Government Departments: Information Officers

(asked on 23rd March 2021) - View Source

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the restructuring of Government communications, what criteria were used in setting the expected maximum figure of 30 communications staff per Department.


Answered by
Julia Lopez Portrait
Julia Lopez
Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
This question was answered on 13th April 2021

The Reshaping Government Communication Service programme will further strengthen and unify the Government Communication Service (GCS), to be an even more effective and efficient service. Cabinet Office is leading the programme and working closely with ministerial departments and other public sector bodies. The programme has completed its discovery phase and is in its design phase, both of which will contribute to the outline business case and will help to identify the potential savings.

All communications staff are considered to be in scope for the RGCS programme. Last year, we received some initial data from departments and Arms Length Bodies, however more work will be done over the coming months to gather the necessary data to inform decision making.

The Cabinet Office has confirmed that its intention is for departments to have core teams for press, social media and rebuttal. We are working with departments to consider what a streamlined service could look like, in order to support statutory, operational or programme delivery.

Cabinet Office is continuously tracking and reviewing spending on cross-government campaigns, to ensure our communications are efficient. We will not spend more than is needed to be effective. Cabinet Office publishes expenditure on government communication spend, including our national campaigns, on a rolling monthly basis on gov.uk as part of routine government transparency arrangements at the link below:

www.gov.uk/government/collections/cabinet-office-spend-data.

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