Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
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Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 28 March 2023
Daniel Johnson
I will come back to Ben Thurman, because I would like to put the question to him in a particular way. First, I ask Mark Taylor whether he has anything to add to that or any insights from his work at Audit Scotland.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 28 March 2023
Daniel Johnson
I have one final question. Consistency in approach is one thing that needs to be examined. You have all discussed challenge, but I wonder whether it is being conceived of and captured in the right way. In our discussions with officials, it struck me that, when we asked them about it, they pointed towards the use of external people on programme boards. That sounded to me very much like challenge at a policy level rather than necessarily challenge at the level of granular assumptions.
That is certainly the case in comparison with my experience of the commercial world, where you build in challenge at that more granular level in order to ensure that the assumptions are correct, because, ultimately, that is what ensures that you have a robust business case. Is that a fair reflection? Is that backed up by your experience of looking at those situations in detail?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 28 March 2023
Daniel Johnson
Thank you very much. I had better leave it there.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Daniel Johnson
I will leave it there for now.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Daniel Johnson
Professor Cairney, your last statement neatly summed up the subject that I am circling around. Your paper is really interesting and excellent, but I wonder whether the bit that I am interested in is actually the next tier down.
I was struck by the fact that everyone in the group that I was in framed every decision as being either policy driven or financially driven. My experience of effective organisations is that the really important bit is what happens in between. To my mind, policy, in a business context, is about strategy and overall direction, while what are critical are the frameworks for delivery and implementation. I had hoped that there would be some examination of the decision making beneath all that. In other words, once the policy has been set, framed and determined, how and by whom are decisions captured and structured at the next level down? After all, that is very often where policy fails.
10:15Am I barking up the wrong tree, or is there something in that? Does that area need to be better defined? It seems that people out there want to talk about policy and finances and civil servants want to talk about policy and finances. Is there an issue around a lack of definition and clarity about those day-to-day management decisions?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Daniel Johnson
To my mind, it is not necessarily about specialism; it is about who is responsible at what stage. There is a point at which we are all very clear about the framing of policy and its outcomes. Ultimately, the minister stands up in Parliament. That is relatively clear, but it is about the individual bits.
We are all trying to avoid specific examples, but there was a significant contract variation in the ferries contract that was documented by an email chain. That stands out as being not right—that is not how things would happen in a well-functioning private sector organisation. In the financial services sector, you would find yourself butting up against all sorts of regulatory rules if you did that.
The issue is perhaps more about how policy is monitored, but is there also a point about roles? There was an interesting bit in our discussion about accountable officers. Is how the civil service captures who is managing the in-flight policy based on role rather than structure or process? Is that an area that we need to probe at more?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Effective Scottish Government Decision Making
Meeting date: 14 March 2023
Daniel Johnson
And some of them are quite rusty.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Daniel Johnson
It is on page 6. The figure is 18,075.2, whereas when I look up the budget bill as passed, at legislation.gov.uk, I see that the figure there is 18,039. Ensuring that we are using accurate figures is important and I am trying to understand why there would be a difference.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Daniel Johnson
Is that the reason for the discrepancy? The heading states:
“Resources other than ... as shown in the Budget Act”.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 7 March 2023
Daniel Johnson
As the convener pointed out, there are a lot of numbers. However, the bottom line, and what people want to know, is whether more or less money is being spent. For example, on regional health boards, has the amount of money that they were budgeted gone up or down compared with what was in the original level 4 figures when we passed the budget bill last year?
