 Good morning, and welcome to the 12th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. I'm afraid that I have to relay the convener's apologies this morning, and in his place I will be chairing the committee meeting this morning. I would also like to welcome Dr Alasdair Allen, who is attending remotely in place of the convener as his substitute, and also Michelle Thompson, who is joining us remotely as well. The first item on our agenda is to take evidence from two members of the Scottish Leaders Forum, Accountability and Incentives Action Group, in relation to their recent report on the national performance framework. This is incredibly timely for our committee, given that we are also embarking on an inquiry into the same matter. So can I welcome to this morning's meeting Jennifer Henderson, Keeper and Chief Executive of Registers of Scotland, and Anna Farley, Chief Executive of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. Both are here in their capacity as participants in the Scottish Leaders Forum Accountability and Incentives Action Group—it's a very pithy and succinct title, if I might say. I welcome you both to the meeting and invite Ms Henderson to make a short opening statement. Thank you. We welcome the opportunity to appear before the committee today to discuss the work that we've been involved in, as part of a Scottish Leaders Forum Action Group set up to examine how accountability and incentives for delivery of the national outcomes and the national performance framework could be improved. Our action group included representatives from across the public service landscape, and as part of our work we have engaged with a wide cross-section of public service leaders. We've found that there is no consistent approach to holding organisations to account for their role in delivering the national outcomes, but, nevertheless, many organisational leaders do seek to show how they are contributing because, and I quote from a colleague we spoke to, it is the right thing to do, even if no one asks me to do it. We concluded that organisational leaders are the key to improving accountability for the national outcomes. If all organisational leaders reflect on whether they could do more to show how their organisation contributes to the national outcomes, and if they conclude that they could do more, make a change that achieves this, this will underpin a robust system of accountability. We identified that there are four types of organisation that could contribute to a consistent system of accountability for the national outcomes. Those organisations who shape the NPF itself, those who enable, through commissioning or funding activities that could contribute to the NPF, those who deliver activities that could contribute to the NPF and those who scrutinise the activities that could contribute to the NPF. When we talk about organisations that scrutinise, we include the role of Parliament. We explored the role of the ADCAR model of change to support the individual behaviour change in leaders of these organisations. How many conversations with leaders have raised awareness of why accountability for national outcomes matters and created a desire in many colleagues to consider if they could do more to contribute to an effective system of accountability? We have developed a series of good practice one-pages to give organisations more knowledge on how they could be more accountable or hold others to account more effectively. We have developed a maturity matrix to help organisations to develop their ability to deliver against the national outcomes. We have engaged with organisations, particularly those who scrutinise the work of others, to discuss the importance of reinforcing good behaviours in relation to accountability. We have recently published our initial report on our work completed to date and delivered a series of round table and one-to-one discussions to share our conclusions and obtained buy-in for our recommendations. We believe that we have created positive engagement around the need to create greater accountability for the delivery of the national outcomes and an understanding in leaders across the public service spectrum that they can make a personal contribution to delivering this improvement. We plan to continue our work by identifying and documenting specific good practice examples to bring to life the elements in our one-pages of maturity matrix, which we hope will further inspire leaders to take action. We are very grateful for the opportunity to discuss our work with you today and hope that our report is a useful contribution to your inquiry, and we look forward to answering your questions. I am very happy with that. I will begin by asking a couple of questions before opening up to colleagues. Overall, I think that it is a very useful report and it is quite refreshing to see one that is both making proactive suggestions but also does so in a relatively concise manner. I thank you for that. I also struck me that looking at it is a very half-full version of the world as opposed to half-empty. You are talking about what it could be and how your organisations could contribute more. However, I would wonder whether you should be having to think about those things. Given that the national performance framework is a creature of Government, given that it is set out that this is how it wants to measure itself and have policy being guided by it, the suggestion is that it is not using that. Especially given that your organisations are largely essentially fulfilling functions of Government through various mechanisms, including contracted mechanisms, it suggests that the Government just is not using the national performance framework as a means of conducting that engagement and as a yardstick for its interactions with your members and the organisations that you are working with. Would that be a fair assessment? That is a fair assessment, but it is not just Government. I would argue that the NPF is not a creature of Government. It is Scotland's national performance framework. It was adopted with cross-party support. It is also supported by COSLA local government, so I would say that that is true. However, all the rest of the system is equally in that space where we use it sometimes, but we do not use it as the really powerful tool that it could be to hold organisations to account. I thought that your point about it being a glass half full is interesting, because a lot of people who read it did not feel it that way. They felt it originally as it was quite a criticism. It really is not. It is about how we can improve. What we are saying is that everybody could play a part in that. We could all do that, and we could all do things differently. However, the people who ask the questions, like you guys, are the ones who hold the key. I think that I would just add to what Anna said. I think that what happens in my experience is that the national outcomes frame