To the 16th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Officiation Committee before we start, can I first put it on record? The committee's thanks to members of the House of Commons and of the Public Administration and the Constitutional Affairs Committee for visiting us here at Pleinard yesterday. We had a very productive temu and the work and approaches from our respect to committees in relation to public administration. It was fascinating for those of us who were here to just to see how much in parallel we have with that committee on the experiences and the challenges ahead of us. Today, we continue our evidence-gathering and relations to our enquirer in the national performance framework Am gespannt into action. I welcome to the meeting our first panel of witnesses, Myryn Kelly, chief officer of local Government finance at COSLA, and Tim Hendrick, community manager and development at the Fife council. First, I would like to thank you for your excellent written submissions, both Rwy'n gwneud, ac yn fawr, dywedd yn adrodd a bod, ond gofio'r byw gwestiwn i'n cwestiynau. Ond y byddai'n mynd i'n ddiwylliant gyda'r ystod y fwy ardal sydd ddim yn cwestiynau unrhyw i'n cymysgol. Felly wrth gwrs, dwi'n ffawr i'n groes bwysig oherwydd blaenau rhynau cynnag ei fod yn cael ei gweithredu i ganfod maen nhw i icyllתau ddau'r cyllideon i'n ei fod yn gwneud o'r ddau'r cyllideon, am fnod gwelwch arwacoi. Ac mae'n ystodnt rhagor yr un gwneud. A tyfnog chi, i mi ddim yn ond i ddim yn dda, Professor? Diolch i chi ddim yn cwmpio dda, ac mae'n ddwy na gweithbeth gyntaf i fwywch yn cael gwneud ac mae'n ddyn nhw ianish i ddod y ffrwynghau rydwg rinfaeis. Felly, mae'n ddyn nhw i rydwg rydwg i ddod i ddod i ddod ddyn nhw i rydwg rydwg i ddod i ddod i ddod i ddod i rydwg rydwg i rydwg rydwg rydwg residents to see the announcement from an almost dual perspective which has both benefits and challenges when we see how it unfolds. The national performance framework's co-signatories are committed to the vision and outcomes that The vision and the outcomes are there, but we know that this is a journey, a progress. There is a really good opportunity to build on what we have learned and what we can see is working well and maybe what needs to improve. One of the things that we see is that there can be challenges in how we demonstrate particular cyfg раздел eraill â meddylistgang.  Mae fyddai'r adeiladau i lŵn a'u ddigonwyr i ddimenig. might be timing from when plans have been developed, but they are focused on contributing those. Local authorities have that ability to identify where the biggest gaps are and focus on where the biggest need is to improve outcomes for people in their local areas. Thank you for that. Do you feel there for that? You talked about perhaps outcomes not being perhaps as prescriptive as they should be? Do you think that they should be tightened up in the regard? Many other people who have given their submissions are talking about enhanced flexibility in terms of the approach to the outcome. Where exactly does COSLA sit in that? I do not think that the outcomes should necessarily be tightened. Many organisations face challenges in how they contribute and deliver on those outcomes. You can see that. You can see several of the evidence focusing particularly on constraints around funding, either because funding is being provided to multiple organisations for really specific interventions that may contribute to those outcomes, but it is not always or necessarily going to be the best way to work on that outcome, depending on circumstances. Additionally, one of the constraints that are related to funding that is frequently cited has also been the restrictions on single-year funding or short-term funding, and the challenge that that can create in terms of that sustainable contribution to delivering on outcomes and different ways of working. Funding is going to come up quite a lot in our second session today, certainly mentioned by everyone who has delivered a submission. Tim, you are very proud of Fife's local outcome improvement plan. You talk about the specific focus that Fife has on three outcomes, priorities tackling poverty and preventing crisis, addressing climate emergency and leading economic recovery, which are all really sensible. However, you have said in terms of how you would innovate as a council is that there is a tendency for national policy and inspection arrangements to focus on certain more easily measurable outcomes, and you mentioned SQA attainment. You are saying that it distracts attention away from the importance of wider wellbeing for improving outcomes for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children. I am just wondering if you can expand a wee bit more on your thinking in that area. That particular comment refers specifically to some of the work around children and young people. I think that the sense from speaking to colleagues in our education and children services directorate is that in order to provide longer-term improvements in key measures like attainment, you sometimes have to have a much broader approach in terms of focusing on the health and wellbeing of children, so that sometimes the national focus is on single inputs or interventions around issues like teacher numbers, for example, children in early years places, and clearly additional funding in those areas is really welcomed, but that can at times put pressure on other parts of the system. What we have been trying to do post-Covid in Fife, although we have our 11, our 13 plan for Fife ambitions, which mirror the national outcomes pretty closely, we felt that after post-Covid there was that need for a much clearer focus in terms of where we put our energy because, as you know, if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Hence the new governance and leadership and delivery arrangements around those three specific recovery and renewal priorities, just to give that pace to the post-pandemic recovery all within the framework of community wealth building. So, I would echo Mirren's comment in that some of the national requirements, whether that's through a ring fence funding or through particular inspection regimes, can constrain our ability to innovate at the local level. Okay, well, I'm going to actually ask you about funding just now, but I'm going to actually quote from Mirren's paper, as opposed to your own paper on that particular show. You have obviously commented on Fife's own paper. What Mirren has said is that councillor can strain about overall levels of funding, and I think that we're all well aware of that. You've also went on to say that the piecemeal approach to funding does not truly support an outcomes-based approach. How do you think that the Scottish Government can implement its manifesto commitments in terms of areas covered by local government and, at the same time, have a more constructive approach? I think that sometimes ring fence funding can be a bit of a blunt instrument, and what's just as important is to work on policy developments, work in looking at the evidence in terms of approaches like what works, and working with local authorities to pilot new approaches and to develop best practice in those areas, whereas funding doesn't necessarily lead to better practice and better outcomes. It can result in just doing more of the same. Yeah, I mean obviously Mirren Cosla's not happy about ring fence and et cetera, but the way that the Scottish Government would explain that is that they would give, say they would give, 10 million pounds to local authorities to employ more teachers. The local authorities, if they had the flexibility not to spend it on that, might spend it on something else. The ministers would then be attacked in the Scottish Parliament for not having enough teachers, et cetera, so ministers think, well, we're providing the money, the councils are not spending it on teachers, and we are getting a kicking for it even though we're giving them the money. So how do you square that circle? So I think that that's a good example, though it goes back to this need to take that outcomes-based approach, because why is it teachers that are the best intervention in that circumstance? It may well be that in Edinburgh additional teachers are exactly what's needed for any reason, but actually maybe in some other areas a share of the 10 million pound investment would be best directed at, you know, nurture programmes or supporting families that, when they're at a much younger and much earlier stage of their life, and that's actually what would contribute to the outcome of them and their educational attainment in all of those elements. I agree with that, but the issue is that, from a ministerial point of view, they're still going to get, if they agree with that, and I know that some local authorities will say, well, look, we don't need additional teachers, we might be need a peripatetic high biology teacher who's got six kids in that school, you know, doing advanced high on six in that school. It seems daft to have an extra teacher, perhaps, to cover that in each school. We'll just have one teacher, but then again, the Government's still, the headline in the media is still a reduction in teacher numbers or whatever it happens to be, and that political imperative, if you like, is what the public see. The public just don't see an improvement and delivery of advanced higher in biology. They see fewer teachers in that area. I think that this is the absolute nub of things, because I think that ministers would really like to give local government more flexibility, local government would like more flexibility, but they're perhaps concerned that the politics gets in the way of delivering on these outcomes, so that's what I'm suggesting. How do we actually square that circle with a hostile media? That is a good point, and I found it interesting. I can't remember who it was, but that was picked up by some of the other evidence submissions. They commented on the fact that there was maybe a lack of proactive journalism supporting the outcomes and the NPF more broadly and changing that narrative around that. I think that that's probably something where we should all be jointly doing work to try and help change that public perception of how outcomes work and the importance of them move away from the ability of journalists to be able to create a challenging situation for politicians where they say that they've not got enough teachers. What's enough teachers? How would you define that anyway? Focusing on supporting that shift in public perception and increasing the engagement and understanding of the NPF and outcomes and how outcomes are delivered and could become part of the public discourse is something that would be really beneficial as we move forward with that. I wish you a view on that. I would agree with what Mernon is saying. I think that a lot of my experience has been around promoting partnership and working around safer communities. Another good example there is the political focus at a national level on numbers of police officers, which is one input of many inputs in terms of how you make communities safer. It could be argued that the evidence points to addressing poverty and providing positive opportunities, particularly for young people, as being the key inputs there. I think that in terms of the dilemma around the perceptions of the media, that needs to be challenged. We should be working on the basis of what the evidence tells us to do, rather than what the headlines say. I understand what you're saying, but it's difficult for ministers if they're getting a kick in in the press all the time about the police numbers of declining or teacher numbers of declining or there's not enough nurses or whatever. For example, my health board thinks of getting five beds too many, but they know that if they cut them, they'll be an immediate outcry, even though they're going to devote the resources elsewhere into delivering services. The money's not going to vanish. It's going to be spent where they think it's going to deliver better health outcomes. However, we have that continued difficulty intent. I mean that probably everyone here in terms of politicians is guilty of pressing that button when it suits them as well, because they have to get reelected, apart from anything else. That is probably the most fundamental and, to my view, barrier to the national volumes framework delivering on its outcomes. Myrin, just to go on to your submission. You say that the route towards achieving national outcomes is not prescribed. That leaves a potential for an advantage of a wide range of different and often innovative paths to be developed through which better outcomes can be achieved at a local level and can translate into tailoring-specific services to address unique local issues or targeting local groups or communities. I'm just wondering if you can give me a couple of examples, not from Fife, because I'm going to ask Tim, obviously, if he can give us some examples on his neck of the woods. I think that this probably is one where Tim will be able to answer with more explicit examples than I am, because I think that what we try to do within COSA is enable our local authority members to absolutely work within that non-prescriptive framework on the basis that they have access to more detailed local knowledge, so know where the biggest gaps are and know where the biggest challenges are and can develop interventions that do work locally, which won't be the same. We often say, well, what works in Glasgow isn't necessarily going to be the best choice for the island councils. I think that there are particular examples where the priorities lie as well around demographics, where there are some areas with de-population or ageing population and the focus that needs to be on supporting support within communities, as opposed to some local authorities that have them increasing population. The focus is on supporting younger families, and the need to be able to focus attention on what matters locally is important in delivering ultimately on all the outcomes. That is one of the challenges that we see when we look at the indicators overall. A lot of them are Scotland-wide only, so it is very hard sometimes to see whether there have been big improvements in an area for some of those. They have not focused on some of the other ones, because that is not the biggest priority locally, but that does not mean that we are not seeing gradual improvements. Or equally, sometimes we are missing where things are going wrong, and that is a particular risk post-Covid. We have all seen the significant impact on the increase in inequalities and that it is likely to have health inequalities and economic inequalities. That is of real concern. How do we adapt within the framework and focus on what is needed? It will be different. Even if everyone agreed on a priority to work on, the interventions needed to improve that priority outcome are likely to be different in different areas, even if you are all working on the same one. Based on the insight and the evidence around the work that we have been doing post-Covid, particularly around the priority of tackling poverty and preventing crisis, for example, we undertook some research into where the bulk of Fife's anti-poverty funding goes. We found that up to 70 per cent of our current funding goes on either crisis interventions or mitigating the impact of poverty. A tiny amount goes into preventative approaches like supported employment, getting people back into work, people who are furthest from the employment market. That means that the focus for Fife, as well as looking at approaches like no wrong door and community wealth building, has to be on supporting people back into employment and looking at positive destinations. That may not be the priority for Highland. It may not be the