UK government departments not sold on shared services strategy, NAO report finds

Data quality

While the Cabinet Office has developed a portfolio dashboard for the programme, which aims to give quarterly information on progress, it cannot enforce timely and accurate returns. “As a result, the quality and completeness of data provided by clusters and other programme owners varies significantly, limiting the usefulness of the dashboard,” the report said.

It also highlighted issues around expectations and buy-in. While all departments are supportive of the strategy in principal, “buy-in from departments that are current cloud users is not clear, creating some uncertainty for the overall strategy”.

This includes both HM Treasury and the Department for Education (DfE), both of which are in the Matrix cluster and have modern ERPs in place already.

According to the NAO, both departments would like more information about the likely costs for them before assessing whether implementing the new system would be value for money.

“Cabinet Office has stated that it does not consider departments joining shared services optional, and that departments cannot make the decision to move or leave a cluster without assessing value for money across government, nor the impact on the business case,” the report said.

It added that while Cabinet Office believes its messaging about arm’s-length bodies (ALBs) being onboarded, clusters and departments had told the NAO otherwise.

However, while Cabinet Office oversees the strategy, it lacks the mandate to compel departments to comply, and there is no single authority in government responsible for successful delivery of the programme.

“Clusters and their member departments are at different stages of planning for the onboarding of their ALBs and existing plans do not include all ALBs,” the report said. “Onboarding of ALBs will be a big additional step, and one that will require careful planning.”

Funding, integration and governance issues

As part of the programme, the government started an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) transformation programme to replace the civil service recruitment platform. However, the programme struggled with a lack of adoption from the clusters. Between 2023 and 2025, several of the five shared services clusters raised concerns about ATS.

As of November 2025, some clusters were still unable to make key design decisions due to the interdependencies between systems. The ATS programme itself was reset in October 2025.

Another issue is governance. With no single owner of the programme, despite departments being mandated to do so, buy-in is uncertain, and the timelines set by the government are at risk.

“The absence of a strong technical lead has resulted in inconsistent ERP configurations and data convergence, undermining interoperability and data standards,” the report said. “When combined with fragmented governance of interdependencies, this creates a real risk that the strategy will not be delivered to time or budget.

“Unless these gaps are addressed urgently, the government will not achieve the full benefits it set out to achieve and may incur increased costs.”

The shared services programme received around £846m in the 2025 Spending Review for three of the clusters: Matrix, Synergy and Unity. While Cabinet Office told the NAO this would be sufficient to address the funding concerns by the clusters, the clusters themselves told the NAO that “there were still some funding gaps that might need to be covered from departmental budgets”. However, other clusters, such as Defence, have no ring-fenced budget.

A programme which lacks formal commitment, according to the NAO, makes planning challenging.

“Its business case includes both DfE and HM Treasury’s participation in its financial assumptions,” the report said. “If either of these departments chooses to move to a different cluster, it would significantly affect the business-as-usual planning, and costs and benefits projections.

“Cabinet Office has stated that it does not consider departments joining shared services optional, and that departments cannot make the decision to move or leave a cluster without an assessment to consider value for money across government and the impact on the business case.”

Another onboarding issue is the merger of NHS England with the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC).

In a March 2025 speech, the prime minister announced he would abolish what he sees as the “world’s biggest quango” – namely NHS England, to take back democratic control of the NHS.

DHSC was part of the Matrix cluster, but once it made plans to abolish NHS England, it was removed from the scope of the Matrix business case.

DHSC explained that this was a decision it had taken jointly with Matrix, to allow the department to focus on the successful integration of NHS England while avoiding any risk to the successful delivery of the Matrix programme itself.

However, to the NAO, this is seen as another risk of successful delivery, due to yet another change.

NAO head Gareth Davies reported that the programme said:“The shared services programme has the potential to deliver efficiency gains across government, but governance issues, interoperability problems and inconsistent commitments are hampering efforts to keep the programme on track.

“Our recommendations are designed to address these findings and maximise the chances of success.”

The NAO has called for the programme to ensure there is buy-in and commitment from departments to roll out the shared services strategy and onboard services by 2030.