the work when you set out to do it, but very quickly you are held to account for the specific inputs or outputs that you have specified. That golden thread of saying, well, are those inputs and outputs actually making a difference to the outcomes starts to get lost? It collapses into the specific targets, rather than continuing to track through whether it is all adding up to the outcomes that were intended. One of the reasons why perhaps we do not invoke the national performance framework in Parliament that much is because it is not actually referred to very often either in terms of the guidance set out by ministers, in the legislation when bodies are brought into being, or indeed referred to in the regular reporting and here where there is ministerial statements or things like the budget. While I accept your point that Parliament could be it, ultimately it is the Government that has set the frame. Unless they invoke it, it is less likely for the rest of us to voluntarily use it. Do you agree with that? I think that our findings were that you want to try and create a virtuous circle and it does not matter where you start. I can do an example from my personal organisation. We do call out the national performance framework in our corporate documentation, how we support it, but we are not really asked about it, so no-one takes the opportunity of having put that out there to then ask about it. Other organisations, their auditors, will look at that, whether they are achieving the outcomes, but if it is not in their corporate documentation, it is hard to make the link. I think that our finding was that it does not matter where you start, but if everybody can capitalise on where there is an opportunity to use a hook of the national performance framework and the national outcomes in how they ask questions of organisations, you can start to build a virtuous circle of it becoming more of the language used more commonly because the opportunity would be there. Just my final question. I take the broad view that if things are useful, they get used. I wonder whether or not the fact that the national performance framework is not being used as much as it could be is as much a reflection of the content of the framework. Does there need to be a re-examination as to whether or not those are the right measures providing the right insights? If it was useful and insightful, surely your colleagues and indeed our colleagues in here would be using it much more. That is an interesting point. I think that it is because it is too hard, because it has not got numbers and it has not got very precise things that you can make precise points about. It will be a real missed opportunity if when the national performance framework is reviewed in the coming months, if we focus on rewriting the outcomes again and rather than thinking about how we achieve them and how we get there, it is very easy to just re-write the words. Scotland is really good at that, particularly civil servants. It would be quite nice if we moved past that and thought about implementation and get past that implementation gap. Thank you very much. Ms Henderson, do you have anything to add to that? I do not agree with Anna. I think that nobody would disagree that the ambition set out in the national performance framework represents a fantastic ambition for Scotland. I think that it is that ability for organisations to make the connection between the specific outputs that they are delivering and how they show that they are making a difference. The other thing that I would reflect is that many organisations can very clearly link themselves to one of the national outcomes, but the challenge for organisations should be to think holistically about what they are doing across all of the 11. Are they contributing the maximum that they could to each of them, not just hanging their hat on the one that they most obviously are making a difference to? Again, that is the way in which you would achieve a real shift across the country in terms of moving towards delivering that set of outcomes. If everybody doubled down on working out, how can they maximise their contribution? I think that the point about measurability is very important. I believe that colleagues will come back on that. I will hand over to John Mason. I confess that I should not be aware of the Scottish Leaders Forum and exactly how it came about or what it is for. I note that the third sector is included, but the private sector generally is not. Can you give me some clarification on that? I am a member of the leadership group for the Scottish Leaders Forum. It is a thing that has been around for a very long time, at least 20 years, but it is quite amorphous. It is basically the leaders of most public service organisations across Scotland. Originally, just the public sector then expanded to include the voluntary sector, but we are currently in discussion about how we could include the private sector in that without it becoming a real day. It is a group of people who used to meet regularly, but also who come together in different groups to do different things. The action group that Jennifer and I are involved in is one where it is just who is interested and we can sign up for it. It is quite an amorphous group, but that in a way is the joy of it, but it needs to have more business involvement in it. That is helpful, because when you talk about leadership in Scotland, there clearly is leadership outside the public sector and the voluntary sector as well. To follow up the convener's line, I have always wondered and I continue to wonder if some of the things are just too vague. I know that when you go down the levels, you get a bit more detail. For example, one of the 11 is that we are healthy and active. I do not see anyone around the table or probably anyone in Scotland saying that that is a bad aim and that we should not be healthier or active. Obviously, everyone wants that, but it is so assumed that therefore people do not talk about it or at least they do not talk about it in relation to the national performance framework. They say that we should be healthy or active or whatever. Is there not a fundamental problem here that it is too vague? I do not think—I mean, there is a question, I think, you are right about how would you measure what level of healthiness, what level of activity, but I think our point in terms of accountability, which is where our work was facing, is that every organisation that receives public money in Scotland thinking about their role in helping making people healthy and active. So, for example, are organisations thinking about their active travel policy? So, when we are coming back to the offices, encouraging people to come to work in an active manner rather than drive, are organisations thinking about their role in supporting the health of their employees and things like that? I think our point is that every organisation, not just those organisations