Outcome delivery plans: The case for keeping and improving the government’s performance framework

The prime minister should embrace outcome delivery plans – introduced in 2020 to set out and measure government departments’ plans and performance – if she wants to make progress on her delivery priorities.

This report says changing or removing outcome delivery plans (ODPs) would weaken Liz Truss and her government’s ability to oversee and achieve progress towards her goals. It sets out how ODPs are a marked improvement on their more narrow predecessor, the single departmental plan, and recommends that the new prime minister break the cycle of new governments dismantling the performance framework of their predecessors. Retaining and improving a working system will help Truss meet her aims far better than attempting to start over.

This paper, based on interviews with more than two dozen people, says that a single view of government performance shared by departments and the centre of government in No.10, the Cabinet Office and the Treasury is necessary for good government, and allows the prime minister to oversee delivery and change approach where the government is off course. It finds that ODPs have begun to improve the oversight of performance at the centre of government, recognising the cross-cutting and complex nature of most policy problems, and sets out a series of recommendations designed to strengthen the existing system.