priority for Aberdeenshire. I think that that is going back to the point that I made about using the evidence to look at what the policy interventions you need to make in your specific circumstances. If you had additional resources in Fife, would you, for example, allocate them to increasing the amount of money that is spent on preventative spending in terms of poverty? You talked about 70-30, so, for example, if you had a significant increase in the resources available for that, would you continue that proportion of spend or would you say, well, we have this additional money, let's try and make a real difference in terms of prevention? How would that work? We would have to follow the evidence there and look to be putting the resources in upstream to prevent people from falling into crisis. That is particularly urgent, given the current pressures on families around inflation and energy costs. Also, looking at systemic change across both the local authority and other partners so that we can make it easier for people to get the support that they need. Hence, the focus on no-wrong door approaches in terms of ensuring that people get the joined-up support that they need at their first point of contact with the public services. Just one more question for me before we open out to colleagues. It's just to yourself, Meryn. You said in terms of economic development in your submission that local government, despite recognitions, is a key partner in the delivery of the national strategy for economic transformation and being a sphere of government as a little engagement in the development of NICT. Can you tell me why that would be? I would have to refer to some of my colleagues not currently present because I didn't lead on the engagement within that. However, more generally, I think that there is certainly not as much direct reference within that strategy to the performance framework itself, as we would have liked to have seen. Thank you very much. I will now open up to colleagues. The first person to ask questions will be Liz, to be followed by John. Good morning. I wonder if I can flag up to you some of the evidence that we took when we actually went out from Parliament into two separate local authorities. The one that I was attending with some very senior officials from local government was saying very clearly that everybody's agreed that the national performance framework in principle is a good thing because it focuses minds on what we ought to be trying to do. When it comes to the practice of delivery, there is a big dilemma at the heart of that, because if you make the prescription to state-orientated and to cumbersome, it is very difficult for local authorities and other stakeholders to have the freedom to do exactly what you have both said this morning to deliver where you know at a local level where things are going to improve most. Do you agree with the perspective of these senior officials? Yes, broadly speaking, I would. I would say that there is a difference between having clear shared ambitions at a national and a local level and having a prescriptive performance regime. I do not think that the latter would help, but I think that having a clear site of where we want to get to and how we are doing in terms of getting there is helpful. And then having an understanding most important, as far as I am concerned, rather than looking at lagging indicators from two years ago, what we need to do to improve our policy outcomes in the future. I think that that is about much more than performance reporting against a performance framework. That is about having a very clear insight and understanding about what is working and what is not working. You cannot separate the policy and the research input in terms of what you need to do to achieve your outcomes from any performance regime. Just to follow the logic of that, are you saying that it is beneficial to somebody like yourself who is making very local decisions on what is best for Fife, that it is helpful to have considerable flexibility and autonomy about what you decide to do and, hopefully, with less money that is rigged fence, where you can choose the priorities that you feel will deliver the best outcomes without having anything that is too prescriptive at national level? Is that really what you are saying? Yes, but, on the other hand, it makes a lot of sense on the broader policy agenda for local authorities and the national government to be working towards the same outcomes, to similar outcomes, in that any national policy interventions are broadly speaking in line with what you are trying to achieve locally, but I suppose that I would agree with you that it is not all about funding, it is not all about where you put the ring-fenced funding. Just to pick up Myron's point from earlier, where she quite rightly said that what works in Fife might not work in the borders or something that works in Glasgow might not work in the highlands, et cetera. The dilemma that faces this committee as we scrutinise this national performance framework is that there are very broad agreements across the board as to what we should be trying to achieve in improving the wellbeing of our communities right across Scotland, but the measures that will ensure that that happens could be very different in different parts of the country. What I am interested to know is whether you feel the structure of the national performance framework allows for that, or whether you think that we should have a slight change in the approach? I think that it allows for that because the Community Empowerment Act essentially states that community planning partnerships should ensure that local outcome improvement plans are informed by the national outcomes, but the local outcome improvement plans do not need to follow the national outcome outcomes rigidly, so I would suggest that that flexibility is important. For example, in Fife following the declaration of climate emergency, we as a community planning partnership agreed that we really need to raise our game in terms of climate mitigation and resilience. Now, the national outcomes are long-term outcomes and perhaps there is a need to be slightly more fleet of foot about the way that you prioritise some of the elements of the national performance framework. My final question is mirroring it in terms of Kozla's approach to this. One of the people who was giving evidence to us was very clear that, when there is good practice somewhere, I just pick up the phone and speak to my counterpart in another local authority and we agree that I am going to do it this way because it has worked for you. Does Kozla have any way of collecting the data and the delivery improvements that are working in all 32 local authorities and how do you measure what is working and what is not working? Honestly, I think that that is something that we could probably all do better. Do you mean the collection of the data? Certainly how successful some specific interventions are against that. It is that challenge, isn't it? How do you measure and evaluate what you have done and how it has contributed to an outcome, particularly given that so many of those outcomes are long-term outcomes and that can be challenging. That probably is something that can be identifying and sharing best practice while it does happen. I think that you are right that it is slightly more informal. It is through officer networks or political networks where somebody says that we did this and it worked brilliantly and somebody goes, oh, can I find out and do it and seek to implement it? Or equally, we tried this, didn't Mabby's work out like we had planned? Mabby's people want to learn from it. That begs the question of whether you need a national performance framework. I think that, as Tim was saying, that overarching shared outcomes and shared ambitions are helpful and not just for the partnership between Scottish Government and local government. It is a useful thing to have with our other partners across the public sector and third sector and, ideally, private sector as well to see if we can build on that and to get behind that. I think that there is a space, again, for sharing and learning from best practice and that evaluation of interventions that maybe is missing, that maybe could be improved upon as we go forward. It is something that you have put in my mind now to potentially raise with the improvement service and have a discussion about. There are networks there, but Mabby's were not capturing the information as well as we could or sharing the information as well as we could. That is an important point. There is also the community planning improvement board. I think that there is quite a lot of work happening within that, which I think would feed in. I think that we need to make sure that it explicitly feeds in to how all of that is contributing to outcomes and the best interventions, given the limited resources that we have. The idea of local outcomes should be valid for national outcomes, which I get. We have a problem that, especially in the third sector, I would have to say, do tend to come to us and say that, if it is happening in Grampian, it should be happening in Strathclyde or whatever, and maybe especially in health, which I realise is not what you are focused on, but if there is a specialist nurse for something in Tayside, then there should be a specialist nurse in Greater Glasgow. How do we square that? I think that that is very much again about what inputs are appropriate, what is required, given a particular set of local circumstances. If that kind of claim can be backed up by evidence that is what is needed in that specific local circumstance, that is a perfectly valid statement to make. However, the whole point about community planning and local outcome improvement plans is that one size does not fit all. The whole point when single outcome agreements were initially agreed was that local community planning partnerships should get on and deliver according to what the local priorities are and what the local needs are for that area. It is a challenge, and until we have infinite resources, it will always be a challenge. I think that there is something about ensuring that there is a conversation about why certain things might have been prioritised in certain areas. It is not to say that a specialist nurse or a specialist teacher would not be welcome, but that there are people at greater distance from realising other outcomes, and that is why there is focus on that intervention, rather than on the specialist nurse that may well be helpful. Is it the best use of resources to achieve what we are doing? Is it best value? Is it going to help people most, given that we do not have infinite bags of money? To move on to something else, one or two people have said to us—I think that it is pretty obvious—that the public does not get excited about the national performance framework. First of all, it is important. Link to that, the suggestion that we should maybe rename it as something like the national wellbeing framework. Do you have any thoughts of renaming it? Would putting wellbeing in make a difference? I noticed that throughout a few of the responses. There is merit in discussing that, because, as somebody says, performance indicates that it is not the most exciting thing, and it is not the easiest thing to get engaged with. I think that there is absolutely merit in doing that, because I think that it is important to get the public engaged. If they see the framework as what can support them to better outcomes, that will helpfully provide a better challenge to all of us. That can be a help pivot media away from the current input focus. That is absolutely worth a discussion. I think that any name with the words performance and framework in it are not going to excite people. I told my son that I was going to come and give evidence on the national performance framework this morning. He said, Dad, do you do anything that is interesting? I think a focus on shared ambitions and striving to improve the wellbeing of the nation is something that would probably get people's interest, but not on a national performance framework. Can I ask you specifically about Fife? I think you have got this, am I right, saying Fife Plan? It is all a bit confusing. We have a Fife Plan, which is the special plan, and we have the Plan for Fife, which is the community plan. We are all part of the same system. My question is then how these kind of more local plans tie in with the national performance framework. Is it your argument then that, really, you are doing all the things that are in the national performance framework are in this local plan, even though you might not use the language of the national performance framework? If a number of organisations would say that the thinking is there, it is implicit, but they do not use the language of the national performance framework. I think that we have mapped our 10-year ambitions against the national outcomes, and there is a good match. It is not a complete match, because, as I said earlier, I think that if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority, so we do have our particular five-spin on that. I have to be perfectly frank with that. We have our 10-year ambitions because we felt that it would be important when we developed our local outcome improvement plan in 2017 that, in 2027, we could, as a partnership, be held to account as to whether we have moved towards the ambitions. All of the ambitions are measurable in one form or another, so we will be held to account. Similarly, it is important that the national government can be held to account for key issues such as reducing carbon emissions and making progress in terms of the wellbeing of children, for example. It is important that we have those ambitions, but, as I said earlier, I also think that it is important that we have this clear focus when needed on areas such as tackling poverty, carbon reduction and economic recovery, when we have just been through a period like the last two years. Can I just follow you up on that point about being held to account? In your answer to that question, you talk quite a lot about being audited, which is happening, and there are statutory requirements for public reporting. Are they taking the national performance framework into account? So, when they do their audit, are they looking at how you relate to the national performance framework? It is hard to answer that one. In terms of the audit, it is generally around best value considerations and are we doing what we said we were going to do, which, in our case, is our strategic plan, the plan for Fife. So, indirectly, yes, but not directly against the national performance framework. Do you want to miss Kelly? Is that a typical picture across the country? I understand that Audit Scotland is doing quite a lot of work in terms of how they consider or interact with the national performance framework going forward. There is a bit of the framework, but it was refreshed in 2018, so it is relatively young for this kind of framework. It is not a surprise that some things are still embedding. I think that there is an opportunity to learn about that. I would agree that there are inspection and regulatory regimes and audits that are not aligned to the national performance framework and probably and certainly do not explicitly take things into account and may have explicit other performance measures that they look at, which, as we all know, drive behaviour. If this is the thing that you will be inspected on, that focuses on what you are doing. There is a good opportunity over the longer term if we can better align all regulatory and inspection and audit regimes to focus thinking on that outcomes approach, as opposed to sometimes it is input measures, sometimes it is output measures and sometimes it is outcomes focused. However, whether