Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many Departments have completed a Data Maturity Assessment as of 13 December 2023.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
Data Maturity is a recognised priority in central government departments. Departments are committed to completing a targeted Data Maturity Assessment of a strategically important part of the department within the year.
The Data Marketplace provides a front door to discover, share and deliver government data in a legal, ethical and trusted way. It passed its initial Alpha assessment in September and will be available as public Beta at the end of March 2024. We are currently working with a number of departments in private beta to develop the service. The Data Marketplace committed spend covering the period April 2022 to April 2024 is £6.7m with a further £4m forecast in the following financial year, 2024/25.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the cost to the public purse was of developing and implementing the Data Marketplace.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
Data Maturity is a recognised priority in central government departments. Departments are committed to completing a targeted Data Maturity Assessment of a strategically important part of the department within the year.
The Data Marketplace provides a front door to discover, share and deliver government data in a legal, ethical and trusted way. It passed its initial Alpha assessment in September and will be available as public Beta at the end of March 2024. We are currently working with a number of departments in private beta to develop the service. The Data Marketplace committed spend covering the period April 2022 to April 2024 is £6.7m with a further £4m forecast in the following financial year, 2024/25.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the Answer of 20 November 2023 to Question 1894 on Electronic Government: Proof of Identity, how his Department plans to expand GOV.UK One Login customer and technical support operations.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The GOV.UK One Login programme is continuing to expand its customer and technical support, as planned. In addition to a new contact centre that provides real-time multi-channel assistance to users, GOV.UK One Login recently launched an enhanced technical service desk with round-the-clock monitoring and support for more complex technical issues. We regularly review user demand, performance levels and customer feedback to optimise operational capacity, using automation where appropriate to ensure high quality and efficient service provision. GOV.UK One Login has robust security and resilience measures in place to keep users’ data safe.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the Answer of 4 December 2023 to Question 4170 on Fraud: Coronavirus, what proportion of the recovered £88 million is designated as (a) fraud and (b) error.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The UK government is proud of its record in proactively seeking to find and prevent more fraud in the system and has invested over an extra £1bn in tackling fraud and error since Autumn 2021 across government. This includes the launch of the Public Sector Fraud Authority in August 2022 which builds on lessons learned in the management of fraud risk and loss in the pandemic.
The government’s ‘Cross-Government Fraud Landscape Annual Report 2022’ showed that at the end of March 2021 there had been £88.2m of fraud and error recovered within COVID-19 schemes (excluding HMRC-administered COVID-19 schemes and any fraud and error related to tax and welfare). Of this, £19.6m was reported by departments as fraud and £68.6m was reported as error. These figures only represent 2020-2021 data, since then, further funds have been recovered.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how much the Government spent on external recruitment consultants in each of the financial years (a) 2020-21, (b) 2021-22, and (c) 2022-23.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
This information is not centrally held. Every department is responsible for their own consultancy spend with governance, assurance and control over budgets to ensure value for money.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will publish the Public Sector Fraud Authority's most recent estimate of the amount of fraud associated with the Covid-19 pandemic which has been recovered as of 28 November 2023.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The government continues to prioritise ongoing work to provide estimates of the value of detected and prevented fraud associated with the pandemic. The 2022 Fraud Landscape Report showed that in 2020/21, across government and outside of tax and welfare, the Fraud Landscape Report has reported £88m of recovered fraud and error related to COVID-19. However since then further funds have been recovered and further efforts to recover funds is ongoing. More uptodate figures will be published in due course.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will publish the Public Sector Fraud Authority's most recent estimate of the value of fraud associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
It was only right that the Government and local authorities stepped up to support the country in unprecedented times during the pandemic – saving businesses and the jobs they create.
The Government is committed to transparency in its efforts to tackle fraud against the public sector. The UK is one of the few countries to estimate fraud and error within the public sector and to openly publish this estimate. The Government also continues to prioritise ongoing work to provide estimates of the value of detected and prevented fraud associated with the pandemic. In 2021, the Government recovered a total of £88m from fraud and error relating to COVID-19 support schemes.
The 2022 Fraud Landscape Report showed that in 2020/21, across government, detected fraud amounted to £54m within COVID-19 specific schemes.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how much his Department has spent on the (a) development and (b) implementation of the GOV.UK One Login.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The GOV.UK One Login programme’s total budget for the three years from 2022/23 to 2024/25 is £305.4 million. Of this, the programme is forecasting expenditure of £132.7m on the development and roll out of the system by the end of the current financial year.
Over 1.5 million users have successfully used GOV.UK One Login to access services. The programme will help save over £700 million over the next three years, as well as people’s time and effort.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the policy paper entitled Transforming for a digital future: 2022 to 2025 roadmap for digital and data, published on 28 September 2023, what is included within the service performance framework developed by the Central Digital and Data Office.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
In its 2022-2025 Roadmap for Digital and Data, the Government committed that by 2025, at least 50 of government’s top 75 identified services will move to a ‘great’ standard, against a consistent measure of service performance.
The framework, developed by the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) in the Cabinet Office, in consultation with departments, has quantitative and qualitative elements to assess the end-to-end service, and focuses on usability, efficiency, and compliance. The metrics used to measure these are:
Usability:
Digital adoption - proportion of transactions completed online
Digital completion - proportion that are start online are completed
User satisfaction - proportion of users that are satisfied
Efficiency:
Cost per transaction - the cost to provide the service including staffing, technology and operational costs
Compliance:
Accessibility - whether it meets legal accessibility requirements
These quantitative measures are consistently assessed using a benchmark of government services and industry standards to provide a robust assessment. Additional data and context can be included through qualitative assessment to ensure a complete and accurate assessment.
Further information on the framework has been published at
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to his Department's policy paper entitled Transforming for a digital future: 2022 to 2025 roadmap for digital and data, published on 28 September 2023, whether it remains his policy to expand customer and technical support operations to facilitate the scaling up of gov.uk UK One Login.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The GOV.UK One Login programme has recently expanded its customer support offering with the launch of a contact centre to provide real-time multi-channel assistance to users. Alongside this, One Login will shortly roll out an enhanced technical service desk to provide round-the-clock monitoring and technical support. Both of these initiatives will be scaled up over time as more government services and users onboard to GOV.UK One Login.