who have an overt role in delivering activities or delivering the health system, could play a part in delivering that national outcome. If everybody thought about being accountable for their contribution to that, you would start to move the dial. I think you are right. How would you measure when you got there? I do not know that you would, because I think that the point of the national performance framework is a continuous improvement. You could always be more healthy and more active, but I think that what we are interested in our work is how does everybody demonstrate that they are contributing to moving towards that outcome? I take the point that you could start anywhere in the circle. If one or two people start referring more to the national performance framework and so on, then other people will catch on. I suppose that I was a bit surprised that the Parliament came out in a positive light. There were some good examples across all categories of organisation, not least in the work of parliamentary committees. I have sat in a lot of parliamentary committees that have never mentioned NPF or hardly ever, but I see in one of your tables on page 15 parliamentary scrutiny recognising values, individuals and collective whole system delivery. I wonder where we go in Parliament or if you have any advice for us. Should we just be using the words national performance framework a bit more, just to raise awareness? I think that there is a bit of that. We have colleagues from the Parliament in the action group and they have been very active in what they have been doing, so I think that that is very much to be welcomed because that kind of cross-system engagement is really good. I think that there is a bit of that, but I think that coming back to what Daniel said earlier on about ministers not leading with those points, I think that it would potentially be a really interesting thing if opposition politicians or others led with. What is happening on this outcome or whatever because that is not what they would be prepared to answer, so you might get more engagement. It is not so much about just dropping in the words, even though I think that that is a good start. It is about asking the questions about, so how are you contributing to every child growing up, loved and respected, or how are you contributing to? What is this bit of work going to do to achieve this? I think that that would be a really good start. I suppose that if we are talking about where it is working or where it is not working, you might want to praise somebody, you might not want to embarrass somebody, but can you give us either good or bad examples of where you feel progress is being made? Somebody is doing it well, as a council, health board, a CVO or whatever. That is the next stage, to collect good case examples, but one of the ones that I would commend is Public Health Scotland, because all its senior staff have accountability for the national performance framework built into their performance appraisal, for example, and their board regularly asks questions about national outcomes. However, they are a new organisation and they have been set up with that in mind, and it is much harder for longer-standing, more traditional organisations to do that, but that is one example that I would point to, at least, making a start on that. You would not want to give me a bad example? No. I think that the final thing that I wanted to touch on was the idea of where we are going on, I think that it is figure 1 on page 9 of the report, it talks about budgets and how, I quite like the idea that there could be a basic level where we are progressing in advance, and then there is the ideal, what is called, leading edge, and it talks about budgets additionally shared with other organisations, so that organisations are so working together that they are actually sharing their budgets. Now that sounds quite an aspiration. Is that practical? Is it happening? Can it happen? So part of that I should probably just explain. The origin of the maturity matrix on page 9 came from when we initially were doing this work we could set out that very clear where would you ideally like to get to, and the number of the leaders we talked to said it was all quite demoralising because we feel we are a long way off that. What are the stepping stones? So we worked up the maturity matrix and as an idea was saying well everybody would be somewhere and if each organisation benchmarks themselves and says well where are we at the moment against this maturity matrix, what would it take to move one step up on any of the lines? Is it about being more effective with our budget, thinking about how we allocate budget and things like that? I think you probably write that the kind of leading edge view about how you could get to the point of really genuinely sharing budgets across organisations is something that would require working up to, but you could imagine I think if you got to the point where a lot of organisations were sitting at the advanced stage and actually given that we've called out that one of the types of organisations who needs to think about making a change are the organisations who do the budget allocation and how the budget system works. You could imagine at that point there could be a discussion about how does the budget system allow people to say actually the best way of me delivering my work is to work collaboratively with this organisation that means I need a way of allocating some of my budget to them how do we make that happen and I think you then kind of take that final step. So it's probably not that practical yet but it could become something that's practical as you move towards it because it becomes the logical next step. I think worth reflecting I suppose more generally that when we were doing this work we started with that kind of mindset of is it about changing the system? We thought well it could be about changing the system but that's very hard. Actually if you change the mindset of the leaders within the system the system will start to change because the people who are making the decisions about how the system works, about the processes within the system want to do something slightly different and think this bit of the system isn't working I'm going to figure out how to make a change. So that's how we think we reach everybody at leading edge it's because we have the right set of people working on moving the system very gradually. I hope that makes sense. That makes sense. We could spend a lot longer on this but I'll leave it at that Thank you John. Can I bring Liz in at this point? Just following on from that point Ms Henderson it's not just about how the system is working it's about the scrutiny of the system and what I'm interested in given what you've said this morning and also what I've finally said are there processes within this Parliament that could be changed to help the additional scrutiny because I agree with