Underlying plans for our people, technology, data and funding
People
Annex B provides a breakdown of ONS’s workforce by Profession, Grade and Location.
The ONS People Plan forms part of this Strategic Business Plan and defines the workforce and workplace priorities and actions that support delivery of the UKSA Strategy.
Technology
The ONS Technology Plan forms part of this Strategic Business Plan and defines the direction for our technology and the linkages between our strategic programmes and ongoing plans for the development of our technology estate.
Data
The ONS Data Plan forms part of this Strategic Business Plan and defines the direction for our management of data and approach to ensuring its safe usage. This will be updated in the context of the Integrated Data Programme once Treasury has concluded on the Full Business Case.
Finances
Table 1 below sets out our current budget for financial year 2021/22. Our budget for the year is based on our Spending Round 2020 settlement together with changes agreed since then. We have also set out further, anticipated adjustments which are the subject of HM Treasury approvals to give an idea of the possible funding landscape for the financial year.
Table 1 – Agreed Funding for 2021/22
| Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit (RDEL) | Capital Departmental Expenditure Limit (CDEL) | Income | Subject to Further Approval | Overall Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021/22 £million | 2021/22 £million | 2021/22 £million | 2021/22 £million | 2021/22 £million |
|
| Baseline Funding | 213.5 | 10 | 21.1 | 3.1 | 247.7 |
| Integrated Data Platform | 4 | 0 | 4.3 | 53 | 61.3 |
| Census Data Collection Transformation Programme | 282.4 | 0 | 2.5 | 0 | 284.9 |
| COVID-19 Infection Survey and Wider Studies | 553.3 | 0 | 0 | 17.6 | 570.9 |
| Total | 1053.2 | 10 | 27.9 | 73.7 | 1164.8 |
In 2021/22 we will again operate with a ‘rolled forward’ budget based on our funding allocation agreed for 2020/21. In addition to this original baseline funding we have secured a £6m uplift to progress our plans in Economic Statistics and £3m of funding associated with Overseas Development and Assistance (ODA).
From a strategic programme perspective – we will receive funding for April and May 2021 in relation to the Integrated Data Programme (IDP) whilst we await the approval decision on the Full Business Case and the remainder of the funding for this year. The Census Data Collection Transformation Programme (CDCTP) budget is in line with the most recently agreed Full Business Case (September 2020) but we have also received approval to use £9m of under expenditure from 2020/21 in 2021/22.
We have included a funding profile reflecting our work in support of the COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS) and wider ancillary studies in 2021/22. The funding stream for CIS has been agreed with the Department for Health and Social Care and we anticipate £8.8m of funding via Cabinet Office for additional COVID19 related survey activity at the Supplementary Estimate in Autumn 2021. The funding for CIS is significant but as with the position in 2020/21 this budget is largely used to cover third party service provider costs.
Looking to the future – we anticipate a multi-year Spending Review (2021) during the summer and have already started our preparations for the submissions including early engagement with HM Treasury on our emerging financial strategy.
Efficiencies
As highlighted above we will use the drive to improve our corporate systems and the recommendations from the BASE Review of our support services to help shape a multi-year Efficiency Framework with process improvement, automation and rationalisation at its heart.
We will capture all existing and proposed efficiency plans and include the impacts of these plans on our cost bases in our Spending Review (2021) preparations and final submission. We will provide further information on the Efficiency Framework, plans and targets as we progress through 2021/22.
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