It is startling to see, on the government’s own figures, how far expenditure on office services varies between departments. The data published in departments’ business plan annexes seems to show, for example, that while it costs HMRC £6,073 per year to supply each staff member with an office, a computer and HR support, the Treasury – a supposed champion of efficiency in government – pays £14,294 for the same essential services (see news and Special Report).

The Treasury is carrying a huge estates cost – due in part to a costly, PFI-funded refurbishment – which it’s now trying to reduce. But these figures tell a story that dwarfs such excuses: with money in such short supply, it must be unacceptable for one department to spend 135 per cent more than another on such basic operating requirements.

Those taking a stand to denounce profligacy at Treasury, however, would quickly find the ground moving beneath their feet. For at the core of our latest Special Report is one key finding: that the quality of departments’ management data, and the ways in which they collect and present it, varies just as much as their back office costs. The data in many departments’ ‘business plans’ is so poor, and its value so undermined by varying collection methods, definitions and calculations, that any actual business presenting it to potential investors would be laughed all the way to the receiver’s office.

The obvious conclusion is that, as things stand, the Cabinet Office’s drive for greater transparency is likely to be more confusing than it is enlightening. As NAO chief Amyas Morse has warned, publishing flawed or non-comparable data risks channelling the debate in unproductive directions, as unjustly maligned departments are forced to disown their own statistics while the identity of the real offenders remains hidden. Indeed, in researching this Special Report we found some departments deliberately undermining their own figures – with spokespeople saying they “didn’t recognise” them or decrying them as unaudited – while the majority preferred not to talk about them at all.

For a government noisily committed to greater Whitehall transparency, this is not a pretty picture. Perhaps, as the Cabinet Office’s director of transparency Tim Kelsey hopes, forcing departments to publish their data will so embarrass them that they invest in improving it. But solo action by individual departments will barely improve the situation: the biggest problem is not inaccuracies in the data, but variable methods of collecting, defining and calculating key indicators.

This is where the Cabinet Office and Treasury come in. Both are trying to improve departments’ management data – and it is crucial that, as they do so, they align it. This may require a stronger push from the centre than has been evident so far, but the reward would be worthwhile: robust, comparable, cross-Whitehall data providing the basis for sensible decisions about shared services, capital investments and process reforms.

The coalition’s transparency agenda has sensible motivations; unfortunately, the outcomes are not living up to expectations. Hopefully, Tim Kelsey is right, and publication will force improvement – but for this to enable better comparisons to be made across Whitehall, faster and more robust action is required by those at the centre of government.

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Written by Matt Ross, CSW