than later). And the chilling out? You bet! Would I go back to full-time work? What do you think?

To finish, let me leave you with an invitation. One of the talks I’m giving, to auditors in Rio, is about trends in public audit over the last 30 years or so – in effect the chance to reflect on all I observed during my career (which started in 1975 – that’s soooo long ago). I started to think about how it might be possible to characterise both the internal and external changes affecting the NAO in that time, and how these could be captured under a few neat themes. Someday, all this will be history – for some readers it already is – but as far as I know there’s no record of it. I now have my own list of the themes which sum up my impressions of the last 30 years or so – what would your list look like? Maybe InTouch could ask other alumni (and indeed current staff of a certain age …) for their views.

} Yes, my Portuguese has come on a lot – I now speak and work in Brazilian Portuguese, but I can also write reports in Brazilian ~

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Recent reports

Financial management in governmentHC: 131, 2013-14

The National Audit Office has found signs of improvement in financial management within government, but concluded that the scale of the challenge for financial managers in government is stark.

The government’s fiscal consolidation programme is now expected to last longer than originally planned, and wide-ranging service reforms are being implemented. The role of financial managers is therefore critical to ensuring that opportunities to improve value for money are realised.

High Speed 2: A review of early programme preparationHC: 124, 2013-14

“It’s too early in the High Speed 2 programme to conclude on the likelihood of its achieving value for money. Our concern at this point is the lack of clarity around the Department’s objectives. The strategic case for the network should be better developed at this stage of the programme. It is intended to demonstrate the need for the line but so far presents limited evidence on forecast passenger demand and expected capacity shortages on existing lines. It is also unclear how High Speed 2 will transform regional economies by delivering jobs and growth. The Department is trying against a challenging timetable to strengthen its evidence and analysis, which at present provide a weak foundation for securing and demonstrating success in the programme in future.”

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, 16 May 2013

Capital funding for new school placesHC: 1042, 2012-13

This report found that 256,000 new school places still need to be provided by 2014/15 to meet increased need. Although the Department for Education has increased the funding it provides to local authorities and there has been a net increase of almost 81,500 primary school places in the last two years, there are indications of real strain on school places.

The rise in the number of children born in England between 2001 and 2011 was the largest ten-year increase since the 1950s, and led to increased demand for primary school places. Forecasts of the places needed are inevitably uncertain, but the demand is expected to increase beyond 2014/15.

The NAO found that although the Department has improved the information it uses to make decisions on what funds it allocates, and plans to collect further data about places created, it currently lacks sufficient information about how local authorities are using the funding they have already been given.

The Efficiency and Reform GroupHC: 956, 2012–13

The Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG) has helped departments make significant savings, according to a report by the National Audit Office. Overall, the NAO has confidence in the £5.5 billion of savings in 2011-12 attributed to the influence of ERG. However, there has not been enough focus so far on the sustainability of savings.

The report points out that ERG has been strongly led by the Minister for the Cabinet Office, while the Group’s close links with cabinet sub-committees have helped it to promote collective agreements across departments. ERG is also acting to improve the effectiveness of its relationships with departments but it recognises that its staff turnover, at 25 per cent a year, is too high, with particularly frequent changes at senior level.

Improving government procurementHC: 996, 2012-13

“The Cabinet Office will have to lead a major cultural shift across government if the centralising of buying goods and services is to deliver the significant benefits on offer.

“There are signs of real progress, but the success of the reforms cannot depend on whether departments choose to cooperate. Departments must commit as much of their procurement expenditure as possible to central contracts and the Government Procurement Service must be held accountable for its performance.”

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, 27 February 2013

NAO Annual Report and Accounts 2012-13The Annual Report highlights that, during 2012-13, we certified 437 accounts, published 63 value-for-money reports, supported 57 hearings of the Committee of Public Accounts and met our efficiency targets. Our recommendations and reports helped government improve public services, and our work led to audited savings of almost £1.2 billion.

Kindle, iPad and PDF versions of the Annual Report can be found on our web site: www.nao.org.uk/report/nao-annual-report-and-accounts-2012-13/

You can find more NAO reports on our website at www.nao.org.uk/publications

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With the popcorn popped, the Oscar statue under guard (even if it was plastic), the hosts all dolled-up in dickie bows and fancy frocks, it was time to dim the lights, cue the bombastic intro tune and start the dry ice. It was time for the third NAOSSA Film Quiz.Hosts Inna Goman and Karl Perrotton led 120 staff through a star-studded evening of film clips and questions over ten rounds. This year had a vague James Bond theme, celebrating 50 years of cinema’s most iconic spy with each of the 20 teams taking the name of a Bond movie. One team all came dressed for the part in tuxedos.

The ten rounds were an eclectic mix to meet all tastes (good but mainly bad) with some delightful gore, the eating of a live octopus, offensive language and of course a snake on a plane.

Teams were treated to the heartwarming Final Destination round where you had to guess how the on-screen character died. All hail Robocop! The keen audit mind was also tested in the general observation round sampled from the revered classic The Muppet’s Treasure Island.

But perhaps the best was saved till last, with the now traditional final round of clips composed of NAO staff re-enacting famous quotes and scenes. This year the Film Quiz team had significantly increased the production values and seriously lowered the difficulty – and the acting quality – of this round.

Taking the lead from the Jack Black movie Be Kind Rewind, clips were lovingly recreated with props, two dance routines and a number of NAO locales including the roof and a ladies toilet.