they are clearly linked to the national outcomes or the local outcomes, as they have been through the community planning partnership and developed locally, reflecting local needs and priorities, is linking to those. One of the points that has been raised with us following on from what you have just said is that, even at the Scottish Government level, the national performance framework and the budget are not always very closely tied together. Do you have thoughts on that? Yes. I would agree that it is not always clear within the budget how exactly everything contributes to the outcomes that are being delivered. Even sometimes when it is clear, it is not always clear how much value that is. The interventions might be made to alleviate child poverty, but are they the best interventions given the cost of them? Some of that opportunity cost certainly is not clear in terms of decisions that are made. I do not feel qualified to answer that one, so I am afraid of that one. Daniel Duglus will be followed by that. I will begin by reassuring Tim on the children's perceptions of what he did last night. My daughter said to me, oh, daddy, I think that you are really good at your job, and I was delighted. I do not really know that, because whenever I listen to anything that you have to say in Parliament, I find it too boring to listen to for very long. I went from elation to deflation in a very short period of time indeed. John touched on the point that has been raised by a number of people both in writing and in person. The national performance framework is being used in an implicit way. It almost sits behind things as a set of values rather than anything else. I would just really want to ask you a less technical and perhaps a blunter way of asking some of the questions that are in our formal things. Do you find it useful? And do you use it on a day-to-day basis, if so, how? If not on a day-to-day basis, do you actively use it when you are framing policies, or is it literally just something that you refer to when you are engaging with the Scottish Government? Largely, yes. As COSLA, I find it useful, because it allows me to engage with the Scottish Government on some of the issues. When policy developments come forward, it is a question that I always ask civil servants. How is this contributing to the outcomes? Where does this fit? There is a bit of a challenge there in a way that there are 11 outcomes. There is quite a lot of them, and broadly, policies will always find a way to fit in there. It is that conversation, but is this the best intervention to achieve what we are trying to do here? I find it useful, from that COSLA perspective, when we are engaging at that national level and also trying to broaden those conversations with our other partners across the piece. However, it is not always easiest in the same way that, if you are talking about rights realisation, some of the language is challenging, and it is not what people use in everyday circumstances or really understand. Even if it is what they are doing, even if they are making decisions that are going to improve outcomes or are going to realise people's rights better, they just do not use that terminology or do not explicitly think about it that way. As a sort of follow-up to that, I mean, do you think that that is one of the things that you should be doing is actually putting these things into a much plainer language? I will just also ask a substantive question. I think that one of the other observations has been that, frankly, it is not used as much as it was when it was first conceived of in 2007. Critically, one of the other observations that I found quite interesting was that it went part-and-parcel with the Concordat. There are lots that go with that, but is that something that you would agree with? If so, what are the things that we have lost along the way? If you were wanting to revitalise the national framework, you would revive from what was being done 15 years ago. Should it be put into plainer language, are there lessons that we learned back then that we have forgotten? I would not necessarily say that, but I think that it is time to revisit the national outcomes and to check whether the national outcomes, as they are set out, are still valid and still relevant. I do not think that there is anything in the national outcomes that anybody could argue with, because they are all good things to do and good things to aspire to. Your question was how useful are they. I would suggest that they are national outcomes, but they are much more useful at a national level than they are at a local level. We have our local outcomes, and they are broadly speaking in line with the national outcomes, but we would not necessarily have the same balance of focus in terms of each of the national outcomes. I think that that is going to vary because local authorities and community planning partnerships vary in terms of what they need to focus on, whether they depend on levels of deprivation and on the geographical and social mix of the area. I would broadly agree. It is interesting, and I had not picked up the point that some people felt that there was greater engagement 10 years ago than there is now. I think that that is something that I am certainly interested in seeing whether we did better. Can we reintroduce some of that and reinvigorate it? I will put two broad questions. We were going to change it. One thing that has come back to us loud and clear is that, to the point that you were making, it is all a bit motherhood in apple pie. No-one is going to disagree that any of those things are good things. Perhaps the issue is that what you need to do is to say how are those things going to be influenced. Is there a strategy that needs to layer upon it? The agencies and ministers can then seek to engage and contribute towards the strategies and that outcomes in them are a bit narrow. Structurally, does that need to happen? Are you a point of view about how they are influenced and how people can contribute towards that? The other point relates a little bit to what you were saying earlier, Mirren, about greater clarity for contribution. One of the other suggestions that has come up in previous evidence sessions is that, essentially, that needs to be embedded by agreement with individual agencies, so that there is a bit of clarity about not so much about particular outcomes being one person's responsibility, but where public money is being handed out is that there is an agreement about how a contribution will be made to national outcomes. Should there be a point of view and a change in structure in that sense? Should there be specific agreements around contribution towards the national performance framework between Government and agencies? We would not want it to be too prescriptive, because of what we have discussed. There are variations across the country and organisations. Some organisations work nationally versus locally, so anything that supports it would need to be able to have that flex. A strategy setting out how the expectation of how you can influence would not be simple, but it would be interesting to see if that could be developed. I think that that is part of it, but not everyone is clear how they can and cannot engage with that. I would also be—I would not want to be too prescriptive about who is contributing to which outcomes as well, because I think that one of the things that there is still a bit of a lack of understanding is how lots of organisations contribute to a number of those outcomes or should be contributing to a number of those outcomes. I would want to be careful with that. I have lost my train of thought. I apologise. I would agree with your suggestion that a lot more of the emphasis should be on how best we achieve the shared national outcomes rather than any prescriptive enforcement of how much you do. A really good example of that is the national outcome around inclusive, empowered, resilient and safe communities. We would all agree that that is a great ambition, a valid ambition. Now, whether the Community Empowerment Act and some of the elements within the Community Empowerment Act, such as community asset transfer, are the best way of achieving that, is open to discussion. Just to take the five example, we would always want to promote community involvement in the ownership and management of services and assets, but, in reality, the areas that have benefited most from community asset transfer have been the more affluent areas around north-east Fife, where communities have the capacity to take on those assets. Again, absolutely no problem with that, but is that where we should be putting our energies when mid-fife is lagging behind in all of the key outcomes in terms of health, income and other outcomes? That is an example of where being prescriptive does not necessarily lead to the outcomes that you are looking to achieve. One of the things that strikes me is that when you look at the thing itself, you have the high-level outcomes and you are just straight into a sea of words and numbers 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? I am going back to the question from Mr Mason about what we call this thing. It is about where we want to get to as a nation and what our ambitions are. A national performance framework does not really do it, does it not? Are you going to reopen the flower versus Cog debate? Definitely not, because this is the problem. If the national performance framework is referenced, you just see that diagram. In this day and age, we all have seen the wonderful infographics and it brings data to life, but I do not think that that data is being brought to life is my humble suggestion. Because that acronym is also NPA, it is confused by some people with the national planning framework. I think that it was called something like national ambitions for Scotland or something, which ordinary people who are not particularly involved in what we are deliberating over would understand that it was something positive and something that the Government was aiming for. It is a very dry title and it is completely uninspiring. I am looking at a comment from the Auditor General that he made just last year. He said that Scotland is suffering from a major implementation gap between policy ambitions and delivery on the ground. Then he went on to say that he is not convinced that public sector leaders really feel accountable for delivering change. Do you think that that is something that you would agree with? The accountability question is difficult. I think that it is important that we are accountable to our communities and to the public by being clear about what we have achieved and what we have not achieved and being honest about that. I think that at times within the whole industry of performance reporting and performance frameworks, there is more of an emphasis on reassurance than on challenge. Certainly, when reports are taken to committees such as these, but in particular service committees, there is a sense that we are throwing lots of numbers at you and showing that we are measuring things and that if things are going down, there may be a good reason for them going down, but who is asking the really difficult questions about are we making a difference, are we making things better? I think that that is where the accountability comes in. There has to be an internal challenge as well as an external challenge. Would that be something that you would measure at a local level or not? I think that the way that community planning is set up requires that to be done at a local level. I do not think that we should get tied up in national inspection regimes because there are always ways of presenting data that shows the work that you are doing in the best light possible. I think that inspection regimes tend to encourage that kind of behaviour, whereas if you promote and support internal challenge and have that very clear focus on outcomes rather than inputs and rather than performance information that maybe is not telling you much because it is two or three years old, that is the kind of—Mirran and I were talking before we came in about the fact that a lot of that is as much to do with the capabilities of the people working within organisations as it is to do with how the performance regimes are set up. Do you have people within your organisation that have the analytical skills to look at the data and say, are we really making a difference? Is this really telling us that things are getting better? It is that internal challenge and that is certainly something that we are looking at so that we do not have this separation between policy development, research and performance reporting because what we should be doing with services is challenging them and working with them to look at better ways of delivering those services and improving the outcomes rather than throwing a whole load of data at managers who are probably busy as it is and having to wade through a whole bunch of performance data is probably the last thing they want to spend their time doing. Back to the example that you gave earlier about North East Fife is doing quite well and you are having to commit resource there for it in terms of community—I forgot what it is called now—communic asset transfer. You could commit resource into central Fife where there is maybe larger areas of deprivation. Do you feel that your hands are tied in a way on some of the things that you have to do? I think that there is an element of pull sometimes. Resources are pulled to areas that perhaps we would prefer to push our resources into parts of mid-fife, temple hall in Kirkcaldy, support and work on capacity building. Much as we admire the work that is being done in places like Creil, they have pretty good skill sets there from retired professionals who are more than capable of delivering some of the projects that they want to deliver. It is always going to be a challenge. Local place plans is another example, part of the national planning framework. That is going to draw resources to areas that want to develop local place plans because they have concerns about house building on the fringes of their villages. That is perfectly understandable, but it will pull resources possibly away from areas that need them more. I guess that the Government would say that that is why we have so many ring-fence funds to actually put resources into certain areas, but that is also too prescriptive as well, is it not? Yes, but there are no additional funds for local place plans or for community asset transfer. We have to do that from our core budgets. We have to support that work from our core budgets. Another question that I had was about the relationship between the loyp and the NPF. You mentioned that there was mapping done, but is that something that is done after the loyp is created and trying to map it back to the NPF? Or is the loyp done by looking at the NPF and seeing how it would flow down the way instead? No, we developed our local outcome improvement plan based on what the evidence in Fife was telling us about what we need to do. It was not based on the national performance framework. It was mapped against it. I guess that was a source of reassurance to some that we had not missed anything important, but it certainly was not a top-down process. Is that typical across all local authorities? I cannot speak for all of them. There is obviously going to be a timing issue. Particularly when was this refreshed versus when did you do your loyp or your 10-year plan? There is always going to be a bit of a risk of lag or interaction in that, but there is that key point about your local outcome improvement plan that has to be driven by your local need, but it should not be wildly unrelated to the national performance framework. You mentioned in your submission that funding to voluntary sector you