Having written a lot about problems of accountability in recent weeks, it makes a change to discuss some solutions which were put forward at an Institute for Government event last week.

Margaret Hodge, chairman of the Commons public accounts committee (PAC), gave a speech on the future role of her committee (podcast available here and a post about it here), and Sam Macrory of The House Magazine, one of the respondents to the speech, discussed some ideas I think are worth elaborating on.

The first is a possible solution to a problem which I discussed in this post – that while the government wants to encourage 'armchair auditors', it has no mechanism for any questionable spending to be reported or for members of the public to get answers about why the money was spent.

The PAC should become this connection between the public and the departments, given both its democratic remit representing the interests of taxpayers and its committee remit not to question if policies are right but if individual sums of money are well spent.

So the PAC could add a section to its website in which 'armchair auditors' submit questionable items of spending.

But as I noted in a post on the Your Freedom crowd-sourcing website, it is useful to include a rating system to ensure that the best ideas are identified without committee staff members having to trawl through them all.

To that end, the PAC could use existing services such as evly.com (when it is out of beta) or izwe.com which already provide the required functionality.

Then, the PAC could take perhaps the five top-rated submissions every three or six months and require written explanations from the officials who spent the money.

There would then be a complete connection between the government's intentions, the financial data being released, the democratic system, the departmental bodies which spend the money and the public who are being asked to scrutinise it.

If nothing else, it would also be an interesting test of how many 'armchair auditors' there are in practice given the scepticism there is in some quarters about that.

Pay bigger bonuses

The second idea I wanted to highlight also relates to the role of the PAC, but comes out of a problem cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell raised repeatedly in a recent appearance before the committee.

Asked why there can be a lack of experienced staff and high turnover rates for key project managers on big schemes, he said the civil service loses some of its best staff to the higher-paying private sector.

And the civil service is unable to pay the bonuses it needs to retain them as "you get attacked all the time if you put in an element of performance-related pay".

What Sir Gus is talking about here is a political problem – it isn't that bonus schemes can't be created that reward success, it is that the media and opposition parties of the day inevitably cite them as "waste" when other services are being cut back.

A political problem such as this needs a solution which ties in all political parties to the bonus system and provides cover from media criticism.

The government should devise bonuses for its most important projects which are large enough to reward the civil servants for staying in place for extended periods and which are also sufficient to stop them being attracted to the private sector (ie significantly larger than at present). For bigger projects, there could be payments at milestones along the way.

However, the payment of these bonuses should be subject to the prior approval of the PAC. The committee should be able to block or reduce the bonus if it chooses to.

Under such a system, the civil service would be able to run an enhanced performance-related pay system and have democratic cover for spending larger sums on it.

And the PAC, as well as having extra power, would also be helping to address its core criticisms of failed projects; that they are damaged by high staff turnover and that the senior officials responsible for them often do not stay in place long enough to be held responsible.

By happy coincidence, the government is giving responsibility for projects which have significant operational, financial or reputational risk to its new Major Projects Authority. This would provide the pool of projects which should command higher bonuses and PAC oversight.