We are astounded that the Cabinet Office appears unable to clearly articulate the value for money case of its Shared Services Strategy. The Cabinet Office claims that the Shared Services Strategy is now set to deliver £4.3 billion in benefits. But this figure does not reflect costs, and the department was initially unable to quantify what these costs are or how they relate to the costs of continuing with individual services for each department. The Cabinet Office has developed a dashboard 3 bringing together clusters’ delivery data, including data on benefits, costs, and milestones. But the Cabinet Office cannot enforce timely, accurate and good quality returns, limiting the dashboard’s usefulness. The Cabinet Office has granted clusters discretion over key delivery decisions, notably outsourcing. It has not quantified the value-for-money case of the Synergy cluster outsourcing to Capita relative to the Unity cluster’s in-house service model. This Committee’s predecessors have criticised Capita’s poor performance on a range of government contracts, including those with the Ministry of Defence for handling recruitment and with NHS England for supporting primary care services. More recently, Capita’s poor performance administering the Civil Service Pension Scheme is a matter of ongoing concern for this Committee. Correspondence we received from the Cabinet Office after our evidence session—on benefits, costs and cluster outsourcing—is inconsistent with the National Audit Office’s findings, and lacks sufficient rigour to establish shared services’ value for money. recommendation The Cabinet Office should urgently publish a case for change outlining how its Shared Services Strategy will deliver value for money, including: a. the economic case, comparing the current way forward’s benefits and costs to viable alternatives; b. a roadmap which clearly sets out timetables, dates and costs until all elements of government in scope of the strategy would be onboarded; and c. a