do not assess the grant awards against the NPF. Are they assessed against the local outcome improvement plans? We would ask them to state what elements of the plan for Fife they are supporting with those interventions. All voluntary groups in your area would be well aware of the loyp because they know that they have to for any funding. In terms of the NPF, it is probably quite distant and alien to so many. I guess that would depend on whether it was a national voluntary organisation or a Fife-based voluntary organisation, but for some organisations it would probably be one step removed unless they were applying through a national funding stream, such as the shared prosperity fund, for example. I have a couple of brief questions. First of all, it is taking things right back up to the top. We discussed earlier in the session about the legislation stating that you have to have regard to the 2015 act. My general question sets aside some of the issues that we have covered with the NPF or whatever it is called today. In a perfect world, would it be beneficial to have something tighter than merely having regard to the national performance framework? A sexier name, clearer linkages and so on, but those are national missions. Would that be beneficial? In other words, does the concept of having regard allow for regular room in agencies? I think that having regard is sufficient. It is not a small duty that is placed to have regard. It has legal standing that is not insignificant. I think that there would be a risk potentially in over strengthening it in the sense that how do you run the risk of, as Tim was describing, everything becoming a priority. Having regard provides the necessary flexibility to enable that consideration of the prioritisation within the national performance framework and the outcomes that you need to focus on locally. I could see that there was a risk of strengthening it that it becomes over prescriptive. It is felt that there is a need to contribute to every single outcome equally, as opposed to focusing on that. I suppose that there are ways around that, depending on how things are framed, but I feel that having regard is a sufficient legal standing. I noticed that you referenced earlier that I am quoting loosely, raised our game with regard to the climate emergency. I suppose that what I am trying to get at if we had less national priorities, because I fully accept what you are saying about if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority, but if we had considerably less but utterly compelling, such as climate change, in that respect, could it be advantageous to having something tighter than merely having regard? It should be a partnership between national government, local government and other organisations, so it is about having shared ambitions. I think that within that we welcome the fact that we have prepared a recovery and renewal plan for the next three years that has that tighter focus on those three recovery and renewal priorities. We do not feel that we are vulnerable to criticism by Scottish Government in terms of saying, ah, but you have missed out eight of the national outcomes. We still have that tie in to our longer term ambitions that are linked to the national outcomes, but sometimes you have to focus your leadership efforts in terms of delivering on the really urgent aspects. I think that it is important to have that element of freedom, which is why I would be against something that was more rigid and more prescriptive. My next question was, in your view, to what extent is the NPF gender-blind? Do you consider it to be so? If not, where are there areas that you would highlight where it makes specific consideration? Obviously, it is generic for yourself, Mirren, and specific to you. I think that there is a challenge for not just for gender, but for all protected characteristics and socioeconomic, and tying it to human rights. I think that there is an opportunity with the work that is coming through following the national task force on the human rights framework. I think that that provides a real opportunity in addressing some of those underlying inequalities in the fact that gender, you experience things differently through your life. The outcomes, your interaction with them, and how far away you are from realisation of those outcomes is different. I think that there are opportunities to embed that inequality tackling, not inequality tackling, the inequality tackling within that. It is maybe support on how you do prioritise. Where are the problems that are based on gender within those outcomes? How do we focus that? How do we support others to focus on that? That is about evidence and knowledge and sharing that. I think that there are opportunities to improve on that basis. I agree with what you are saying about the human rights element. It will give a different perspective, which should be enlightening. I suppose that my question is to what extent is it already the case that it is not gender blind that it is fully aware at every step and every measure. In general terms, I appreciate that this is a huge question to ask, but in general terms, what assessment would you give at red, amber or green? I do not think that I can comment too much more on that, sorry. Have you got any reflections? I think that it all comes down to the extent to which issues of gender and equalities are reflected in the delivery of the national outcomes rather than what it says in the document. It is always a bit of a dilemma in terms of how, within strategic plans, issues around equalities and human rights are represented. In Fife, we have gone for fairness at the heart of our loyp, and that is the overarching vision following the fairer Fife commission six years ago. A number of our ambitions and our indicators focus on fairness. Now, whether you feel that should be more explicit around issues of gender and other protected characteristics or equalities issues, that is open to debate. As long as you can look at what your delivery plans are saying that you are going to do and what your outcomes are demonstrating that you are doing, that is the key thing to reflect on rather than the extent to which some of the issues are inadvertently included in the outcomes. I mean it is a very interesting area and I will move on just now because it is quite a big area as well. Last week's question then, we have touched on this session and indeed other ones about the lack of linkage to budget planning. I suppose that my observation as well is that means of measuring wellbeing in economic terms are still relatively underdeveloped, and we still have academics such as Rootgar Hoogstra replacing GDP by 2030 and so on who are puzzling over that. Do you think that that is a real issue that it is very difficult because of our adherence to GDP because it gives firmer measures to measure wellbeing and link it to economic activity and therefore link it to budget? Is that the real challenge? We have to accept that it is difficult and we have to keep working on it. That would accept that it is difficult and we have to keep working on it, yes. I have given me a good get. Thank you very much, thank you convener. Okay, thank you very much. That has included questions from members of the committee, but I still have a couple to touch on areas that we have not really covered at the moment. One is in terms of the submission from COSLAP mirroring, you talk about national outcomes impact on the economy. There is one example of working collaboratively. We talk about business gateway, national unit and COSLA, working extensively with the Scottish Government, three enterprise agencies, Scale Development Scotland, Visit Scotland and Creative Scotland, as well as all 32 councils, etc. You talk about community planning partnerships and other structures such as integration joint boards, etc. Of course, one area is not covered here, but I am sure that it is in your mind also a city and regional deals. The question therefore is, and I will be asking the same question. Do you feel that delivery of the national outcomes would benefit from decluttering of the public sector landscape? I do not think that that is something that I am able to comment on in this context. I think that whether decluttering is or is not necessary is a much broader discussion. However, there is certainly the opportunity to improve that shared approach and that shared ambition. I do think that that is something that the renamed national performance framework can hopefully help to drive, but I do not feel that I can comment on whether or not anything should be decluttered right now. Tim, one of the things that came out in the D-Session, which I am sure that Michelle and Liz were there, was a fact that some people said that whenever there is an issue, another organisation is almost created or another reporting facility, whatever you want to call it. Do you feel that there should be decluttering? I am not suggesting that you necessarily go into specifics unless you wish to, but do you feel that generally we have to look again at the way things are structured in Scotland? I do not think that anyone in the public and probably a few people among the electorates know exactly where everything fits. It is so incredibly complicated, so how do you feel? I am all for decluttering, definitely. I do think that Scottish Government has not always joined up as it might be in terms of looking across issues, whether that is to do with policing, community justice. I think that there is a sense that there are sometimes requirements on local authorities to develop specific reporting, for example, on child poverty action plans. It is very difficult to address child poverty without addressing poverty within families. We have delivery and reporting arrangements around the work that we are doing to tackle poverty, so I sometimes feel that just as the local landscape can be overly complex, I think that the national landscape can be overly complex, and there is scope, but I certainly would not want to name any names there. No, I think that it is something that we might want to look at further in terms of public administration remit in the months and years ahead. Just one last thing, it is about best practice. Tim, I thought that you had an excellent submission, but in your last question, your answer was fairly terse, and the last question is, please share any examples of good practice areas for improvement or practice that have not worked so well. You have basically just said examples of good practice and challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic, a detail in the Fife partnership annual report 2021, a copy of this report can be provided on request. That was not really what we were looking for. One of the things that we have talked about in the committee is that there are a lot of examples of really good work that is going on in Scotland, but there does not seem to be much enthusiasm for sharing it, and this was an opportunity to share an example or two, which you have not taken up. I ran out of steam. So basically what I would say is that is there any area where you have learned as a local authority from other local authorities, and is there any area where other local authorities have learned for some of the good work that you are doing in Fife? Yes, and I would be more than happy to share some written evidence along those lines. I did jot down some notes when I was reading over my submission. One of the things that we are building on at the moment, and I do not think that this is unique to Fife, is that a lot of the response to Covid was based around the development of multidisciplinary teams in each of our seven local community planning areas. Those multidisciplinary teams met on a weekly basis to identify families and individuals that needed urgent support, and we are building on that at the moment through a local people in place leadership approach, where we now in each of our seven areas have a local people group and a local place group, bringing the various community planning partners and disciplines together to look at what is needed, for example, on the people group, particularly in terms of what is needed to provide more of an early intervention approach around crisis and around tackling poverty. I think that that is one good example of learning, specifically from Covid. What about sharing between local authorities, either learning from or sharing with other local authorities? We share through communities of best practice. We have been very active across, for example, community wealth building. There is a lot of best practice being shared around the work that we are doing and other areas such as Clifmaninshire, North Ayrshire, Edinburgh, or community wealth building. We are always open to sharing best practice. I think that we need to do more sharing of best practice around issues like no wrong door in particular, because that is not something that can be looked at internally within a local authority, for example, because people really do not care what organisation you belong to when they come for support if they are in crisis, whether that is health and social care, the NHS, or the voluntary sector. I am more than happy to share some examples. I would be delighted if you did. I mean no wrong door. You mentioned a couple of times, so I am intrigued by that. I think that, because resources are tight and they are likely to be tight for the foreseeable future, obviously, if best practice can be shared, it means that resources will be spent, hopefully, at a more optimum level than perhaps are at the moment across Scotland. Just to finish on yourself, myrnau did start with you. It is all about shared practice. Again, I was somewhat disappointed in the response of the question, can you share an example of good practice? It talked about involving work and collaborative organisation, where work streams and a range of stakeholders have been set up to progress each of the agreed outcomes, etc. There was a sentence before that and a long sentence after that. Not really any specific examples of best practices, I would consider it in terms of where improvements have been made. For obviously, when you deliver on these outcomes, I think that it is important that, as I have already pointed out, we do share that. I wonder whether you could get any specific direct examples that you could share. I guess that one of the things that we probably should have included in that is the COSLA Excellence Awards and the opportunity that we used to take that national shining of best practice. Obviously, we invite submissions, which are not quite the right word, but local authorities to say what they have been doing under a number of categories. That is probably something that we should have reflected within that. I can happily find our winners and nominees from this year and share that with you. I think that they are available on our website. It is not just about people being given awards, but how other local authorities have looked at those awards and said that that is something that we want to adopt in our local authority. How it is working in a practical sense is what we would be keen to see. There has been a lot of interest in one of the awards winners, which I think was Angus in the four-day week introduction. There is definitely quite a lot of interest from other areas of how that has worked and how that has led to improvements for the staff and services. One of the challenges with that is that you cannot translate that approach across every single type of service that local authorities deliver. Indeed, the NHS, for example, which I will imagine would be the issues there. Is there any further points that you want to make before we end the session? No, I think that that has covered it. Thank you very much, Tim Kendrick and Myrne Kelly for your evidence today and your response