Mr Mason that the committees I've sat on in my 16 years here I don't really think this kind of issue has been mentioned at all and that suggests to me either two things that it's irrelevant or secondly that it's too complex and people don't really understand it so just on the basis of Mr Mason's question there do you think that there are procedures within the Parliament particularly within the committee structure that could change to enhance the scrutiny? Yes I think that if the parliamentary committees will scrutinise outputs and inputs and that's absolutely right there's a lot of merit in that however taking that next next step and saying what do those outputs and inputs contribute to what difference are they making what people would you know in cliched terms called the so hot question and I would call the and therefore so we did this this this and this and and therefore that happened what's the theory of change there's a theory of change must underpin whether it's over it or not legislation and policy which says if we do this this this and this which we are going to legislate for setting guidance fund then we're expecting this to happen at the other end and I think we focus parliamentary committees you know scrutiny bodies local authorities focus on the inputs and outputs and and don't quite get to the and therefore and I think that would be it would be adding that that last kind of to close that loop I suppose that that's very interesting point do you feel that with any move towards longer term spending terms as in moving from a one-year budget to potentially a three-year budget do you feel that that would enhance the process of being able to scrutinise a bit better about how effective because let's be honest it's all about money really how effective the money spend is in in different areas do you think that that would help I think it would help immensely it would help across a whole range of things you know for for all parts of the system actually but it would take it would mean you didn't have to spend so such a high proportion of your time again whichever part of the system you're in monitoring and thinking about things over and over again and preparing for the next year and preparing for the next year that's particularly true you'll not be surprised to hear me say for our sector but I think it affects everybody there's a lot of people doing a lot of you know reprocessing of things where they don't need to do that if they've got a longer time frame to work in they can be thinking much more to the longer term and also able to focus on the collective rather than the individual things that they're funding or producing guidance for Miss Anderson you said in your opening remarks that there were people amongst the leaders groups and people who are operating the national performance framework who had felt it was a good thing to do even if nobody asked them about it if people are not being asked about it is there something that needs to happen to ensure that the public are more aware of this and what it actually means and if so how would you do that because you know I don't think if you asked people out on the street outside national performance framework I don't think anybody would have a clue what it was I think it's interesting I mean we've you know probably observed in our report we've slightly interchangeably used the language of the national performance framework and the national outcomes I wouldn't imagine most people in the public have heard of the national performance framework I wouldn't necessarily think people have heard of the national outcomes but if you talked about the actual language of the outcomes I think that is things that would resonate with people if you ran through the 11 things that the national performance framework is trying to deliver I think many people in Scotland would say yes that's the country I want to live in so I think that as you were just discussing with Anna the sort of way the scrutiny happens of is all the public money being spent as effectively as possible to get to this point is the sort of thing I think the public are exactly interested in and it's how I guess we help make that link between as Anna describes the legislation and the policy and the way the money is spent and then the so what is it actually making a difference for the lives of people of Scotland because I imagine that's what people in Scotland really care about and that's how I think you'd get the engagement to be able to explain how those outcomes are being genuinely achieved in terms of the structures of the parliament in enhancing the scrutiny do you feel there is a case to be made as been made in several years past in this place that a finance bill would be helpful accompanying the budget process so that there is more opportunity to enhance the scrutiny of exactly where money has gone and how well it has been spent do you think that was help I thought about that particularly halfway I think that that's kind of why we value the role of audit Scotland on the group but I see what you mean about it so I can't answer that question but I think that is partly the purpose of audit Scotland to being involved and I also think that when you were talking about the public I've thought for a very very long time that for the way that we work in democratic fora the public discourse has to change because if the public are constantly thinking about how many policemen do we have how many teachers do we have how many menaces do we have all that's really important but what's the contribution to them therefore that's what you guys are going to be asking about because that's what people are asking you about and it would be really good if we could somehow build up that public discourse to to be a bit more informed I suppose about that and I would just make the comment that I think that certainly again in my experience here that sometimes committees feel that there isn't the extensive opportunity to scrutinise what has happened in a particular policy as if we just don't have time to do that the committee system is you know so busy that actually would be quite helpful if there was a finance bill alongside that to try and help the process anyway thank you for that I'd like to stick with this the the role of parliament proceedings you've got the impression so far that we as parliamentarians are perhaps a bit less pessimistic about the role that we have collectively played so far with NPF but I'm interested in the feedback from the organisations that you were speaking to did any of them reference particularly those organisations who have made sure to embed practices around the NPF in their work did any of them mention that the the idea that parliament was going to scrutinise them specifically on this was playing a role in their embedding it successfully yeah I thought that would be the the case so yeah that that's informative of the you mentioned you know a number of