3.3 In mid-2015 the Cabinet Office responded to evidence of continuing weakness in CCS's service delivery by appointing a consultant, who previously led the buying functions for large, private sector organisations, to review CCS operations and reset the way that CCS carries out its business. The review took around six months. It involved a series of interviews and workshops with CCS and departmental staff and analysed the services CCS provides.
3.4 The review found that CCS performed inefficiently and had not yet been set on strong foundations. It found that CCS:
• carried out services that CCS considered could not be performed efficiently or effectively in a central buying organisation
For example, in some instances CCS had agreed to approve purchase orders and state that services had complied with contracts. However, CCS had no way of verifying that services were consistent with contracts;
• engaged with customers in ways that were inconsistent and often unclear
For example, the review found that CCS did not follow its own protocols for engaging with customers and that most CCS employees engaged with customers in ad hoc ways;
• focused on compliance with procurement rules
CCS had not taken the opportunities offered by recent changes to the rules, which allowed for more flexible processes and more commercially focused behaviours;
• produced management information in ways that were inefficient and unreliable
CCS prepared more than 280 reports a month, many of which relied on manual processes, requiring input from the equivalent of 70 full-time employees; and
• had support roles such as programme management, change and transformation spread throughout the organisation
This limited CCS's ability to manage projects and change activities effectively.