to our questions. I am now going to call a 10-minute break and we will start the round-table session at 11 o'clock on schedule. Thank you very much. So we now continue our evidence-taking on our national performance framework inquiry with a round-table discussion. I welcome this morning to the meeting Amy Woodhouse, Head of Policy, Projects and Participation at Children in Scotland. Keith Robson, Senior Public Affairs Manager at the Open University in Scotland. Jamie Livingstone, Head of Oxfam Scotland. Vicky Bibby, Director of Strategic Planning and Performance at Public Health Scotland. Neil Ferguson, Head of Corporate Functions at Revenue Scotland. L. Adams, Program Manager at Scotland Canby. Paul Bradley, Policy and Public Affairs Manager at the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations. I would like to thank you for your detailed written submissions. We have around 90 minutes for this session, which is intended to generate a discussion run by a straightforward question and answer. To make any points during the discussion, just let Joanne or Clark know and I will take you in. The system is going to be bugging to turn, so it is not going to be. I am not going to take you in sequence. People just put their hands up when they want to come in. It may be that we bounce back and forward. The same people may get in more than others. I do not intend to do a lot of talking, which colleagues in the committee will be pleased to hear. I have specific questions from each of your seven submissions, if I need to ask them. If we have a three-fold flowing discussion and we touch on the areas that we want to, that will not be necessary. I do not want to be in a situation where I am just going through the questions that you have already answered in your submissions. If I do ask questions, it will be in reference to those in order to expand on some of the comments that you have already made. Without further ado, Vicky knows that I am going to go to her first, because the floor warned that it is four-armed. In terms of the written submission for Public Health Scotland, Vicky has said that, in summary, we believe that the national performance framework is fundamentally important as a statement of the shared national priorities and a clear expression of what wellbeing means for the people of Scotland. Yes, in Public Health Scotland, we are huge supporters of the national performance framework, what it is trying to do. It highlights the complexity of the system, of delivering public services, of the need for that whole system approach, which we very much recognise. It was touched upon in the last session all the services coming together. We are, in Public Health Scotland, big fans of it. I think that it needs to be taken to the next level and have more teeth, that accountability, how we are measuring, how, just on a day-to-day basis, those delivering public services are thinking about how I am contributing to the national performance framework. What does that mean for the outcomes of people? That is not maybe how it feels on a day-to-day basis. At the moment, I think that we need to do much more to get that teeth and down to that more granular level. In terms of what the ambition is and what it is trying to do, it is absolutely fully supportive of it. Vicky, in your paper, you said that bodies were self-selecting outcomes. Can you expand on that and do you think that that should change? I think that there is not a big driver in terms of, we have done our strategic plan, the work that we do with our joint sponsors in Public Health Scotland, which is jointly sponsored by the Scottish Government and the COSLA local government. We are saying that we will contribute, but we are not being marked off against it. There is not something in the landscape that is looking at every public body and saying, right, where are the gaps? How are we working on those? It is a self-selection. I think that we need more teeth in it to really be driving forward what we are doing from a performance basis, from a financial basis, to really making sure that we are looking at that longer-term outcomes approach. Particularly as finances are, we know, are going to get tighter, we could just revert back into the way we have been doing things. It is difficult, it is complex, that was touched upon in the last session, but I think that we need to be braver in what we are trying new ways of delivering, otherwise we are just going to be continually on the same road. I think that in terms of self-selection, the work that senior leaders forum did around accountability, what scrutiny bodies are doing, much more can be done to hold people to account on the NPF. I do not feel that people are really being held to account on the NPF for delivering each year long-term planning, so there is much more to do. I was just going to ask Vicky how do you give it teeth in, if that is what you think should happen? Obviously we heard from local government just earlier today and they were saying that they have got the local outcome improvement plans, they feel that they are working towards those. They do not want things to be too prescriptive and too rigid and they feel that they are going to be held accountable more to the NPF than that is what would happen. It is a really good point because what we do not want is layers of planning upon planning and planning. The purpose of good planning is the end point, improving those outcomes. Of course, local authorities have their loypes, but it is multifaceted how we will give it teeth. It needs leadership, it needs scrutiny, it needs accountability. Again, I come back to the work that the senior leaders forum did. There are many layers that different bodies can do around this. We talk about it in the submission and I am sure that we will come on to it about different indicators that we can use, but we maybe need to start smaller. We are having conversations about thinking about everybody going in a one-hour. Let us test, let us try new things and actually where we have success is build on that and actually build that greater coalition of success around what we are actually looking at. To tackle the problems that we have got, I mean from a public health Scotland perspective, tackling the inequalities that we have got in Scotland absolutely needs a whole-system approach. The national performance framework is a brilliant opportunity to bring the whole system together and how we move from talking about, we all agree with Christie, we all agree that this looks good on paper, we need to move into that stage of actually how we are bringing the system together. You mentioned earlier—sorry, I do not want to keep talking—about ways and structures you could do that. Community planning is already there. If you reinvented the wheel, you would probably come up with community planning partnerships, actually giving that the teeth, the power to bring partners together to deliver in local areas for the communities. There are real opportunities there. I am going to bring in somebody else in, but I think that in some ways—I hope that this is not an unfair way of counting—you are putting quite a half-full version of what is going on in that. I think that if I could paraphrase, you are saying that having the national performance framework is incredibly useful, but in a sense you are talking about how it should be working rather than how it is. Is that fair? Absolutely, but I do not think that you need to reinvent another national performance framework. We now need to move into the stage of making it work. I was actually wanting to bring Jamie in because I was really interested that you referenced what Germany did. In a sense, that was refreshing because we are lucky if we get an example from somewhere else in the UK, but it is actually completely other countries. I noted from your evidence that one of the key insights is that that had a popular participation in terms of generating it, but I was just wondering what, A, if you could just step through that. Are there similar structures in Germany to ensure that, once those are developed, they are used and applied and there is a plan to use them? In a sense, that is what vikies are articulating. Certainly what we are circulating is there, but there is no real plan or structure to use them. Are you able to bring in any examples from Germany or elsewhere? It is refreshing to hear the enthusiasm, and I am taking it to the next step. At times, when we talk about performance, people have a negative connotation around that, but accountability moments give us the chance not only to take stock but to build public awareness about the national outcomes, about the performance framework, which we can all agree. If you go out on the streets of Edinburgh and ask somebody about the performance framework, you will be lucky if anybody has a clue. It is also a key moment for civil society to get behind and push for that on-going progress. There is always going to be reticence, particularly in relation to outcomes that, by their very nature, require multiple actors to drive progress for people to be held accountable for that specific outcome. However, there is a difference between that and holding people accountable for transparently showing where they are contributing. There was a part in the evidence earlier on where there was a question about the term due regard and whether that should be strengthened. For me, it is less about that terminology and it is more about our local authorities and other public bodies transparently saying which national outcomes they are contributing to, how they are contributing to it and, if they are not, why not, to go back to the point about public engagement on that. We all have a role in scrutiny. Parliament, organisations like Oxfam and the public, but we need to create that architecture that empowers people to hold people accountable. Right now, we would argue that having been involved as an organisation in the 2018 review that set the current national outcomes, that the scale and depth of public consultation was not really big enough to give that a core legitimacy. In Germany, certainly, it was a broader process. I think that in Scotland, we ran some street stalls, workshops were held by Carnegie Trust and the like, but the depth and quality of that public engagement to make sure that the national outcomes are right in the first place, but then also involving the public in terms of reporting, ensuring that lived experience goes side by side with the hard data and in terms of scrutiny. Where are committees picking up those national outcomes and scrutinising them and creating an opportunity for the public or civic society to come and give their views on it? Finally, I would say that there is a close alignment between the national performance framework and the SDGs. There is a great example. A couple of years ago, ourselves, the SCVO and others commissioned an independent snapshot of delivery against the SDGs, but we did that because the Scottish Government was conducting its own review. Those accountability moments are really important as we have seen through child poverty or climate targets in allowing people to get behind and scrutinise and build accountability and engagement. 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 actually need the national policy framework? Should we just be all focused on the SDGs because they are better understood and, indeed, they are more comparable because they are used internationally through that? I encourage other people to pile in an interesting point—don't wait for one of us to ask you to speak, basically. I'm about to name one of you any second if I don't have a volunteer. At the moment, Keith? Saved to the rest of your colleagues there, Keith? I'll chip in. Only in this year that was going to be me, you're going to land on first. That was Paul, actually. The SDGs are where we would look to initially, I think, when we were doing our work and then drilled down when we were mapping our activities in preparation for last year's election manifesto. It's not something that we reflect on on a day-to-day basis. As I said repeatedly in our submission, it's the funding council's outcome agreement, which is a rather dry, dusty document that nobody really wants to read unless you had to. It's been fairly light touch the last couple of years because of the pandemic. I think out the funding council's review. There's a bit of a commitment to revisit what that document might look like and potentially there's an opportunity there to have those discussions around. Here's all the merit of the activity going on. Where does it relate to the framework and how are we contributing? Because it only will be, for the Open University, a contribution. We're not going to solve any of those issues within them on our own. There's a number of points I'd probably want to pick up on. I guess the first one really is just around the SDG's work and particularly something that I've been working on since 2017 with the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. I would say one of the things that we were calling for with others around that time was for there to be a central team within the Scottish Government that had responsibility for the sustainable development goals and had central responsibility for the national performance framework. We weren't the only ones calling for that, but we were one of the groups that were. That happened in 2018, and to this day there is now a team, a dedicated team within the Scottish Government that has responsibility for the national performance framework and the sustainable development goals. I know through working with that team directly how crucial they were for us to get a Scottish Government joint review published with Civil Society on the sustainable development goals. Without that central co-ordination, it just wouldn't have been possible to pull in that expertise and contributions from other places across Government. I hadn't realised until I read some of the submissions that there was also a round table on the NPF until 2018, and that seems to have dissipated or gone away. I don't know this for sure, but just from reading that and from my own reflections, as we've seen a shift to the national performance framework being overseen by a central team, which is really important, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, has there also been a shift in terms of accountability in terms of leadership across Government portfolios to one portfolio within Government? I think that that's something that would be interesting to know how the NPF team within Government works with others across Scottish Government to ensure that it's embedded. I'm going to bring Amy in a minute, but leadership was the thing that I was going to actually come to you next on, because you've said in your submission that there needs to be a consistent commitment to leadership of the NPF throughout the Scottish Government and other public bodies that delivers policy coherence across strategies, plans, frameworks and activities. So clearly, have you identified a significant gap in that regard? Do you feel that? I think absolutely, yes. You would have heard from us in our submission when I was in Dundee, but also from others around the national economic strategy, so I won't go into too much detail on that. I think that we're using that as an example of there being no mention of national outcomes and maybe a throwaway line on the national performance framework, because it's time in its crucial document. But it wasn't a surprise to see that in a national strategy. I think that that's something that's really important to make clear, is that we weren't shocked when we saw no mentionary of national outcomes. For me, as a policy professional, I'm always looking towards what Government are doing, what they're saying and trying to think