Departmental Outturn and Forecast Outturn: Commentary on Quarter 3 2020-21 Data

Synopsis: This Commentary is part of an ongoing pilot project, proactively undertaken by the Public Finance Scrutiny Unit (PFSU) of the Assembly's Research and Information Service (RaISe). Ultimately, the project aims to further support Assembly committees when discharging their advisory and scrutiny roles and responsibilities under current Northern Ireland (NI) devolution financial arrangements. In particular, it seeks to enhance committees' understanding of departmental Outturn and Forecast Outturn data; so that committees use that data to scrutinise departments' forecasting accuracy – i.e. to scrutinise how effectively departments plan and actually spend their expenditure.

Date: 22 February 2021