Intelligent monitoring

New practical guidance published by the National Audit Office will save charities and other voluntary and community organisations time and money by reducing the paperwork they are currently required to collect when providing public sector-commissioned services.

Guidance

The guidance, published by the NAO along with the Office of the Third Sector (OTS) in the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury, will help government cut paperwork while still enabling it to monitor the £12 billion it gives to charities, voluntary and community organisations and social enterprises each year.  OTS has also unveiled principles for the monitoring of funding for the third sector.

Charities that receive public funding have to account to government funders for how they have spent this money and should show the impact they have achieved with it. The cost of producing this information, however, must be proportionate to the risks and benefits involved. Cutting unnecessary red tape can free up time and money that would be better spent focusing on the key services charities and others provide. The term for achieving this balance and avoiding poor practice is ‘intelligent monitoring’.

The NAO guidance, Intelligent Monitoring, provides practical, step-by-step help for government funders - . Alongside this, the OTS has launched its Principles of proportionate monitoring and reporting . The aim of the principles and guidance is to lessen the unnecessary burden of monitoring on charities, social enterprises and voluntary organisations and help them and departments gain better value from it.  The OTS’ principles commit government departments to understanding the cost of reporting for third sector organisations and to working closely with them when establishing monitoring requirements.  The principles will apply to all new funding streams.

Rob Prideaux, director of Third Sector Value for Money studies at the NAO, said:

“Government departments have a responsibility to make sure that public money is being spent properly. However, when monitoring goes from being a safeguard to a hindrance to those delivering services, often to the most disadvantaged in our society, it no longer provides value for money.  The aim of this practical guidance, which supports OTS’s new principles on monitoring, is to help Government, taxpayers, the third sector and service users to benefit from better and more reasonable monitoring of expenditure.”

About NAO

The NAO is totally independent of Government and audits the accounts of all government departments and a wide range of other public sector bodies.  The head of the  NAO, the Comptroller and Auditor General, has statutory authority to report to Parliament on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness with which departments and other bodies have used their resources.

Further information

See NAO's website for further information about Intelligent Monitoring.