Making his regular appearance was that budding thespian and method actor Amyas Morse who even drew his own white cat to recreate a delightfully hammy Dr Evil!

The plastic Oscar and Amazon vouchers were won by Live and Let Die team: Ant Byrtus, Frazer Clark, Stephen Morffew, Hannah Robinson, Ian Cockburn and Hannah Simpson.

A good night was had by all if the wrestling APs and devastation of the ITRC empties were anything to go by. Stay tuned for more of the same in 2014.

(taken from the March issue of Green)

Organisers: Natalie Stewart and Dhruve Shah.

Film quizLIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!

Why did you join the Exchequer & Audit Department in the first place?I was interested in the policy side of government, but I also wanted to work with figures. The careers service at my university put these variables into their big computer, and out popped the E&AD. It turns out that nobody else does quite what we do.

Do you have a public service role model?It has to be Clement Attlee. He was an unassuming and undemonstrative man, whom you probably wouldn’t even notice in a crowd. But he ran the Home Front in World War II, and went on to lead the most reforming government that this country has ever had.

Which department has been most interesting to audit?They all have their interesting features, and it’s important to try and understand their view of the world if you want to do your job properly. But two stand out in particular. The Department of Health, because of its sheer scale – employing over a million and spending a couple of billion pounds a week. And the Office of Fair Trading, because of its similarity to the NAO. They too have an office in the middle of London, marshal a highly professional workforce on civil service style salaries, and frequently have to fight their corner.

What is your fondest Office memory?A few years ago, I was doing a VFM study on livestock tracking. I went out with a Ministry of Agriculture inspector in the Yorkshire Dales, on a bright spring morning, surrounded by snowy hilltops, to learn how to count sheep. We finished the day in a warm farmhouse kitchen, drinking tea and eating homemade fruitcake. Not the kind of day I expected when I joined.

What is the best place you have visited on official business?On official business, probably Sierra Leone. Being British makes you really popular because we helped pull them out of their recent Civil War. But the country is also very poor and there is an awful lot to do there, development-wise. On holidays, I found China absolutely fascinating.

It’s the fact that you can get on a plane to leave a city the size on London, in a province with the population of England, and then after a few hours land in another London-sized city in a province of 50 million people. And you can keep on doing that for day after day.

Do you have any good travel stories?We visited the British Embassy in Algiers in spring 2010, just before the Eyjafjallajökull volcano exploded and grounded flights all over Europe. We went into Trains, Planes and Automobiles mode, planning all sorts of inventive routes by which we might get home. But we knew the game was up when the pilot of the plane we were supposed to take arrived in the hotel bar and started lining up multiple beers. We finally got out on a French plane, and arrived back in BPR literally five minutes before our big meeting with Amyas (looking a little ruffled, and with a subtle hint of ash).

What is your proudest achievement in the job?On the Regulation area, we produced a report which suggested that water bills were too high. Ofwat used the report to reduce bills by almost £1 billion a year for people in England and Wales. That’s the kind of thing I hoped to achieve when I joined the Office.

Can you tell us something that we definitely won’t know about you?When I was living in Holland, I appeared on television as part of the first ever satellite link-up between Europe and the United States!

Talking of television, is it also true that you appeared on University Challenge?Yes, it is true. The series was filmed in Manchester, in the studios where they used to shoot Coronation Street. Our captain was a ducker-and-diver who went on to have an impressive career in merchant banking. He arranged a rather unusual deal with the television company, which involved them providing us with copious amounts of food and drink. We were lucky enough to win the competition too, so it was a very pleasant experience all round.

What was your most embarrassing moment at work?When I was a trainee, I worked in a building that we shared with the Ministry of Defence. It was a secure building, and we were encouraged to challenge strangers trying to enter the premises. At our Christmas party, a fellow trainee vigorously confronted a rather odd looking chap who was sneaking in behind us. It turned out to be our AAG, whom we had never seen before. Thank goodness that we now have a more visible Senior Management Team (and mugshots on Merlin).

Most recently, you have been working on Foreign Office and Regulation matters. Can you sum up, in a couple of sentences, what’s going on in those areas?On the former, the Foreign Office is facing two big issues – the Eurozone crisis and conflict in the Middle East. It is coping well, but is clearly stretched. One more crisis and they might really struggle – although I’m sure they will pull out all the stops to cope. On the latter, the government clearly wants to reduce the regulatory burden, but people in business aren’t noticing much change yet. The Better Regulation Executive is key to this process, and the new Minister for Business and Enterprise, Michael Fallon, is determined to succeed.

What will you miss most about the NAO?Definitely the licence to go out and ask all sorts of questions about interesting topics. Oh, and timesheets, of course!!

And finally… what are your plans for the future?I’m not absolutely sure yet. I’d like to do a bit of consulting, and also some kind of volunteering. I have DIY work to do around the house as well. It would be really nice to read a book for pleasure, rather than to build up knowledge on a subject. Just having some more time on my hands will be great, and we will use some of the time travelling – perhaps to the Americas. Let’s hope the volcano-with-the-funny-name keeps quiet for a while. (taken from the December issue of Green)

Q&ALast September, Chris Shapcott left the Office, having served the NAO and its predecessor the Exchequer & Audit Department, for 36 years. His final role was as VFM Director covering the Foreign Office and Regulation matters. We caught up with him on his very last day, and asked him a few questions.