organisations who did include a clear link with NPF indicators in corporate plans strategy documents etc not all but but some of those that did I'm wondering if there's two subgroups there one of which being those who've genuinely built corporate plans and built strategies around these NPF outcomes versus those who came up with the corporate plan or strategy and then worked backwards at the end and said well somebody needs to go through and find a couple of indicators that these tick boxes on and include that in the forward if I'm categorising it correctly kind of broadly grouping them into these two what was the balance there do you find that of the organisations who were actually including this in their corporate plans how many were had genuinely followed the correct process as opposed to work backwards to tick boxes I don't think we could give you numbers but I guess in terms of the approach we took we tried to sort of follow the trails so if if it was in an organisation's corporate plan we then went and saw what we could find you know many organisations nowadays sort of publish things like board minutes online we then saw if we could sort of follow through to say was this just a one-time exercise where it was in the corporate plan box ticked I mean you know due to due regard for the national performance framework as per the community empowerment act or was it something the organisation was genuinely using to inform its decision making and if it was you would expect to then see board minutes reflecting those kind of conversations that the internal audit process that happens within organisations are looking at it that was a harder trail to follow and that's why we want you know for the next phase of our work really pick up those good examples because I think just to come back to Ms Smith's point there should be a joined up chain all the way through where it isn't you know it isn't entirely the role of parliament to do that scrutiny at the end it should be that boards are scrutinising internal audit scrutinising external audit scrutinising and organisations are making changes as they go to constantly be course correcting to be ensuring that the way they are spending the money is delivering to best effect against the outcomes they're trying to meet and then you know within that process parliament clearly has a role to kind of be reviewing that but yeah you shouldn't have corporate plan and parliament as just the two ends of the chain with nothing in between so yeah our good practice examples are going to try and find those organisations where there is genuinely that chain that joins it all up and we can show that organisations are using the national performance framework as part of their decision making about how are we going to change our work programme are we are we going in the right direction not everyone involved in this reports the parliament we focus a bit on the parliament because we're here however when we've got local authority membership we've got and me for our sector we're we're not going to be scrutinised particularly by the sometimes we might be scrutinised by the parliament but it's more likely to be by for my sector by a funder or by our own boards who don't report to anybody apart from occasionally Oscar or councils who council officers who report into council councillors and obviously Mr Lumsons very experienced in that but so it's not just that we are focusing on the role of parliament today because we're here but actually there's a role for local authority councillors and for for my board and for for funders particularly to ask we've never been asked enough with all the grants we've had from various people no one's ever asked how it contributes to national outcomes on that point about the the role of local authorities given that we've established this morning that parliament needs to step up its work here are there any local authorities in scotland that you would highlight as a particularly strong example of embedding this work particularly into the the democratic scrutiny and element a local authority where the elected members themselves are really engaged in making sure that this is guiding either their work or the work of their partners we haven't got there yet but we do want to get that i'm confident there will be some but we've not got to that point yet i would just add if i may we've had really good engagement from a number of local authorities the round table sessions that i referred to us running when we finished our report and were socialising it we got a number of local authority chief executives coming along to that who were very engaged and a couple of them we are due to follow up with to try and pick up their kind of examples of what they're already doing that follows what we think people should be doing i should say i'm sure Aberdeen city council are absolutely nailing it but mr onson can confirm that later on Jennifer you made a really interesting point a moment ago about the the role of corporate boards in this and i've mentioned in in this commit a few times before particularly in the public sector in scotland there seems to be quite a wide variety quite a spectrum of understanding amongst board members about what the role of a the board over a public body actually is is it about scrutinising policy decision making strategic direction setting et cetera or is it purely about corporate governance hr practices et cetera did you find quite a wide spectrum of opinion amongst the board members that we're speaking to about their role in this process or is this something that there is some consistency around whether it's consistently good or bad so i don't think there is consistency but i think that's partly because there are a number of different flavours of board that oversee the variety of public bodies that exist there are sort of accountability boards where the board is the corporate body there are advisory boards and there are sort of a mixture of things but again i think there are roles for organisations within this about when anybody joins any board how is the national performance framework part of their induction i mean again registers of scotland we make sure we tell our board about the national performance framework tell them about how we use it and things like that i wouldn't be sure that that happens everywhere so i think there'll be a role for organisations like the public bodies unit who do a lot of work inducting board members to just make sure that the national performance framework and the national outcomes and how it could be used by boards because again that's where you'll get the behaviour change if new board members coming on board are inspired to think i have a role in asking my organisation whether i'm advisory or accountability and how that organisation is working to deliver the outcomes in the way it spends public money we'll start to see that change happening that's actually an excellent example of what