Departmental Business Plans

Monday 11th June 2012 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Oliver Letwin)]

On 31 May the Government published an updated set of departmental business plans.

Each Department’s business plan sets out:

its departmental priorities;

the actions it will undertake to fulfil its priorities and when it will take these actions;

Its expenditure for each year of the spending review; and

the indicators and other data it will publish on the cost and impact of the public services for which it is responsible.

The form and structure of the business plans has been improved from the previous versions in the following ways:

a new annex has been added showing each Department’s contributions to cross-cutting agendas including growth, social mobility, sustainable development, efficiency, open public services, the red tape challenge and the civil society compact;

the structural reform plan sections are more focused on actions that contribute to the Government’s reform agenda; activity representing “business as usual” has been moved to an annex; and

the information strategy section has been replaced by a summary of each Department’s open data strategy, which will be published in full later this summer.

We are also improving the way that progress against the plans is reported. We have updated the business plans website, available at: http://transparency.number10. gov.uk/, so that it is clearer, more informative and easier to use. The information will also be published in open formats, so that users will be able to analyse the data more easily.

A full list of the changes to each of the departmental structural reform plans and input and impact indicators contained in the business plans can be found at:

http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/department-business-plans-updated-2012/