The Assembly Government’s Making the Connections agenda sets out a vision for a prosperous, sustainable, bilingual, healthier and better-educated Wales. There are four guiding principles:
- citizens at the centre;
- public engagement;
- working together as the Welsh public sector;
- value for money.
Our role
The Wales Audit Office has an important role to play in helping the Welsh public sector to achieve these aims, so the Auditor General has established an ongoing programme of work which focuses on the Making the Connections agenda. The work we have done so far and that we plan to do is detailed below.
Baseline assessment
In 2007 we carried out a baseline review to assess how the Welsh public sector was implementing the Making the Connections agenda. These findings were reported to individual organisations in August 2007 and summarised in their Annual Letters.
Efficiency savings
In Making the Connections, the Assembly Government set a target of £600 million worth of efficiency savings to be made across the Welsh public sector between the financial years of 2005/06 and 2009/10.
We reviewed the efficiency gains declared by local government bodies for 2005-06 and the efficiency gains declared by all other public sector bodies for both 2005-06 and 2006-07.
Links to case studies detail efficiency gains from the Good Practice Exchange case studies library are provided below.
 Gwynedd Local Health Board out of hours service for neighbouring Local Health Boards
Dyfed Powys Police: preventative occupational health
Monmouthshire County Council: school transport service
Countryside Council for Wales: Green Dragon, environmental management system
North Glamorgan NHS Trust: Reducing travel costs
Denbighshire County Council: Accident and emergency vehicle kit
South Wales Fire and Rescue: Provision of Fleet Services
Pembrokeshire County Council: School Transport Costs - Note this is in our Shared Learning Forum for public sector and requires login. Please email goodpractice@wao.gov.uk if you require login details.
Asset Management
The public sector in Wales owns assets worth around £30 billion. These assets are wide and varied in terms of their type, location value and age, with many older assets no longer fit for purpose. This is an area where significant efficiency savings could be made.
We are conducting a review of asset management across the whole public sector. We will be examining four different types of assets over a four year period:
2008 – Fleet Management
2009 – Buildings Management
2010 – Management of Plant, Equipment and Machinery
2011 – Management of IT assets
Fleet Management
In 2008, we looked at how 50 different organisations in Wales managed their fleets of vehicles. We wanted to establish whether the Welsh public sector is ensuring that its approach to fleet management is making the best use of resources.
We reported back to each organisation on how they were doing. Our findings are summarised in a national briefing report, which was published, and presented to the National Assembly’s Audit Committee, in October 2008.
We fed back our findings to public sector fleet managers - via a series of practical workshops – known as Shared Learning Seminars. We also held a national fleet management conference at Cardiff’s SWALEC stadium, in November 2008.
Our work uncovered lots of examples of good practice, which is on the Good Practice Exchange section of our website – along with practical tools and advice on how to manage a fleet effectively.
Buildings Management
We are currently carrying out the next phase of our work - on buildings management, and have begun the fieldwork stage. We also set up a stakeholder group to support the development and implementation of this study.
If you would like to submit a good practice case study on effective buildings management, please get in touch.
Further details will be posted on our website as key elements of the project are completed.
Contact details
If you would like any further information about our work on Making the Connections, please contact either Kevin Thomas (Engagement Partner) on 01244 525981 or at kevinp.thomas@wao.gov.uk or Geraint Norman (Project Manager) on 01267 242036 or at geraint.norman@wao.gov.uk.
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