Whitehall to unify accounting

The government plans to standardise its accounting systems as part of its Efficiency Review process and an ongoing drive to cut costs.

The Common Accounting Software Specification (Cass) project led by Whitehall buying arm the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) aims for a standard format to improve interoperability and exchange of information between the many different systems used across government.

Cass is the result of the Treasury's 'Whole of Government Accounts Programme', set up in April last year to ensure best practice accounting methods are used across the public sector.

'The OGC is currently leading a project to produce a standard specification for accounting systems for central civil government that will include the requirements for future systems to be usable by more than one organisation,' said Chief Treasury secretary Paul Boateng.

'The Efficiency Review is working with departments to develop proposals for consideration in the Spending Review to simplify and standardise back office functions and the systems that support them.'

Twenty different departments and agencies are looking at how Cass might be implemented and are working with the OGC team that is developing the standardised specification.