The Public Service Reform Committee is carrying out a short inquiry into standards for public sector reform.

The Committee wants to understand what effective public service reform looks like in practice and to identify principles of good practice that can support ongoing scrutiny of the Scottish Government’s public service reform agenda. The Committee will consider lessons from previous reform programmes and explore how reform can be delivered in ways that improve outcomes for people, while supporting the public sector workforce.

To inform its inquiry, the Committee has agreed to take evidence on a range of topics including:

• Redundancy schemes in practice;
• Governance perspectives on past restructuring;
• Workforce perspective on past restructuring, redeployment and redundancy;
• Partnership and collaborative leadership and;
• Digital innovation and automation

The Committee will consider how the above factors can support successful reform. The Committee expects to take evidence on this inquiry between November 2026 and February 2027 and will report on its findings in due course.