Covid Recovery strategy activity overview and next steps report

Focussing on outcomes

Recommendations

• The Scottish Government should ensure that learning from the Pathfinders - as exemplars of how to implement a move towards more person-centred, holistic services - is shared widely and used to inform activity across the public sector.
• The Scottish Government’s approach to public service reform should focus on holistic, person-centred public service delivery.
• In recognition that the Pathfinders are not the only areas of work that are making strides in public sector reform, the Scottish Government and COSLA should continue to identify, support and scale up the work that has been done in all relevant areas, with the aim of a wider roll out of person-centred holistic services across Scotland.

Achievements

The scope of the CRS was large, with a wide range of actions. 72 national level actions were identified in the strategy that were tracked through the Scottish Government’s performance reporting processes, all of which were considered to have positive impacts on the programme outcomes. This provided assurance to the CRS Programme Board that the majority of actions were understood to be progressing as planned or were completed. As a result a decision was made to focus on the priority actions that were considered to have the most impact on delivering the vision and outcomes set out in the strategy. Subsequently, the board was better able to focus its efforts on barrier reduction and on examining work towards person-led service delivery.

Several common barriers were identified both nationally in policy design and in local service delivery that have been seen to impede the effectiveness of delivery. These include:

• data and intelligence sharing
• funding flexibility
• competing priorities
• reporting requirements
• collaborative working
• crisis response to world events
• resources

Local authorities have made clear that an inability to share data among key partners has made it more difficult to target funding and support to families who need it most. This is also a barrier to delivering the greatest possible impact on child poverty. Work to address this seeks to find a solution which would allow local authorities to proactively identify and support families in need while respecting privacy and legal requirements.

Work is also in progress to move towards more flexible funding approaches which focus on delivery of outcomes as part of the Verity House Agreement. The outcome framework developed as part of the CRS is being used to inform work taking place in this area. This approach has potential to reduce reporting requirements and the administrative burden. In addition, a move to outcome-based approaches supported by flexible funding has the potential to support local authorities. This means they can move to a more holistic model of service provision, beyond what is permitted by discrete funding streams. While this will not change the impact of the challenging economic climate, it has the potential to go some way to address resource barriers, as it allows local authorities to focus their resources on their own priorities.

The clear priorities given in the Verity House Agreement - alongside the Policy Prospectus’ three missions for government of tackling poverty, building a fairer, greener and growing economy, and improving public services. This demonstrates how Local Government and the Scottish Government are now aligned on where resources need to be focussed.

Research carried out by the Community Planning Improvement Board (CPIB) into the critical role Community Planning played during the pandemic identified a series of key themes. This included the need for a whole systems approach, alongside greater empowerment and flexibility at both local and national levels. The research also identified the impact that the CPPs played in providing a key vehicle for multi-agency working at local levels and the rebalancing of national and local priorities to support a more targeted approach.

Learnings

The strategy identified a number of actions, to be delivered across multiple policy areas. While the vast majority of these action are progressing as planned or are already completed, some actions - such as the formation of the National Care Service, would not be achieved within the 18 month timescale.

The inclusion of tactical actions risked being a distraction from the vision and outcomes of the strategy. At a meeting of the CRS Programme Board in March 2022, the board agreed to stop tracking individual actions and instead focus on future activity more closely aligned to the vision and outcomes set out in the strategy.

As a result, further progress was made and the board was better able to focus its efforts on barrier reduction and on examining work towards person-led service delivery.

Organisational and individual risk aversion to data sharing has been identified as a systemic barrier across the public sector. Individuals often default to a position of not sharing data to ensure that they are not in breach of any legislation.

In addition, many partners reported that a lack of analytical resource was a challenge in terms of realising the benefits of data for public service delivery. Evidence also highlighted that an absence of a common platform for secure data sharing hindered the legitimate exchange of intelligence and information. The lack of a single, national, secure and agreed platform for storage was also a significant hindrance with a range of bespoke solutions put in place of a cross-public sector solution.

The research carried out by the CPIB identified data sharing as a significant barrier towards financial security for low-income households with one of their recommendations being the establishment of a set of common data sharing principles.

While focussed, tactical interventions are effective in addressing specific issues, they are also resource intensive and risk duplicating work taking place in other areas. In line with ways of working identified within the Verity House Agreement, there is an urgent need to collaboratively develop an overarching set of data sharing principles. This would inform, guide and support data sharing across the public sector.

Local authorities identified funding flexibility as a key enabler and blocker to delivering against the outcomes identified in the CRS. Limitations around multi-year settlements required policy areas to undertake significant additional work annually to agree year-by-year funding options, with some key projects unable to secure final year funding. It was highlighted that funding in relation to actions included in the CRS, comes to local government with challenging conditions and reporting requirements attached. Local authorities highlighted this as often being time consuming and bureaucratic and with implications on delivery.

Some local authorities took the decision to pause workstreams in order to explore alternative routes and partnerships to enable delivery. It was also reported that the lack of truly devolved funding for CPPs to trial tests of change or to design services differently also presented challenges, with many services only managing to contribute ‘in kind’ by providing resource time or use of buildings.

The complex landscape of competing priorities and funding arrangements across the public sector has led to a multitude of reporting requirements posing a substantial burden on teams. Many highlighted that information is often gathered in a multitude of ways via a range of requests. It was also noted that sometimes there is conflict at different levels in terms of reporting requirements, generating frustration when duplicate information is requested.

The Local Government Data Platform is an ambitious transformation programme to deliver improvements in the way local government manages and uses data. This collaboration between the Improvement Service, the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government, COSLA, The Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (Solace), Public Health Scotland and Scottish Government supports streamlined and automated collection, exchange, validation, enhancement, visualisation and presentation of data.

The activity of the CRS Programme Board identified that to work effectively to drive systemic change, there is significant value to be gained by taking a collaborative, whole system approach that is consistent with the Christie Principles. In particular, the work on the Pathfinders highlighted the benefits of close working between national and local government, alongside third and public sector partners to integrate child poverty interventions, bring services together, and to connect families to the services they need.

Recommendations

• The board was most effective when it moved away from a focus on tactical actions and instead focussed on the vision and outcomes of the CRS. To continue to drive this approach, the Scottish Government and COSLA should work together to identify the mechanism that supports a joined-up, co-ordinated approach to reform jointly pursing reform and barrier reduction across the public sector.
• The barriers identified through the CRS are common across public service transformation and reform. The Scottish Government should continue to support work to test change locally and nationally to identify approaches that have the potential to overcome these challenges and inform a ‘once for Scotland’ approach to public service reform.