Chamber and committees

That would be a good start.

I have one final reflection and a comment that I did not manage to get in.

During the pandemic, I became addicted to looking at Public Health Scotland’s data dashboard. In a sense, it achieved something that the national performance framework has not achieved. For such things to be used, whether we are talking about qualitative or quantitative measures, they need to be engaging, and the NPF is not there yet. The Covid data on the PHS dashboard was complex, but it was rich and it allowed people to look at different things. That is a good example of what we might need to do.

From what has been said in today’s conversation and others, I am struck by the sense that there is a real desire for the NPF to work and for there to be a common language so that different agencies and different parts of the public sector can show their contribution. Ultimately, there has been a failure on the part of the sponsoring organisation to place sufficient emphasis on that. That is my reflection from today’s discussion and the preceding ones.

I will bring somebody else in but, in some ways—and I hope that this is not unfair—you are giving us a glass-half-full version of what is going on. If I could paraphrase, I think that you are saying that having the national performance framework is incredibly useful, but you are talking about how it should be working, rather than how it is. Would that be fair?

I want to bring Jamie Livingstone in, because I was interested to see that the Oxfam Scotland submission referenced what Germany did. That was refreshing, because we are lucky if we get an example from somewhere else in the United Kingdom, so it is good to get one from another country. I noted from your evidence that one of the key insights is that there was popular participation in generating the framework In Germany. Could you step us through that and also tell us whether there are similar structures there to ensure that, once the framework is developed, it is applied and there is a plan to use it? In a sense, what Vicki Bibby is articulating—certainly, it is what we are articulating—is that the framework is there but there is no real plan or structure to use it. Are you able to bring in any examples from Germany or elsewhere?

That is an interesting point that probably—to be blunt—brings to life why, essentially, the NPF is withering on the vine, if we are being honest. It is interesting because you are saying that to make it work you need almost a translation of what your organisation’s contribution does. Unless—this is the point that I was making in the previous session—the overarching strategy for how the Government seeks to influence and advance measures and outcomes is holistic, it becomes incredibly difficult for individual agencies or partners to demonstrate how they are contributing to it.

I wonder whether what Neil Ferguson just outlined is what the Government as a whole needs to be doing, by saying, “Here is the national performance framework as a whole, and here is how Government and the public sector are seeking to influence it and deliver against it.”

My first point is on that subject and is not what I originally wanted to speak about. At the risk of contradicting you, convener, coming from a private sector background, I should point out that not knowing what revenue you are going to generate in the coming year does not prevent you from formulating a business plan. You do it on the basis of a high expectation and a pessimistic outcome. It is not set in stone, but the fact that you do not know precisely what your budget is going to be in the following year does not prevent you from setting parameters. Something could be done around that.

The key point that I want to return to is the timeliness point. Having some broad projections and broad plans would be sensible, but do we just need some simple things? For example, on climate change and carbon emissions, everything needs an environmental impact assessment. Whether it is a bit of legislation or a Government strategy, it requires a constant reference back to that. Do we need to do something as simple as requiring all new legislation, strategies, initiatives and programmes to state how they contribute towards achieving the outcomes in the national performance framework—both the primary outcomes that they seek to influence and the secondary ones that they hope to affect in broader terms? Would something as simple as that be useful?

It might just have been a typo. [Laughter.]

On that point, as we brought up in other discussions, in some ways the SDGs seem to have a bit more purchase and currency. Do we even need the national performance framework? Should we just be focused on SDGs, because they are better understood and they are more comparable, because they are used internationally? I would encourage other people to pile in. Do not wait for one of us to ask you to speak.

Finally, and briefly, when you look at the framework, you see the high-level outcomes and then you are straight into a sea of words and numbers being referenced. Do we just need to present this stuff a bit better so that, when people look at it, they get a sense of what is going on?

Definitely not. The problem is that, all too often, when the national performance framework is referenced, you just see that diagram, but it is about the numbers. In this day and age, we have all seen wonderful infographics that bring data to life. However, my humble suggestion is that this data is not being brought to life.