was going to be my final question but there may be others that you wish to give i'm particularly keen that we make sure that the outcome of this process is not a burst over the next couple of years of understanding enthusiasm for the npf but then five or ten years from now when all the individuals involved have moved on to different positions we have to start the process all over again how do we make sure beyond you know induction work that he talked about there seems key how do we make sure that this is embedded permanently into structure and practice not just a change in culture which may be temporary depending on personnel turnover and i think our the work we did identified this idea if you get to a tipping point where it has become the cultural change it has become the way things are done around here and you know you've got there when you've got people joining boards going well why is there no discussion about the national outcomes and things like that so i think there is just that idea that if we can get enough people in enough of the different organisations involved and you know people move around within the public sector in scotland so they take good practice from one organisation to another i think you do just get that but embedded because i mean that's the other thing about the national performance framework because it's a long term set of goals and that's why i think it's hard for people to kind of maintain a focus on it because it is a lot easier to do your short term input and output on an annual basis i do think longer term budgeting will help because you can set out what you plan to achieve over several years rather than just in the year ahead and then i think you can start to get to that point where you're looking really long term at what organisations are delivering and boards for me mr Greer a you know they're custodians and stewards of the organisation for the period they are there they should believe in the organisation in a better state they found it and handing it on to be taken forward so over a period of board rotations you should see in any organisation a real set of progress that that organisation has demonstrably made a difference in how it's contributing to the national outcomes excellent thank you that's all for me commuter thank you very much now turn to Douglas thanks give me an under surprise as i am going to ask about local government of course cancel the year back in 2020 but i don't like to bring it up much computer one of the things that struck me when i was reading the report and it's a question i'd asked the deputy first minister i think it was last month obviously the local authorities have the local outcome improvement plans and then at a national level we have the the mpf and it's a from where commissioning services from a you know at the local authority level you know or commission services you know one of the first questions is you know how does it align to the the loyb how does it contribute to the outcomes we're trying to achieve there you know we don't really ask about the the mpf and i'm just trying to think is that we just and that's our golden thread that we have gone through you know at the local government level it's almost like there's two changes the Scottish government chain that seems to be broken almost when it goes down to local government and then we have a chain down at local government would you think that's fair or you know would did your did your members say anything about the loyb and how that wasn't aligned to the mpf at all or i guess it is it's almost like vhs and beta max they are doing the same things but they're different and i guess it's how we to almost combine them together yeah i think that's that's fair i think that this is a bit that really intrigues me i'm really fascinated by how it all works it went into dub tailing with local government as well i think that loybs probably do align with the national performance framework because apart from what's been discussed already it's so broad the the loyb in Aberdeen will be looking at how you make people healthier and more active and you might not call it that but the outcomes will be pretty similar i would think but i think it has to work at a local level in words that are relevant to your local area so even if it's it's less overt i think that if it's there and it's embedded then that's that's only going to help to achieve the outcomes but i think it is it's quite intriguing that whole kind of how and it's really fascinating for me that all of you are regarding the NPF as a government thing i'm going to i'm taking that away to reflect on because because the impression that we have is it's it's not just a government thing it's you know it's an everybody thing so maybe we'll be naive in that but i i take your point and i think that's why we need to delve more deeply into it because it's because it's really fascinating and hopefully useful yeah it was really useful and you know it's back to the awareness as well but at a local level we're pushing the awareness of the loyp and over the last five years you know especially at budget time everyone was quoting the loyp back to me which obviously had worked everyone knew that if they're looking for funding had to align to the loyp but i guess that's so organisations are maybe not aware so much of the NPF locally because they know that the loyp's there and they have to align to that learn from you maybe how did you achieve that and ever do you mean how can we replicate that in the at a national level sorry i'm not being flippant i'm actually yeah but then it's still there's a link that's broken between the the NPF and the loyp because then still organisations will be aware of the loyp locally but maybe less aware of the NPF at a national level and it's how they how we combine them better so people are aware of both and that's just one or the other i don't know how to fix that no but that's a really good point and i guess you know one of the things we did with loyp you know it was it was embedded at the start of the project and i think you mentioned that in your your report any project should be embedded right to start so in terms of the NPF the way i read it it's almost like a it's measured at the end you know how did that project align to it as opposed to right to start how is it going to achieve the outcomes of the NPF any ideas how we change that i think it's back to what we've been saying about sort of like chipping away and incrementally just gradually introducing questions whether it's internal auditors whether it's you know council committees or parliamentary committees or whether it's scrutiny bodies or funders i keep harping on about funders because that is the most relevant to my sector how you gradually if you gradually chip away and get questions being asked then i think that will produce a culture shift and it is a case of as soon as there's an application for any funding it should be