Catalogue description HM Treasury: Public Services and successors: Financial Management Strategy and Agencies (FMSA prefix): Registered Files

The records were created by the Civil Service Management and Pay (sector), Management Policy and Running Costs Group, Financial Management Division. The function of this Division was the strategy for financial management in government departments and the creation of Next Steps Agencies; separate agencies created to carry out the executive functions of government within a policy and resource framework set by a department. The Next Steps strategy was advanced on a key government aim to reduce waste and make government more efficient. Each Next Steps Agency's Chief Executive Officer would have their respective function's daily responsibilities delegated to them by the sponsoring department's Minister to be run independently from the department but answerable to it.

The origins of the work of the Financial Management Division lie as far back as 1986 and the creation of the 'Financial Management: Public Services (sector)' where the issue of running costs started to be treated as a separate area of interest to the Treasury. Running costs concerned the administrative spending by central government and the costs of wages and salaries of officials employed in the Whitehall departments. From 1986 the Treasury introduced a separate control regime for running costs, delineating such spending from wider programmes, involving goods and services and capital expenditure aimed at achieving the policy goals of a department. Through the analysis of running costs came the necessity of efficiency and proper financial management in government as a policy aim in itself. The creation of Next Step Agencies in the 1990s was just such a scheme to ensure that government functions could be carried out as efficiently and inexpensively as possible.