Charities will be subject to nearly £3bn in cuts over the next four years, according to research from the National Council of Voluntary Organisations (NCVO).
Using government figures, the report, Counting the Cuts, found that the voluntary sector will lose around £911m in public funding every year by 2015-16. Distribution of the cuts will not be spread evenly with some areas of the sector being hit harder than others. Budgets for the Department for Health and Department for International Development, for example, have been protected, while others, such as the Department for Communities and Local Government, have not.
DFID's budget has been ringfenced but other government departments are not so lucky. Pic credit: Vicki Francis / DFID
"Putting an authoritative figure on the extent of the cuts has been like trying to pin jelly to the wall. Estimates have varied widely and this report provides a solid baseline figure based on the governments own figures," said Karl Wilding, head of policy and research at NCVO. "Many charities are unwilling to speak out for fear they will jeopardise other funding streams but we currently fact the perfect storm of an increase in demand and nearly £3bn public sector cuts - this is a significant cause for concern."
The research also found that there is significant variance in the way different parts of government and local authorities implement cuts. Many local authorities are making long-term strategic decisions in partnership with their local voluntary and community organisations, while others are making severe and disproportionate cuts that are having an adverse affect on charities' ability to deliver services.
Also read: Coping with the cuts
Central government shloud make policy and set the rules by which services are delivered. It is also very likely to deliver a large number of them (by virtue of trust, security or scale issues). I will not stray here into commentary on how it shloud make policy that is more a matter of political style and judgement in my opinion.The mechanics of delivery will also be hugely complex, with public and private sector participation both playing significant roles. Again, there is no single, trite answer in a forum such as this to who does what'.I will however suggest a few tips: government needs to get better at assessing what can and cannot be achieve in practice using digital services. There is no end of theoretical modelling that will show us how x transaction can be reengineered in y ways to deliver z savings. But apply that theory to the reality of 60m citizens with an almost infinite variety of personal circumstances, motivations and behaviours and previous solid business cases start to crumble. It is extremely unlikely, in my view, that a mechanism can ever be constructed which will allow for single sign-on to a trusted relationship with lots of areas of government at the same time, such that meaningful and useful transactions can be carried out. The drawbacks and pitfalls scale much, much faster than the benefits. I can draw you a theoretical model of how a single identity and PIN could do the job, but I wouldn't be able to implement it (even accounting for the fact that much of what we understand about rights and privacy would have to fundamentally change to do so). But that is a much deeper debate than suits this comment box.Rather than barking up the same old trees, government needs to improve in other disciplines I'll offer two for consideration. 1. Smart service design whereby real-world cases, cutting across many departmental areas of responsibility, are used as a starting point for developing solutions. Strong leadership, to ensure that such smarter services can be pushed through to delivery, even where this means some flex in departmental ownership, or amendment to policy. And 2. Risk assessment simply replicating offline services online doesn't work. We know this. Much is changed simply by the act of providing a service in a remote, anonymous, scalable and rapid channel, such as the web. Reliance on old forms of friction', such as the filling in of complex forms, or the use of a physical signature, don't have the same meaning in a digital channel. Risks, of fraud or error, need to be wholly reevaluated in light of the digital channel.Directgov's flagship service, still after more than 5 years the car tax renewal, works so well because of decisions like this. There is no requirement to go through an elaborate identity-proving process every time you buy a tax disc. What's the worst that could happen, really? You might buy a disc for someone else? Wow. And the car itself is oblivious to the fact that its details are being shared across MOT, insurance and DVLA databases. It's a car. It doesn't care. It's because almost every other service is about a person that makes them so difficult, and the tax disc magic so hard to repeat. And although, generally, we need to be sure that someone is entitled to the services they claim and that appropriate data sharing safeguards are observed I still feel there is more that could be done in assessing service risk in a way appropriate to the channel being used.Full disclosure: as per Question 1.
8/23/2012 12:30:59 AM