quite clear how it's going to align to the NPF and maybe that's something that's missing just now as well absolutely what i would like to avoid is it is it becoming a kind of tech box because and as you described earlier on in terms of retrofitting things to make it look like they were to do with the NPF but if we're going to be asking about sustainability we're going to be asking about fair work we're going to be asking about you know blah blah blah so many different things you don't want just to be a whole list of things that people have to retrofit stuff to comply with they need to need to buy into the purpose of it okay thanks thank you very much Douglas i believe Alasdair Allen has a question you'd like to ask it may have been covered by a lot but may we have heard there that NPF should be an everybody thing and i'm not going to be on wise enough to suggest that the NPF should ever capture the public imagination i'm not sure that would be an entirely healthy situation anyway but i think what has come through is the importance of awareness amongst community level bodies who are actually spending money or perhaps applying for money and do you think that there's anything that the government could do to express the purpose of all this in terms of that do capture the imagination of people at community level perhaps more effectively i think it's it's an awareness reason thing for government but in a way as i've discussed with mr lumson how do you make it relevant to those people so there's it's it's not about kind of those people out in communities need to understand what we're doing it's more about how can we make this relevant to those people and help them understand their contribution and i keep thinking about some of the really small organisations that are members of sc view like village halls for example or walking groups rambling groups things like that they are all absolutely contributing to the national outcomes but they don't know that and they maybe don't need to know that but whoever's kind of monitoring the national outcomes needs to know that and needs to know how to capture that information so i suppose it's a bit about people need to feel part of contributing to a better scotland but do they need to know the absolute detail of which outcome they're contributing to or what they need to do i don't know i think that's um that might be over complicating it no i mean i i would i would agree with ana i think what's potentially missing is the ability to really capture all the contributions that are already happening because organisations the type that ana described just have probably never heard a national performance framework probably don't know about the national outcomes and therefore don't understand that the thing they are doing is making that contribution they are making life better for their community i mean scotland is a set of communities and if life becomes better in every community life in scotland becomes better and i think just going back to mr lumstons question there is absolutely a clear link between local improvement plans and national performance framework they are all just part of the same spectrum aren't they what is making life better for the people of Aberdeen will be a bunch of things that are related to the things that are on the national performance framework and i think one of our observations in the work we've done is the way to deliver the best outcomes might be different in different parts of scotland you won't have the same solutions everywhere which is why local improvement plans are so important and then there will be things that can also be improved on a national basis and then at a sub-level to local there'll be really niche community things where things can become better for individual communities but i think if you showed anyone in scotland the set of outcomes they would be able to go well i buy into all of that and i can say where i think i see that happening locally dr allan do you have any further questions no thank you thank you very much so i don't believe any members of any further questions so i may just ask one final thing i mean listening with interest and reflecting a little bit and in combination i think some of the things that were raised by both john mason and uh douglas lumsden about the the structure of the performance framework i mean i think i think john's observation that it's that the first level is very very broad but then actually you know stepping into it you get into actually very a very kind of micro level very very quickly you know you look at each of the individual indicators and actually a lot of them are not just one measurement they're actually a number of different measurements they're presented in words and actually just thinking about what douglas was saying they're not all but they're largely outputs rather than inputs so i was wondering two things first of all does it need to be more focused and i think in particular with interactions you know i think maybe obvious for your members uh ana that that you know where they're relevant but you know think about registers of scotland i mean there are so many of the different indicators that potentially register scottan could touch on i don't think it will be necessarily helpful for for for you as an organisation to be looking at all of them all at once so do do we need to actually almost task individual organisations or bits of the government with looking at particular bits or particular measures and and actually almost sort of giving a bit of a mission the other thing i was wondering and thinking about that that inputs and outputs perspective do we need to be thinking rather than just about outcomes about actually how we measure change whether or not that actually needs to be focused on on identifying measures which are actually will change other things or or or at least having a prospect of saying we believe we can change this area by doing x or y so for example in health and wellbeing you know we getting people you're measuring kind of exercise or even you know the consumption of of fruit and fruit and vegetables because that is an input that will result in the output so just wondering if those two sort of thoughts are ones that your group might might might consider or whether you thought they were we're welcome thoughts yeah i think i think one of our other observations is if you start to dive into the national outcomes everything can become connected to everything because you look at one national outcome around you know poverty but then other outcomes around fair work and business clearly have a connection so i think there are you know there is a danger i think if you start to carve it up that you miss the idea that the whole of the national performance framework and the outcomes sort of they're all self-reinforcing i suppose in some ways but you're absolutely right i think mr johnson that yeah it's impossible for any organisation to