Local transport authorities achieve very different levels of bus service and the Department’s lack of monitoring means it cannot identify under-performing areas and help them improve.31 The Department does not have standard measures or defined outcomes for reliability, affordability, frequency or other factors passengers value. The data it does collect are too late or inconsistent between local areas.32 We asked the Department which data it needs in order to identify which areas require most help. The Department acknowledged that it needs to have better monitoring data and that there is a tension between minimising unnecessary data requests and collecting what it needs to support the sector and evaluate the whole bus system.33