In 2004, the Government announced 110 Public Service Agreement (PSA) targets for 17 Departments covering the period 2005-08. PSA targets express the priority outcomes that Departments are seeking to achieve nationally and internationally, and cover key aspects of the Government's social, economic and environmental policy. Large sums of public money are devoted to the programmes designed to deliver them. This NAO report summarises the results of its examination of the data systems used by six government departments to monitor and report progress against their 2005-08 PSA targets, covering a total of 65 data systems. The six Departments are: the Cabinet Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Education and Skills, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Ministry of Defence and HM Treasury. Findings include that 75 per cent of the data systems used are broadly appropriate, but less than half of these were fully fit for purpose. Most required some action to strengthen measurement or reporting arrangements. A companion volume (HCP 127-II, session 2006-07, ISBN 0102944083) is available separately which contains the NAO's detailed findings.

In 2004, the Government announced 110 Public Service Agreement (PSA) targets for 17 Departments covering the period 2005-08. PSA targets express the priority outcomes that Departments are seeking to achieve nationally and internationally, and cover key aspects of the Government's social, economic and environmental policy. Large sums of public money are devoted to the programmes designed to deliver them. This NAO report summarises the results of its examination of the data systems used by twelve government departments to monitor and report progress against their 2005-08 PSA targets, covering a total of 237 data systems. Overall Departments have successfully taken steps to improve the quality of their data systems. There are still improvements that can be made to increase the relevance and reliability of data used in the reporting process. The NAO makes a number of recommendations on specification of data systems, their operation, and the reporting of data. A companion volume (HCP 22-I, ISBN 9780102951615) is available separately which contains the NAO's summarised findings.

In this report the Committee recommends amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill to ensure that private (or voluntary) sector care homes which accommodate publicly-funded residents are brought within the scope of the Human Rights Act. It also calls on the Government to implement recommendations in its earlier report on the human rights of older people in health care (HL 156-I/HC 378-I, session 2006-07, ISBN 9780104011447). The Committee's concerns arise from the meaning of "public function" and "public authority" in the Human Rights Act. It believes it was clear that Parliament intended the Act's requirement of public authorities to act compatibly with the European Convention on Human Rights to cover private-sector providers of publicly-funded services, and is disappointed that the Government has deferred a decision on a new statute to reinstate the original intention of the Act.

Fines are the most common sentence imposed by Magistrates' courts in England and Wales, covering a range of crimes including motoring offences, drug offences, criminal damage and TV licence evasion. In the year 2004-05, penalties totalling £352 million were imposed, with £75 million cancelled and £222 million collected. Following on from an earlier report (HCP 672, session 2001-02, ISBN 0102914508) published in 2002, the NAO has examined whether the changes made in practices and procedures have resulted in improvements to the enforcement and collections of fines. It is estimated that a 25 per cent reduction in the number of legally cancelled fines would result in potential savings of £6.9 million per year and prompter payment of fines would yield further annual savings of almost one million pounds. Although a series of measures have been introduced by the Department for Constitutional Affairs to improve the system, over two thirds of the cases examined required enforcement action before the offender made any payments. A number of recommendations for further improvements are made, including in relation to developing performance indicators; prompter collection of fines, including making payment facilities (including cash) available at each court; focusing staff resource allocation on the early stages of enforcement; and addressing IT problems caused by the delay of the Libra system

This report sets out interim assessments of the progress made by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) against its Public Service Agreement (PSA) performance targets as agreed in the 2004 Spending Review, together with progress against the Department's efficiency target and the outstanding targets from the 2002 Spending Review. This report is supplementary to the Departmental Report 2006 (Cm. 6812, ISBN 0101681224).

This report is one of a series of studies by the NAO which examine key factors involved in improving project performance in defence equipment procurement, with the aim of establishing best practice in relation to a theoretical 'gold standard' developed by assessing and comparing results of overseas and commercial operations. Following on from the first report in the series (HCP 30, session 2005-06, ISBN 0102932611) which identified the contract as a key component of project control, this report sets out recommendations on how the Ministry of Defence and its industry partners can best use the contract to maximise the likelihood of successful project outcomes. (It does not examine methods (competitive or otherwise) the MoD might pursue to select a potential supplier, as the effective use of competition will be the subject of a future report). More information on the evidence underlying the recommendations in this report and the gold standard criteria developed can be found on the website: www.naodefencevfm.org

This NAO report examines sick leave in the National Probation Service, which was running at 12.3 days per person in the 2004-05 period at a cost of £31.6 million. A number of recommendations have been set out as follows. That the National Probation Directorate should agree with the Chief Probation Officer a consistent minimum standard for collecting and reporting sickness absence data in their areas. This in turn could be used to produce comparative analyses, and offer a basis to diagnose the causes of sickness absence. An upgrade in some areas of their information technology systems should occur, so that better management information can be compiled. All probation areas should implement the mandatory elements of the national policy on sickness absence. All Chief Officers should review their action plans for reducing sickness absence. Sickness absence should be managed effectively but sympathetically, by including return to work interviews, along with a means of distinguishing between avoidable and unavoidable sickness absences, and addressing the culture of absenteeism. Long term sickness absence should be reviewed as a matter of urgency. Policies relating to work/life balance should be implemented nationally.