Ms Caroline O'Loughlin:

That must be addressed within the scrutiny when they appear at committees. As was said, and we have had this conversation at previous meetings of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight, the public service performance report is an excellent tool for transparency and accountability of how public expenditure is allocated, and how impactful that is. A big part of that is to do with the scrutiny of that and how this information is used. When the Departments appear before the committees this information should be looked at and the Departments should be challenged. That is part of it. They must be asked why they picked the metrics, if they are the most appropriate ones, and what do they actually tell.

Reference was made earlier to the quality of accessibility of the information. When we are collecting this information and working with the Departments to get it, we very much keep in mind that this cannot be information that is so technical that only people with financial expertise can access it. We make sure that the information is targeted at the general citizen, so that he or she can understand what is being done with that, and at the people such as those on this committee, who are challenged with scrutinising that. Again, these are people who may not be financial experts. A huge part of our work is to make sure that this information is very accessible.

There are two points within the budgetary cycle where performance budgeting is captured. One is in the Revised Estimates Volume, which is published each December. As we know, this is a very data-heavy document. It is not the most appealing read for somebody to pick up. We do a lot of work in the public service performance report to make sure that this information is as accessible as possible. We have spoken with this committee previously about the structure of that. We take back feedback from all committees and stakeholders, and particularly from this committee, on how that information should be captured so that it is a tool in the dialogue and the scrutiny of public expenditure. Every year we try to ensure that this best serves this purpose.