The savings are driven by the Cabinet Office's Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG). The ERG applied spending controls to cut expenditure by departments on IT contracts, property, marketing, temporary staff and consultancy.

In recent months, the government has worked to improve internal operations and make the delivery of public services more cost-effective via the work being done by the Government Digital Service, which GOV.UK, for example.

Furthermore, , such as SAP and Microsoft, to renegotiate licencing and maintenance contracts. It has trimmed £70 million of its software bill up until 2015 with these two suppliers alone.

Outside of ICT, government has achieved £680 million of savings through a moratorium on consultancy and contingent labour spend, £170 million from reductions in government property and £900 million from salary cost.

"We have said we want to be saving £20 billion a year by 2015 and savings of this magnitude cannot come by trimming budgets here and there. That's why we are working to transform Whitehall into a leaner, more efficient machine that manages its finances like the best-run businesses," Maude said this week.