about how we can make our case, how we can align with what we do with what Government is doing. However, if I'm not seeing across policy documentation, across strategies any mention of national outcomes or any mention of the national performance framework, then we internally at SCBO and other charities probably aren't going to focus on that as a priority way to make our case, because our Government counterparts aren't making that the priority. I'm just a bit talking the talk, a bit walking the walk. Amy and then Ross. Thanks. I think one of the challenges is that the national outcomes are at their high level and they're quite general and so they can be difficult to translate into action and meaning. I'm going to speak obviously from a children's services perspective today. One of the things that we've been supportive of at Children in Scotland is the development of a set of children, young people and family wellbeing outcomes, which should sit underneath the national outcomes and just provide that connection between the high level outcomes and actually planning and delivery on a local level. I think it would certainly be mentioned in a few different evidence sessions and submissions about the golden thread that runs between from a national level into a local and indeed an individual relationship between a service and a person, a child. That's probably one of the areas that we need to do a bit more work on, is seeing how that follows through. I certainly think that the development of a set of sub-outcomes, if you want to call them beneath the national outcomes, might help to just translate them into action. That's a bit more usable at a local level. Ross have fought by Neil. Thanks. I'm keen to hear other reflections on the example that Paul just gave there around experience of engaging with Scottish Government officials, civil servants, folk from various national agencies and whether they are bringing the NPF to their discussions with you and how that's shaping either the requests that you're making of them or your own strategic decisions. Does anybody else around the table have a different experience of regularly expecting to go into meetings with civil servants and to know that they are going to ask you how you're contributing towards NPF outcomes or are others' experiences broader similar to what Paul has just outlined? A brief response is to say that, certainly we've never been asked about how we're contributing to the national outcomes, but that's not to say that when we're proactive and engaging with the Scottish Government as we are currently because we're actually pushing with a coalition of organisations for a new national outcome on care because we think that it's largely invisible in the current basket of outcomes which we think the upcoming reviews an opportunity to change. We're getting good levels of engagement, so the door is open there and there is a small team there. It's much smaller in terms of a team than, for example, the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner down in Wales, for example. Paul mentioned the round table though and I think it is a real shame that that's dropped off the radar. I participated in that and one of the key things that I found of value on that round table was that it actually was cross-party and that was really, really important for the legitimacy of the national performance framework going forward. At that point we were pushing, for example, for wellbeing to be placed in the purpose of the national performance framework. We were hoping that economic growth would drop out completely and I think that this committee could usefully restate the disconnection of the ends and the means from the purpose, but having that cross-party engagement really helped, I think that Murdo Fraser sat on that in the past. The absence of that platform has eroded the level of civil society engagement in the national performance framework. Paul is right, there's chicken and egg here. If we were banging on about the national outcomes but we're not hearing that coming to us from Government or from parliamentary exchanges, then you're going to go where the energy is. If the energy is on child poverty plans or on climate plans or the like or programme for governments or budgets, I think that we do need some sort of moment to elevate up the status of the national outcomes, perhaps certainly at national level but also perhaps at local level too. Neil Tofford, I think that what we're talking about here is to embed the national performance framework in practice almost. I wonder if trying to give a little bit of a Revenue Scotland perspective might be helpful. We've been going, since 2015, our core purpose is to collect and manage two devolved taxes and to that extent we collect revenue, all the revenue that we collect stays in Scotland and goes to fund public services so we would claim to contribute all of the outcomes by helping to fund them although our purpose is not necessarily related to any of the outcomes in particular. The way we've tried to look at the national performance framework, and I think that this is part of the problem, is that it can be seen as a way up there. It's the end goal, if you like, and it's not necessarily the day-to-day, the everyday. We've gone about it by trying to align our corporate plan and our strategic objectives to the outcomes, and sitting below that we have a business plan, which sets out all the projects that we're going to do to deliver that corporate plan. Our team plans are at the individual team level and as individuals we each have performance objectives. The idea is that there is what Amy referred to as the golden thread, that line of sight from what I do through my team plan, my business plan, right through to the corporate plan, and that's how we're delivering the national performance framework and the outcomes there. I think that hopefully that structure might be helpful for other bodies in terms of how you can relate what I do to those outcomes. Obviously, we also look at it not just from the delivery of outcomes but we look at it as a public body, as an employer. We've got a green strategy, we've got equality strategies, so in that context we're trying to bring it to life within the organisation itself. I don't know if that helps us to bring it to life a little bit in the day to day, but if it's only by doing that, I think that we can engage with it more meaningfully than just, oh, it's a thing that we're trying to achieve that's a way up there. I think that that's a really interesting point and I think it probably brings to life why, essentially, bluntly I think that NPF is withering on the vine, if we're being honest. The thing is, what you just set out there, I think it's really interesting, because you're saying that in order to make it work you need to have almost a translation of what your organisation does and the contribution. I think that unless you have that at a holistic level, and this is the point that I was making in the previous session, unless there's an overarching strategy about how the Government is seeking to influence and advance the measures and outcomes, then it becomes incredibly difficult for individual agencies or partners to actually demonstrate how they're contributing to it. In a sense, I wonder whether or not what you just outlined, Neil, is what the Government needs to be doing as a whole, going, look, here's the national performance framework and here's how, as a whole, Government and the public sector is seeking to influence it and deliver against it. The first one is just on the sustainable development goals that you mentioned, Daniel. We're definitely in the position that the national performance framework should stay and it's about building it and building up better, but I think that we need to look at the sustainable development goals and how that was developed and how that is monitored and used in terms of accountability, in terms of greater participation, in ensuring and measuring progress across the board. For example, if you look at the sustainable development goals and the national review that we developed that was co-designed between Scottish Government and civil society, there was a process of going through developing the chapters openly on Google Docs. There was an exercise of gathering intelligence, case studies that really would be better in terms of speaking to people about the real impact that Scotland is making in these different areas as opposed to the mundane statistics that you might see on the current website around the national performance framework. I've heard a few times people mention about how they'll pick one or two or three outcomes and those are the ones that they're focusing on. I understand that they may be a priority, but they're interconnected and I think that that's the good thing about the sustainable development goals because that's very clear, that's the central part of it, is that these goals are indivisible and actually, yes, you might be prioritising your attentionings year one, two and three on a number of outcomes, but actually what other impact do you have on the other outcomes? I think that I'm pretty sure now that the Scottish budget, the budget lines, all the directorates have primary and secondary outcomes that are lined with the budget, but I think we need much deeper analysis of how spending is impacting on all the outcomes, whether it's doing that very obviously and very clearly or having a kind of knock-on effect. On to a subject that I was about to touch on quite soon, but it's a subject that everyone has touched on in their submissions, but Michelle had to be followed by Vicky. Actually, I too was going to drift on to that subject with permission, convener. Paul, in your submission, which I was very interested in, you make a number of comments which allude to something that I asked to the earlier panel about the complexity of aligning national outcomes with budget, but it being more than that, it's actually the relative immaturity of wellbeing measures and economic terms. You reference, for example, the advisory group on economic recovery electing not to use NPF instead using the four capitals framework and so on.  My question is, is it not just because it's really, really difficult? There are other people who have spent years working on this area who know far more than me and would say it's difficult, but I think that what we want to see in the clear point in our submission is around the consistency. We start to see the consistency, we can start to develop that better and clearer and learn from what works what doesn't work. You know, I gave an example in the submission about the National Investment Bank and how I worked with economists who were looking at developing proxy indicators to demonstrate how investments would have an impact on the national outcomes and that process was extremely difficult, extremely challenging and I, A, that shows the difficulty in doing that, actually how can you actually show a clear line of sight between an investment and national outcomes or indicators, but also highlights that there are things going on around government and how is that, when we're talking about best practice and sharing that, have those tools and ideas been shared across government and how we can identify how to measure progress? In that case it's what you're saying that arguably some measures, even if they're proxy measures, applied consistently across the board are better than nothing at all. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that's what I took from what you were saying. I think what we would like to see is we would like to see kind of starting with the national performance framework, that is the kind of, trying to think of the word now, but the north star that people refer to and then from there of course yes building on different frameworks where that's necessary and where that's needed and different outcomes and indicators and we've heard from Amy about having specific indicators and outcomes, sub outcomes for for children and young people. That makes total sense but I feel that there is a disconnect between different agendas that are taking place so I don't personally, it might just be me, but I don't understand the connection or how it's being connected in government between things like the wellbeing economy agenda and the national performance framework. For me I don't, I understand there's a there's a link but I don't see how it's being done in practice. Exactly. For my Amy. I've probably covered a few of the points that's developed. I think it was the conversation that the question was is the NPF going to wither on the vine? I think that would be really sad if that happened and I think it's because, your point, it's difficult. Is that the reason why it should be should allow it to wither? I think we need to just put more energy behind it to make it work. Otherwise, you know, it's the same with Christie, we're 10 years on, we know it's the right thing to do but there is not an obvious answer. I sat in this chamber probably by eight years ago when it was the finance committee hearing what New Zealand has done and their work around focusing budgets on outcomes. It is difficult, it's not easy and I think that's why we need to not allow it any longer to be the homework for another day because it is difficult. So we're focused on right where we've got a budget to get through this year and then we've got to think about, you know, we've had Covid. There's always something that seems to be a greater priority because we can put this off for another day which I think is the thing that is allowing inequalities to increase. So I think it needs the leadership, the energy. You do hear it from Scottish Government officials, yes, but individually at that superficial level, is it going down into the discussion I have about right here's the new pieces of work we're going to do, here's the funding we're doing. Absolutely not, it's nowhere and you say, well how does this link to the NPF? Oh, but we need accountability for this and then we're back to our old ring fencing etc, which we're maybe going to come on to. So I think it needs that leadership from all levels in the Parliament, in government, it from scrutiny bodies. We need to keep talking about it to make sure that we're doing our homework on the difficult stuff otherwise we're just going to be, I absolutely agree with what everyone's been saying today, but it's just going to keep, well we're here in another two years talking about the same thing. Yeah, well obviously we've got this inquiry to ensure that it doesn't bother on the vine and then there's this statutory review next year, but I mean I think if the point that Jamie made actually about the round table is extremely significant in fact that was a bit of a highlight to ask you about you know when we came on to that, so I was really pleased that you actually brought that into the discussion, I think that's certainly something we would be putting to Scottish ministers, Amy. There are limits to what the national performance framework can do, it is a framework, it doesn't make the decisions for you and I suppose that's possibly the bit where we need confidence that the right decisions are being made to achieve the outcomes, the outcomes set the priorities, the indicators measure the progress but the decisions that are being made are they the ones that are actually going to achieve the change and we do need evidence to make those informed decisions and obviously we have a lot of evidence already if we're talking about the Christie report which has argued for greater investment in early intervention and prevention, we all know that, we all agree with that but however somehow the budget decisions aren't shifting that significantly enough to make the change that we need and that's because actually there's some