“Community planning: an initial review”
The next item on our agenda is consideration of a response from the Scottish Government to the previous Audit Committee's second report of 2007, on "Community planning: an initial review".
My experience over the past few years at local authority level, in East Ayrshire Council, has been that many of the documents relating to community planning, especially what we call regeneration outcome agreements, are very challenging and hard to understand. Many of them focus on the outputs that the local authority hopes to deliver, rather than on the outcomes that we hope it will achieve. Sometimes there is confusion between the two at local authority level. In any ROA, targets and outputs are set out clearly, but that tells us nothing about how effective and successful implementation has been. We must seek more clarity at local authority level and ask councils to do more work on outcomes, benefits and impact, rather than outputs.
Your point is well made. I am smiling at Mary Mulligan, because I remember a huge meeting with community representatives, when she was Deputy Minister for Communities and I was leader of Glasgow City Council, at which we tried to persuade people to become involved in the wonderful world of community planning in Glasgow. I will not say how I think people are getting on, but some documents and processes are bound to be challenging, in particular for community representatives.
I have similar problems with the response. In paragraph 42 of its report, the committee said:
"The move towards an outcome-based approach is overdue."
The Executive has not accepted that, but its response to paragraph 42 contains phrases such as "moving towards", "work is in hand", "we intend to", "we are currently developing", "hope to implement shortly", and "working … to explore". The word "developing" is used twice. The committee said that the approach is "overdue"—in other words, it thought that something should have been done. However, the response talks about intentions and work in progress. It does not say when an outcome-based approach will be in place, although "overdue" carries a sense of urgency. When will an outcome-based approach be implemented? I would be happier if the response had given a timescale for action.
I am encouraged to comment by the convener's remarks—
You rose to the bait.
I remember that meeting vividly. Our views on community planning were well received in Glasgow.
I agree completely with Willie Coffey and Andrew Welsh. We should look for outcomes, and timescales should be attached to work in progress. I was involved in the production of the previous Audit Committee's report, and committee members were encouraged by the people involved in community planning who came to speak to us. There is a lot of optimism about what can be done and we have talked a lot about how interagency working can improve services for people in our communities. I am a little less encouraged by what the Executive's response tells us about how it supports the work that is going on in communities. I would have liked a more positive response.
However, as we said during our discussion under the previous item, there has been a change in Administration and I am interested in what progress will be made. I am not sure that the committee would derive any benefit from responding to what is now an out-of-date response. I hope that the Audit Committee will keep the issue on its agenda, because in future we might want to consider what progress has been made, in particular on the two issues that have been raised, but also on support for community planning in general.
I might regret having provoked Mary Mulligan into commenting, because she appears to have provoked other members into re-entering the discussion.
I do not disagree with members' comments about the need to move to an outcome-based approach—there is clearly such a need. However, I make two cautionary points. First, if the outcomes do not emerge from people's normal work—in other words, if trying to determine what happens represents an additional load—a whole new level of audit must be put in place. Unless information systems are robust and continue to be so, so that outcomes emerge from people's processes, it is difficult to identify outcomes.
Secondly, I am disturbed by the lack of prioritisation in the seven bullet points in the response to paragraph 42, all of which refer to development, discussion and exploration. According to the response, a range of high-level outcome options are being explored with ministers
"to inform their choices for the forthcoming Strategic Spending Review",
but it does not say what stage those explorations have reached. I would have thought that the information should be published by now—perhaps it has been. We should be getting it now. It is the only response that has a date on it, and we should be seeing the work now. It should be being explored and open for discussion now, and the other points should be prioritised.
Page 6 of the response refers to the recommendation in paragraph 18 of our report to
"reduce the number of reports that community planning partners need to make to different Executive Departments."
I take that to mean cutting down some of the bureaucracy. The Executive response states:
"Progress is being made across the Executive and we will report this to the incoming administration."
If there has been a report, I would be keen to find out what it says and what progress has been made.
Let me say to Mary Mulligan that it is a new Administration but they are the same civil service advisers.
You are not getting your excuses in, are you?
Yes.
At paragraph 18(2) of our report, we said that the Executive should
"build skills and capacity among staff to better support those organisations tasked with delivering services".
The Executive has agreed with that, but it says only that there are training programmes for staff in developing and implementing public policy and that
"Further work is under way"
on a
"project to clarify the skills required for Policy Delivery and to embed them in the annual Performance Appraisal process."
The Executive also refers to
"the Scottish Leadership Foundation to deliver a joint programme of Change Management training",
which is great, but elsewhere we are told about a lack of statistical evidence on which to base policy and programme decisions.
In other words, we are about to get the skills but the information is not there. We all want to see joined-up government. Although the Executive has agreed with the committee's point of view, I do not see any implementation of that agreement, and I am concerned about the gap. It is good to see that training is being done, but the civil service can act only on the basis of accurate information.
The points are all very well made, and we will decide on them in a moment or two. If there are no more points from members, I will ask Mr Black to comment.
I have just a quick comment that might be helpful. The original Audit Scotland report was an ambitious piece of work, as some committee members might recall, and the committee took extensive evidence. It is at least encouraging that the Executive has responded to the recommendations.
The report was difficult to produce because we found it so difficult to answer the basic question: what impact is community planning having on the quality of services that people receive? The answer was that we could find little evidence at that stage, in part due to the fact that community planning is at an early stage. However, we have given a commitment that we will revisit it at some point in the future, and the Accounts Commission has signed up to that as well. We will need to get a clear focus on what impact community planning is having on the quality of services that people receive. We will do our best, but I suspect that it will not be easy, for all the usual reasons about the quality of available information.
Colleagues, there are three options open to us: we could note the response; we could correspond with the Government or Executive on the issues that members have raised; or we could request an update, which does not apply in this instance. Do members want to note the report, having heard Mr Black say that he and the Accounts Commission will revisit the subject at some point in the future? Alternatively, do we want to raise particular queries in the form of a letter signed off by me on the committee's behalf?
I have not raised the issues lightly, nor was I making an attack of any kind on the civil service. I raised specific points about good government and the response to the committee's well-thought-through report, based on research and findings by Audit Scotland. In the end, what we share with the Executive and civil service is that we want to deliver for the people of Scotland, and I would like a response on the specific points about how that will come about.
Fair enough. I do not think that the committee should divide on whether to note the response or raise some points in correspondence. All the points that members have made—there may be others—will be written up by the clerks and we will draft a letter that I will send on the committee's behalf. Are members happy with that?
Members indicated agreement.
Item 7 is consideration of our approach to the various reports. As we decided at the beginning of the meeting, we will move into private session for this item, so I ask the press and public to withdraw.
Meeting continued in private until 11:55