Oflog, the unfortunate abbreviation for the embryonic Office for Local Government, has proved an enigma. It was introduced in the following terms: ‘The UK Government will work with local leaders, citizens and sector experts to establish a body to focus on local data, transparency and outcomes.' (From the Levelling Up White Paper). This suggests three things.
First, that there is a problem with the quality or quantity of local data. But the Local Government Association already provides LG Inform, which supplies not only key performance data but also – crucially – contextual and financial information, without which the data would be meaningless. And LG Inform is award-winning, rather suggesting that it does the trick.
Second, the White Paper definition suggests that there is a problem with transparency and thus accountability. Communities secretary Michael Gove emphasised this, saying in July last year that Oflog would ‘shine a new light on how local authorities are performing and delivering'.
Third, there is the reference to outcomes, glossed subsequently as the idea that local leaders will be helped to deliver improvements.
These second and third points are where the comparison with the Audit Commission comes in. The Commission's role was threefold: providing an audit service; providing high level national studies (considered variously as authoritative or unhelpful); and finally, managing for the Government the much-disliked Comprehensive Performance Assessments (CPA).
Local politicians found the CPA inspections – distinct from the financial audits – often unfair and superficial, preferring LGA peer challenge to the blunt instrument of ratings and league tables.
Oflog is clearly nothing at present to do with auditing, although some might argue that a body which can address the capacity problem in audit would be helpful.
Nevertheless, the fact that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is currently testing four themes in relation to Oflog (adult social care, waste, financial reserves and adult skills) is intriguing, given the previous role of the Audit Commission in relation to themed reports – this function transferred to the National Audit Office when the Commission was abolished.
Is Oflog simply going to publish a bunch of statistics on these areas? Can a bunch of statistics on, say, financial reserves mean anything at all without a substantial narrative to interpret them? Does this mean there will be a sort of national report on what the level of financial reserves should be?
It is also intriguing that the first (interim) chair of Oflog is Lord Morse, until 2019 the comptroller and auditor general of the National Audit Office. He may be seeking a complete change of scenery, of course, but it does look like he is playing to his previous strengths and taking over the chair of a body which produces national reports.
Government ministers have been keen to emphasise co-design in the development of Oflog, hence the ‘round tables'. These are welcome but are hardly co-design.
The Audit Commission comprised various people, not least three serving senior councillors, appointed through the usual mechanisms for Government nominations to quangos, and politically balanced. There were also at various times prominent academics and significant players in industry and public life.
All of those who were my colleagues on the board were independent minded and dedicated. If Oflog is to work at all it needs a credible board.
So Oflog does look like the return of the Audit Commission in terms of in-depth data-driven studies. That need not matter if it is there to help advise local government through good, consistent statistics and well thought out national reports. But it will matter big time if the data collection and the references to performance and delivery are ultimately a return to the days of CPA inspections.
And it is still far from clear whether, in the way described by ministers, it is needed at all.
Chris White is leader of St Albans Council and a former audit commissioner
@ChrisWhite_SADC