really difficult decisions that need to be made, difficult prioritisation, how do you fund early intervention at the same time when people need crisis support but really we're going to probably just keep on going round and round in these circles unless we actually grasp that nettle and make some hard decisions about how we spend, so yes I'm drifting into finance and budgeting as well with this. I was actually going to bring you in on that, John's going to elect John and then I'm going to come back to you and we'll talk about finance because it's obviously a thread right through the submissions and indeed you have made a number of specific comments relating to that, so I'll be back to you after I've been to John. Thanks, convener. I mean I think it's still in the same area as to, the comment that was made in Glasgow at one of our groups that the NPF should be more practical and not so aspirational and I mean you're kind of in that space as well, is it too vague? And the comment, I think one, Oxfam made the comment, there was a lack of time bound commitments. So again, I mean I'm struggling a bit with this I suppose to know, I mean it is, I see it as aspirational, I think that's good but maybe not just aspirational. Does it need to be more or is there a danger we just end up with a set of rules if we become ABCD, it's got to be done by the 31st of December? I'm sorry, I thought the question was directed to Jamie, that's fine. So let me come on to that. I think what we need to say is that in many regards, Scotland was an early adopter in this space. Other countries have been catching up and it's good to see for example the Scottish Government engaging in things like the wellbeing economy governments initiative to foster government to government learning. So although this is really difficult, we're not the only country grappling with this. So there are opportunities to keep developing it and keep building on what's there. I must admit when I read the Scottish Leaders Forum, one quote jumped out to me that was a bit depressing, that typically the NPF is not actively used to shape scrutiny, provide sponsorship, undertake commissioning of work or shape the allocation of funding and it's a pretty broad suite of things being missed. So it's clearly that there's something in terms of the implementation that needs to be addressed and we have an opportunity through this inquiry, through the review of the national outcomes to help to achieve that. So what I would say is it's about improving it, it's not allowing it to whether on a value. I mean can I pressure on that then? Is improving it, does that mean more detail? So I think there's a balance to be struck. Obviously I think at the last review we removed the targets and the time boundness and it was a continuous improvement. I think it is quite challenging to build those accountability moments without being clear about saying what do we want to achieve by when. But that needs to be wrapped within a culture of continuous improvement and it goes back to the difficulties of holding a single body accountable for a national outcome dealing with multiple actors. I think the social renewal advisory board suggested that local authorities are responsible for about 65 per cent of delivery. But if you look at any of the national outcomes, say poverty, the Scottish Government alone is not going to deliver the national outcome, the UK Government as a role, local authorities have a role. But having greater transparency over what are the policies and spending choices that the Scottish Government are taking, local authorities are taking and what are the results of that so that Parliament can scrutinise that and test the assumptions so that we have a national vision, our outcomes, our outputs, our inputs, who's doing what and really it's about the conversations about are those adding up to the delivery of those national outcomes over time. Some time boundness I think would help that. I mean if I've got to do a piece of work I've been given a deadline by Friday, I'll do it on Thursday. If the deadlines have fallen Monday, I'll do it on Sunday. If there's no deadline, there's always something else to do for your time and I do think that's an issue, even with the best will in the world. We've always got other priorities, some of which are indeed time driven. Amy, I said I would go back to you and then I'll go to Daniel. So in your submission Amy, you talked about, as we just touched on there, we believe that the scope of funding will closely align to national outcomes and welcome the opportunity for discussion about this, how this can be taken forward. So I'm going to ask you how it can be taken forward. You've obviously talked about that in your own submission, but rather than me read that out, I'll let you cover that ground, Amy. So sorry, could you just repeat the question? I missed the first part of it. Yes, basically he said that there's scope for funding to move closer line to national outcomes and we welcome the opportunity for discussion about how this could be taken forward appropriately, so I'm giving you the opportunity to do that. Yes, so I mean I think it follows on from really what we've all been talking about, is that once you have your outcomes and then you're deciding your priorities, the funding needs to match that and suit that and help you achieve what you want to achieve. And so yes, at the moment speaking from a Children's Scotland perspective, as I've said in our evidence, we receive some core funding from the third sector intervention fund which we set our own outcomes for and there's no accountability to the national performance framework or the national outcomes within that or other than in the most general terms because the outcomes are very general and you can see yourself in any of them really. So I think there's definitely scope for funding decisions to be more specifically linked to the outcomes and that would certainly help with seeing where the contribution of the third sector can make to achieve in the outcomes, which is significant. If you look at the funds that the third sector receives to do very important work on an individual level, what is the cumulative effect of that? It will be significant but at the moment it's very difficult to say that. So I think a bit of continuity across funding across government would really help in terms of recognising where the contribution of all parts of the public sector, including the third sector, are. One of the things that you've said is that our manifesto calls for five-year funding timescales and I believe that stability would allow a third sector organisation to be truly creative, ambitious and impactful and I think it would but the Scottish Parliament doesn't have a five-year funding arrangement so I think it's very difficult for the Scottish Parliament to deliver that when it itself doesn't have those circumstances and if we'd looked two and a half years ago before the pandemic we wouldn't really anticipate a pandemic be the war in Ukraine etc so there are always a number of imponderables that actually can come in so I think it's about trying to have that stability but at the same time it's difficult to be able to anticipate what's lying further ahead when you don't have budgets that are made available for you so far. Yes I completely appreciate that however we have to say what we think is going to be needed in order to make the change that we want to achieve and I guess part of your challenge is to think well how can we move towards longer term funding for not just third sector but public bodies as well. Certainly I know from previous roles about grant making bodies that give up to seven years funding which really allows voluntary organisations to stretch into the work and achieve longer term change but certainly there has to be progress on what the current situation is. I mentioned in our response about the year on your funding that we are experiencing at the moment and frankly that's just not really good enough it leaves us in positions where we're having to put staff on redundancy on a year by year basis on services that have run for 20 years. We should feel confident that we've got the funding in place to make those services secure and build on the work that we do so maybe five years is wishful thinking but certainly we must be able to get better than year on year funding. I mean I think that everyone in the committee supports multi-year funding if it can actually be delivered because it's extremely wasteful as has been pointed out in the year. You mean people who are doing excellent jobs in this way run up to the end of financial year are wondering whether they should be looking to apply for the job elsewhere because their own funding might not come through so I do think that that's a really important point that is something that we've taken on board. I've now got four people who are keen to speak so we'll have them in order. Daniel to be followed by Michelle. Following on just from that point there which wasn't my original what was going to come in on but I mean I would at the risk of contradicting you convene it. Coming from a private sector background you don't you never know what revenue you're going to generate in the coming year but that doesn't stop you from formulating a business plan and you do it on the basis of a you know high kind of expected and pessimistic outcome and I you know and that's not set in stone but I mean I think just because you don't know precisely what your budget is going to be in the following year doesn't allow you doesn't prevent you from setting out parameters and I do think there is something you know in that that could be done. The key point I just want to come back to is the timeliness point. I mean I wonder if well I mean first of all I think having some broad projections you know broad plans I think would be sensible but I also wonder if we just need some simple things. So you know for example on you know climate change and carbon emissions everything has to have an environmental impact assessment you know whether it's a bit of legislation you know whether it's a government strategy you know it's something that you require constant reference back to do we need to do just something as simple as that just require new legislation new strategies new initiatives new programmes all to require just a statement about how they contribute towards the national performance framework the outcomes both in terms of the primary outcomes they seek to influence and the secondary ones that they they they hope to affect in broader terms is something as simple as that is that you know do we need you know would that be useful? I mean I don't necessarily disagree with what you've said actually because local authorities are encouraged to do short-term medium-term and long-term planning but I think you know government's not going to make an overall commitment in terms of that but what you do have to organisations obviously have to plan for these different scenarios and what we as a committee want to do is to try and ensure that there is as much funding you know that you can rely on and you know as much sustainable funding as possible and that's something that we certainly be pressing governments on okay michelton for by douglas it's just picking up on a question asked at the tail end of that session which was to what extent is the NPF gender blind and I fully accept the other protected characteristics as well but the reason I'm asking about gender blind specifically in this questions for it for Jamie is in terms of processes and culture because culture can often be part of gender blindness without organisations being consciously aware and I noted that you had reference in gender I think in your submission so I just wanted to get a bit more thought about that. Yes certainly don't want to speak on engenders behalf but I know they are quite critical of certainly the national indicators within the national performance framework not being sufficiently gendered I think they say that only two out of the 81 are explicitly focused on women we obviously have in development the equality evidence finder which I think is a good initiative but it still remains very much in development and there's lots of caveats on the front page and that's not to say that we're not making progress in reporting and improving the disaggregation of data but certainly on equality I think it could be improved and then a level up from that in terms of the national indicators that are selected I think once we have the new set of national outcomes approved engagement and consultation on which indicators sit below that will be really important I was really struck for example about the one on greenhouse gas emissions on a headline level that's marked as performance improving and that jumped out as being really strange to me and it was on the basis that emissions are falling year on year and yet we've missed the last three climate targets so we've got this mismatch between what the national indicator is telling us and what the facts on the ground are requiring so I think there is still a bit of work to be done on on the indicators on the equality impact finder you know we're we're you know coming to a review point but something like 20% or near near enough 20% of the indicators data sources have been identified but we still don't have data so that goes back to empowering scrutiny by making sure that we have up-to-date data spice are doing quite a good job with trying to keep across across the indicators how many are improving how many are maintaining or the like but there's still big gaps in there and I think we need to have an ambition of having a constantly updated set of dashboards but built into that those review moments because if we've seen anything that annual targets for the child poverty act that annual targets for the climate emissions they do provide fairly robust moments of accountability for Scotland to see where we're going and it provides key moments for civil society to heat pressure for the new actions that are going to help realise not just child poverty or climate but across the national outcomes including on equality and on that point just to finish off on this in terms of data I noticed Paul that you had referenced methodology in your submission which is actually a point I brought up ages ago it seems like to the deputy first minister that I didn't have any sense of methodologies being used and it's a whole area that we haven't even really begun to consider and I'm not saying there's a right way or wrong way but in terms of data is incredibly important and lack of data is just as important as the data we've got. I'll let Douglas and then Vickie and I just want to go to Keith because Keith is almost what you're saying those in terms of maybe not data but you're talking about what you want to avoid however a significant additional reporting burdens at a time when our core funding is failing to match rising costs and I noticed you writing things down there at the moment so I don't know if you want to comment whether you agree with Jamie or whether you feel there's an area of disagreement there what do you feel about data and reporting how do you feel? I think our experience of reporting can be quite burdensome a few weeks back we had five deadlines to report on a couple of different projects to the funding council and obviously we want to be transparent and held accountable for how we spend the public money we receive and the progress we're making on the targets but we view this exercise as an opportunity to talk about a good work activity we do as an institution and in partnership with lots of other organisations in private sector, public sector, third sector, any chance I can learn and take some notes and go back to senior management and say how about this or why don't we try that in terms of