sort of go line by line saying what do i do i think most organisations will target and say i'm predominantly contributing to this outcome and i'm thinking about whether i'm meeting those indicators but then i'm also looking i'm not missing the opportunity to ensure that where i can i'm making a broader a broader contribution across as much of the performance framework as i can but yeah i'm not sure how useful we think it would be to sort of carve it up and look at it as a set of individual things but i think that mission and the change is really important and in my mind and that gets to the end therefore but it's similar to if you're looking at children's education if all you're doing is measuring exam results that's not a great indicator if you measure where somebody started and where they got to and how much progress they made that's a far better indicator of the quality of their education or or their then their trajectory into adult life so i think there's a that kind of that was the analogy that was popping into my mind but i think that measuring that change and measuring progress that would be a massive step forward on and we need to think about who might work out how to do that rather than us thinking we can do that i think yes i'm going to guess another analogy would be measuring acceleration rather than speed exactly and one is a dynamic measure one is a static so i've got a question from michelle michelle is traveling hence i'm relaying this but her question is is this why has the scottish government not mandated all organizations to state exactly uh all organizational plan how all organizational plans aligned to the npf and where possible that funding uh settlements are uh predicated on that um surely this would change behaviors well i suppose you could argue that it is mandated in that the community empowerment act says all organizations have to have due regard for the national performance framework and national outcomes but i think the question i suppose is what does due regard mean and in terms of budgeting i mean when you put into the sort of budget process there is a requirement to specify how your budget is in support of the national outcomes but i think our our point i suppose is then where the follow-through is on all of that and as i described to mr greir it's not enough to just set it out because then it's almost a tick box exercise you then actually need to be held to account right the way through the chain to a make sure you're doing it but i think your point mr johnson that it's actually making the change required because you could be spending money doing some of this stuff and making no change at all and that isn't well money well spent so i think the measurement of the change and the measurement of the rate of acceleration towards the delivery of these national indicators and the national outcome is the thing that really has to follow on from just specifying what your organization does and as i said in my opening statement lots of organizations we spoke to say they specify what they do but then if no one ever asks them about them asks them about it asks them whether it's good enough asks them whether they're making enough progress just writing it down doesn't make any difference i don't think there's also the incentives part of our working group so nearly everything we've done and everything we've talked about has been focused on accountability because that's where we can see that you can make a difference and that goes to mr tomson's question which is about how can we make them now if we didn't need to make them if there was an incentive and we could somehow get people to buy it and do it willingly then that would actually be more productive but we have kind of struggled to work out what the incentives might be other than not being in front of the public committee or not being on the front page of the deal record so we're working on that at the moment i think we all prefer carrots to sticks i do i believe that duggs lumson has an additional question thanks community thanks for all our meat back in and i was reading your blog last night and one thing that did stand out was we know that investing time and money in prevention is essential if we are to address poverty inequality and climate change we've known it for years even decades but we don't make that important shift because the benefits don't show up with that within that electoral cycle and it does mean and it means moving spend from immediate pressures and that's something i i agree with completely but it's something that the the government you know claimed to be taking prevention and early intervention seriously so do you think they're not doing enough and what more could they do around prevention then well i think it's really difficult because especially just now in the financial climate that we're in because you have to shift spend and to shift spend from the acute end of things whether it's health or justice or you know that to shift it into prevention is really difficult when you've then still got that the pile of people who are ill or in prison or whatever but i absolutely think we do we need to somehow make that shift i mean it was in the christie report and we're still talking about it now so yeah if you send someone my frustration in that and it is i think it's a spend to save thing so you would spend it now to save later because what we're doing at the moment is funding acute services in whatever sector to deal with the problems that are created by not investing in prevention and that might be investing energy and time as well as money but it is often money so and i think part of that is because of that public discourse thing that we talked about earlier on where there's not so many people are going to vote or withhold their vote on the basis of prevention they're much more likely to do it on the basis of immediate priorities that they see in their communities because i've got a feeling we we do it within sort of silos almost but you know i keep banging the drum in this committee that you know more money spent in the local government can help save money on health and injustice later but i guess that's harder for the government to do because that might shift some resources from one pot to another okay thanks again thank you and with that unless there's any other questions draws to close the evidence session today can i thank both that anif Allie and Jennifer Henson hugely for their contribution i think it's been a very interesting discussion and i think there have been a number of themes and issues that we have alighted on that we will certainly follow up in our own inquiry work on the national performance framework so thank you very much for your contributions and with that we conclude the public part of today's meeting the next item of our agenda which will be discussed in private is consideration of our work programme and so we now move into private session great