A fictional Whitehall department has commissioned external consultants to investigate its worrying dependence on external consultants, after discovering that every attempt to reduce the bill begins with a proposal to increase it.
The winning presentation contained a photograph of a bridge, a circle divided into four colours and the phrase “building internal capability”, which officials found reassuring because none of them could build it internally.
“We need to understand how we got here,” said the department’s invented director of spending discipline. “Unfortunately, the people who understand how we got here are charging a day rate to explain.”
The first phase will map the current landscape. The second will identify the desired landscape. The third will explain why moving between landscapes requires a programme director, six workstreams and a person whose job title ends in Enablement.
Civil servants had suggested simply employing someone who knew how the system worked. This was rejected as a recurring cost, unlike the consultancy contract, which could be renewed indefinitely as a temporary measure.
An internal employee who remembered the previous review was initially invited to contribute, before it emerged that listening to her would duplicate an already commissioned discovery exercise.
She has instead been asked to prepare a handover document for the consultants. They will interview her about it, convert her answers into a slide deck and present the findings back to her manager on Thursday.
The department stressed that contract award values were not the same thing as money already spent. This distinction was welcomed by the Treasury, which has asked for the same arrangement to be applied to its sandwich budget.
Early findings suggest the department could make substantial savings by doing more work itself. Implementation support is available separately.