we're going through our strategic planning our business planning our team planning cycle other ways we can explicitly talk about the activities we're doing and the contribution we're making but I was sort of thinking right back to my one term was local government council in Edinburgh and I was appointed as play champion and on the dashboard there was a grain because I'd been appointed well that was great you know and I enjoyed it and if many a sandpip fund was had but in reality by the end of that term you know what was the impact a few committees I banged on about the importance of strategic thinking across the council on play can make your own judgment of basis that in the next term they didn't have a play champion they went for a cycling champion instead so yeah I think we'd around that way and so we would always look into to show the good work that we're doing in conjunction with other organisations being around employability and what we're doing with some of the football clubs foundations and you'll see from our submission I listed them alphabetically and not in any order of success and my own club hearts aren't in there and hopefully in the future we'll get to do some good work with them too whether it's work we've done with SCVO on skills portals community councils with the improvement service upskilling community councillors to help them do their job in local communities a lot better but we can't really have somebody else sitting filling out more forms and finding eight different ways to say the same thing but the measures have got to be right so just having a green box because something has been ticked on that day doesn't mean you doesn't mean you've actually made the difference you're seeking to make okay well here's a man who'll say it once Douglas I'm just thinking maybe is Aberdeen top of the table for once on your table that would be a first I just want to go back to the point that Amy said about funding not being linked to the NPF now I had five councillor in earlier today and in their submission it says in terms of funding to the voluntary sector we do not assess grant awards against their contribution to the national outcomes directly nor do we map the awards the national outcomes that they contribute to but when I asked them about it they said well they do map it and link it towards their loyp and if we look at the golden thread then their loyp should have due regard to the the NPF so maybe it's not directly explicit but maybe there is that link through the loyp and back to the go using the golden thread back to the NPF that way yes and and the equivalent for children services children services plans which are statutory plans that have to be produced on a three-yearly basis and likewise I had to look to see what it said about those as well and it says it's expected that all actions activity and interventions are aligned with and seek to deliver the ambitions contained in the national performance framework so there is that there and so where it translates I don't know because then it talks about GERFEC and I think that's probably where people are much more familiar and happy to think about well-being indicators etc etc so yes in theory there are mechanisms for doing it so maybe it is just about tightening up and making it more explicit in reporting because whether they're actually reported in that way is another matter yeah so maybe the link is there but just through another and I suppose we're from a national perspective so maybe it's happening better at a local level than maybe for some of the national organization so that might be something to consider too is being very patient um so is it a couple of points first of all I think mr johnson's point on the performance at all organizations having a statement that might help that might be good but if that was the single thing we did it would probably fail it is about building up a swell around that if you had that but then also even within government government agencies all having we've got performance measures individually relating to the national performance framework our board asks us about the national performance framework public health scotland's a new organization it's kind of easy for us to easier for us to develop these things and start with them so I recognize we've had more of that luxury but I think if everybody was required to do that it would just create more of that groundswell around it again public health scotland I think in in terms of our system leadership role and our data role is well placed to help on this we've seen through Covid real-time data not bureaucratic data it can really engage the public on this so sharing that and really building up on some of the learning we can do around that but then I probably with my accountancy hat on I can't let the budget the finance building on that point each spending review and we don't know exactly what money we've got but we know the bulk of what we've got that each spending review is at the margins of the 30 odd billion funding we have in Scotland we must find a better way to give consistency I am we in public health scotland I mean I say this regularly to ministers and Scottish government officials we have started our financial year I still don't know our budget you cannot fully we've not got commitment and we probably won't get it until about august our full commitment for the financial year this is not uncommon we need to get into a budgeting process that people know multi-year plans we've not got the plethora of ring fencing again public health scotland set up to do quite different things but now 40 odd percent of our budget is still ring fenced from the legacy organisations we had so how do we change the way that we do things how do we work to the national performance framework when we've got small pots of 800,000 100,000 pots of money still requiring us to do the same thing on input measures of how we're spending it on people so we do need there's I know there's quite a lot in there sorry I'm quite happy to mention I mean that's what we're here for is to hear your views and your opinions and that of your organisation and share it with others because there is quite a lot of common threads here I mean for example you know in Jamie's submission he talks about as a known public body we're not held to account for how our actions decisions impact on our national outcomes and Keith you've expanded on that quite a lot you've said our core funding is not currently directly contingent upon demonstrating our contribution to live your national outcomes as we're reporting the outcome agreeing with the with the Scottish funding council which are guiding document none of the additional funding we receive through national training transition fund upskilling fund university's innovation fund and workforce development fund is contingent upon demonstrating a contribution to delivery of the national outcomes should it be I would have thought in an ideal world yes if I was sitting on the other side of the defence but is it how easily do you allow organisations to do it without you know you get layered in bureaucracy and you spend more time writing the reports than you do doing the delivery I've a 20 year career in the boundary sector of what many organisations where I've spent hours doing reporting what you think has never even looked at it doesn't mean what the work we're doing isn't important and it doesn't mean we shouldn't be held accountable for the public money but sometimes you are thinking why why we've done these reams of reports that nobody's ever come back to ask me a single question on or you've got different elements of within the Scottish Government chasing you around the same pot of money or asking you different questions and you think can I just can you lot talk to each other so I do one set of reports and that's less of my experience thankfully at the open university modern past career I think where we should be accountable we want to be accountable I think it's up to the Scottish Government to think how it does that with those with those pots of money is it I mean I've been thinking about it rather probably a rather simplistic way and compared to colleagues around the table that are more embedded in this but even just dropping into documents we are reporting on these goals or we are working toward these goals at least gives an indication of our contribution and for us as an organisation it might be as light touch is that and if the funding body wants more information because we get we've got targets on our number of students are declaring with disabilities and number of students we who are coming through different routes we were hitting our targets and if we don't there's a good rationale as to why not how many are progressing year on year because our funding model is different as I mentioned a nurse's mission I think where we have been able to have a free hand where the Scottish Government during the pandemic gave the higher education sector additional funding to tackle digital inclusion and I've referenced that in our submission I can go into more detail in writing if the committee wishes but we had a relatively small amount of money to disperse amongst our student body and colleagues were at the the chalk face thought that actually looking at our care experience students was an easily identified cohort where we knew from past experience we could support quite quickly and quite easily so when we set up the fund the digital inclusion fund for those set of students we opened it on a Friday and the money was gone by the Monday morning now as an institution we've backed up that by a hundred percent of our own funding in addition to what the Scottish Government has given us and we were a very positive meet with civil servants I think back around February time we explained our process how we've gathered our evidence and what had led my colleagues to come to those recommendations of the approach we're going to take so I think we've able to demonstrate them but there is almost a light touch you know you've got an issue go and talk to that community that you deal with and try and resolve it as best as you can but we still are able to to say here's what they did here's the impact it's had how many people received payments to get them to pay for their wi-fi how many people have received a laptop because we had students who previously had told us they got by there was one there was one device in the house it was okay when the kids were at school and their partner was working but they were all at home during lockdown all trying to to work from home or study from home on the one device and that's what led us to sort of look at that cohort the experience we'd had through our student reporting a student support team but I think we've but we still managed to report on that in a way that gave satisfaction to officials that we'd spent the money wisely without going into the rooms of reporting. That's a key point. I think if we focused reporting around a national set of outcomes that might help with having to report in different ways to different funders and it might actually help streamline reporting approaches but actually the point I was wanting to make was about the data gap and I guess the evidence and the onerousness of gathering lots and lots of data and just making the recommendation I guess that we look at what we want to prioritise what we really need to know and certainly from some of the work that I was involved in to develop the children young people's wellbeing outcomes and the indicators what we saw through what we already gather is a real gap around the early years which really surprised me to be honest because there's so much evidence that shows that investing in the first a thousand and one years days of life is really aspirational isn't it that we're going to live for that long is really important and that if we invest in the early years we're likely to affect outcomes into adult life so I would suggest that that is a really good place to start if we're looking at gathering really robust evidence and data to show impact as focusing on addressing the gap in early years data okay elton before by paul I thought I'd just add my voice into the mix have we not piped up yet this morning but I guess I'm here representing initiative that has a business lens and Scotland can be is our kind of mandate is around leveraging the role of business towards building a wellbeing economy in Scotland and so the existence of the national performance framework is really close to our hearts along with the stgs which often business is much more aware of but I'd echo and resonate with a lot of the experience mentioned already today around you know not having the teeth and to provide accountability for the NPF that the NPF isn't mentioned in any of our sponsorship with the Scottish government that it's also disappointing when things like the mset comes out or the business purpose commission that's in progress also have no references to it and you know where their training businesses and increasingly more business advisers so business intermediaries in the accountability methodologies for how that they can provide evidence towards what they're contributing to in the NPF but then when we have a system kind of not reflecting back the importance of the NPF or making it visible or champion in the fact that it exists and it's the the nation's direction of travel it's really hard to kind of reinforce that this is really ever something we want everyone to get behind so yeah a real commitment to making it more tangible more engageable for businesses and business advisers but not feeling very supported by how present it is currently. Okay thank you Paul to have followed by Neil. Yeah it's just on the the budget point again and kind of building a keep keep it set in an ideal world and I guess there is an issue in terms of we want to see spending decisions marry up with our national outcomes but at the same time if our outcomes and if our indicators have gaps in aren't measuring the right things then that could potentially have a big impact on other areas that we aren't currently measuring so for example as Jamie had mentioned around gender if there are gaps around gender within the national performance framework then if we actually do find a way of aligning our spending decisions with national outcomes and indicators then that could have a potential adverse effect on on gender equality so I think that's something that we need to consider when we're talking about this um but I was kind of taking them back a little bit when I read I think it was the committee's paper that the Scottish Government officials who work on the budget said that they'd had no consideration of the national performance framework and I thought that was that was really interesting retelling and I think particularly because the national performance team has been in close proximity to the Scottish Exchequer over the past number of years if it's not coming through in that part of government then then what other parts of government isn't it coming through in and I think Jamie mentioned around the fact that that team is quite small and it is quite small so if this is something that we're trying to you know really kind of push towards and it's really going to kind of anchor us down and our focus then what's the investment in the national performance framework from government and that's why you know my own organisation or Jamie's we're supporting the call for the wellbeing and sustainable development bill supporting the call for a future generations commissioner looking at that best practice from elsewhere and the need for this to have resource and need for this to have of buy it. Yes I mean obviously in the national performance room what was set up at John Swinney had an overview of that and he was financial secretary at the t