Speeches by Hall.

“Given that not everyone has experience in this area, do you think that people understand where there are issues and where there could be wastage? For instance, we talk about legacy systems at a lot of our hearings. To me, it feels a bit of a mire—a bit of a jungle. There seems to be a lack of ownership, and people do n…”

“I guess it comes down to ownership—to who is responsible for driving this forwards—and monitoring. You mentioned best practice and benchmarking on an annual basis, but would it not be better to do it at an active management level, working alongside and supporting Departments as much as possible? A lot of Departments do…”

“On a more granular level, the NAO Report gives examples of techniques like job costing, process costing and activity-based costing. These are things that are happening in the private sector. Are they things that could be passported over?”

“Thank you, Chair. I want to focus a bit more on the benefits of understanding the costs of services. We know that identifying the drivers of the costs gives us the basis for understanding the full cost of the services. With that in mind, and looking at how we realise those benefits, what are the quick wins to give a se…”

“That is what needs to be monitored. I fear that that has not been monitored in the past, or not as closely as it could have been, and that is why we are at this point.”

“Will it be monitored quite closely?”

“Sorry to interrupt—it is great that the information is going to be disseminated, but lots of information is disseminated. Where is the accountability? How do we know that people are actively listening and acting on this?”

“Again, it comes down to support of the Departments. You have mentioned the work going on with the legacy systems, but will there be a hands-on level of support for all the Departments going through these processes? Will you ask them, “Have you considered this area or this area?” and provide that support?”

“A lot of the transformation work and efficiencies are around AI. We will not be able to do any of that while we have legacy systems in place that are not giving us the good data we need to move forwards.”

“With a culture change this significant, having that wraparound support is going to be absolutely critical.”

“To carry on with my favourite topic—legacy systems—what practical improvements are needed in data capture and collection, Bonnie and Andrew?”

“One of the issues I hear about is that a lot of the information is very siloed at the moment—it is based in the Department and not cross-departmental. Is that going to be changed down the line? It would obviously cut down a lot of time, for instance.”

“Realistically, how long will those improvements take?”

“It is not just sharing; it is capture and collection. It is the whole thing.”

“You must be working towards something, though. You must have an ambition as to when this needs to fit together.”

“I suppose the faster you can do it, the more you can benefit from and utilise a lot of the AI. A lot of the legacy systems, as we said before, and data are not usable at the moment. You said that there is a road map, and that is great, but we really need to focus on having those milestones to work towards rather than a…”

“We have talked about improving reporting and disclosures in order to increase transparency, but I wanted to focus on smaller bodies. The NAO Report highlights how important it is that financial reporting requirements are proportionate. Matthew, how will you make sure that this is proportionate for smaller bodies?”

“They understand that there is a cost, but is about fairness, is it not?”

“They do not want a big shock.”

“How do you make sure that future users are not unfairly affected when recovering deposits?”