Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has a staff of 15,000.
It is a complex department with ever-changing responsibilities. Local employees
and UK nationals work at a large number of overseas sites.
"The Collinson Grant study is an integral part of the FCO reorganisation. Not
only will it contribute to decision making on how to reprioritise resources, it
will also generate ideas on how we can work more flexibly and responsively, both
as individuals and as part of a team, to deliver the FCO Strategy.”
FCO Annual Report 2005
Reporting to the Management Board, we reviewed the FCO to find out the mix of the
staff and how it was organised. Which activities were duplicated? How
appropriate were the managerial structures at the different sites? And who controlled
costs? Our work covered almost 3,000 employees at fifteen embassies and consulates
throughout the world – including Accra, Beirut, Bratislava, Colombo, Mexico City,
Paris and St Petersburg, as well as support functions in London.
We used Process Activity Analysis to draw a detailed picture of how employees used
their time, and to reveal the scope for improvement. More comparative analyses
showed variations in performance in different parts of the department. A by-product
was a robust model of the FCO’s costs, which it had never had before.
Our report revealed opportunities to make big annual cuts in cost. In line
with the review by Sir Peter Gershon, it showed how lots of jobs could be saved
in the UK and overseas. It also pointed out how working practices and managerial
controls could be improved.
The FCO’s annual report in 2006 drew extensively on our work to improve its efficiency
and effectiveness. In his commentary, the Permanent Under Secretary described
what the FCO was doing to put our recommendations into effect:
“The FCO Board has considered the Collinson Grant report. It re-committed
itself to achieving the £87 million target and agreed to incorporate the Collinson
Grant work as far as possible into the FCO’s existing Efficiency Plan. In addition,
based on the findings, the Board agreed to review the Finance function in the FCO,
both in London and overseas; identify resources that could be reallocated from low
to high priority activity using the Collinson Grant comparative analysis of expenditure;
and monitor, at Board level, the FCO’s efforts to re-prioritise resources.”
This work was also reported on the front page of the Financial Times.