Cabinet Office Business Plan Quarterly Data Summary

The Government has published the Business Plan Quarterly Data Summaries (QDS) The QDS are designed to fit on a single page to provide a quarterly snapshot on how each department is spending its budget, the results it has achieved and how it is deploying its workforce. The QDS follows commitments made at Budget 2011 and the Written Ministerial Statement on Business Plans. Their primary purpose is to make more of the management information currently held by government available to members of the public on a regular basis. This information is not audited and the quality and accuracy of the data needs to dramatically improve. However, over time with improvements in data quality and timeliness the public will be able to judge the performance of each department in a meaningful and understandable manner. We intend for an annual version of this information to be formally laid in Parliament in the Annual Report and Accounts for July 2011/12 onwards. The information is presented in excel format to allow the information to be presented in a re-usable format. The QDS template is the same for all departments, though many of the individual indicators are unique to the department (especially input and impact indicators). This is the first time Government has published this kind of information, and while this is a good start, there is room for improvement. Before using this data people should ensure they take full note of the caveats noted in each Department’s measurement annex and treat with necessary caution. At the moment, people should not be using this data to make direct comparisons between departments for several reasons. Firstly, the business of each department is unique and it does not make sense to compare some measures across all departments. Secondly, many of the measures are not directly comparable because they do not have common definitions, time periods, or data collection processes. We will be updating regularly the QDS each quarter with the next publication following in October 2011.英国政府已发布《商业计划季度数据摘要》（Business Plan Quarterly Data Summaries，QDS）。 QDS旨在以单页篇幅呈现，为公众提供各部门预算支出、履职成果及人力资源配置的季度快照。 QDS契合2011年预算案与《商业计划书面大臣声明》所作出的承诺，其核心目标是定期向公众公开更多政府当前持有的管理信息。 此类信息未经审计，数据质量与准确性亟待大幅提升。不过随着数据质量与时效性的持续优化，公众将能够以清晰易懂且兼具意义的方式评判各部门的履职表现。 我们计划自2011/12财年7月起，将该信息的年度版本正式提交议会，纳入年度报告与账目之中。 此类信息以Excel格式发布，以确保其采用可复用的格式进行呈现。 所有部门的QDS模板统一，但多数单项指标仅适用于对应部门，尤其是投入类与影响类指标。 这是英国政府首次发布此类信息，虽为良好开端，但仍存在较大改进空间。公众在使用该数据前，应充分研读各部门计量附件中列明的免责提示，并秉持审慎态度。 当前，公众不应使用此类数据进行部门间的直接对比，原因如下：其一，各部门业务属性各异，对部分指标进行跨部门对比缺乏实际意义；其二，多数指标因未统一定义、统计周期及数据采集流程，无法直接进行横向比较。 我们将按季度定期更新QDS，下一期发布将于2011年10月推出。