Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - gender budgeting pilots: evaluation report

Executive Summary

Context

The Scottish Government considers the equality impacts of budget decisions as part of its Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) and has published an Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement (EFSBS) alongside the budget since 2009. Each year, the government has made improvements to its approach to equality budgeting.

To explore opportunities to further strengthen its approach to equality budgeting in the longer term, and to inform the potential development of gender budgeting in particular, the Scottish Government commissioned the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to:

(1) conduct a review of the Scottish Government’s current approach to gender budgeting, and

(2) pilot and test the feasibility of implementing a new approach with two areas in the Scottish Government.

The OECD’s review is published as Annex A at the end of this report. Its main recommendations are in the following areas:

1. Identifying clear gender equality goals for Scotland.

2. Improving the quality of Equality Impact Assessments (EQIAs) and gender analysis within them.

3. Establishing the Scottish Exchequer as the clear lead for gender budgeting.

4. Increasing the use of information from EQIAs in budget decisions.

5. Improving the Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement (EFSBS).

This pilot exercise then built on the OECD findings, with the aim of testing an approach that centred on incorporating and responding to strategic gender goals. To test feasibility, participants in each of the two pilot areas were asked to: select an overarching gender goal; develop a portfolio level objective; consider current and potential future activity that might help achieve this goal; and categorise associated portfolio budget lines. This activity was intended to test the feasibility of implementing such an approach, rather than to develop concrete new proposals.

Two policy areas took part in the pilot: Economy (located in the Deputy First Minister, Economy and Gaelic portfolio), and Justice (located in the Justice and Home Affairs portfolio).^[1]

Working with support from the OECD, the pilots ‘borrowed’ some of the gender goals developed by the Government of Canada and attempted to apply them to a gender budgeting exercise in the Scottish context.

This report provides an overview of the findings of the feasibility evaluation of the pilot activity and concludes with a discussion of areas to potentially explore in the future.

Summary of Key Findings

The work with the OECD and the pilot areas highlighted a number of benefits of a gender budgeting approach. The pilot also identified two current impediments to rolling out this approach more widely in the near future:

• the lack of strategic over-arching gender goals and;
• the need to move away from the current portfolio based budget model and towards a more performance-orientated approach. This would require a more comprehensive and longer term reform programme.

The experience of the pilot participants indicated that current budget processes do not readily enable gender budgeting in a straightforward manner. This is partly because funding is allocated to portfolio envelopes rather than on the basis of portfolio objectives relating to overarching goals, or priorities. The OECD more widely suggest that exploring performance reporting budgeting^[2] may enable better adoption of gender and other equality goals.

High-level Canadian gender goals were used for this pilot. Participants found those to be broadly applicable to Scotland and relevant for each portfolio’s activities. The OECD recommended, and pilot participants agreed, that the development of Scotland-specific gender goals would improve their relevance within the unique Scottish context.

Both pilot areas faced challenges in categorising all the relevant budget lines for their proposed activity in the timescales available. Relevant funding can sit in different levels of budget lines, with some funding located within larger budget allocations that also fund other activity. This caused challenges in linking identified activity to centrally collected data on the budget’s Level 3 and 4 funding lines. It was considered this might also create additional challenges when considering the monitoring of activities through the budget process. An approach that involves tracking how specific budget lines, rather than portfolio pots, relate to, and advance, gender goals might therefore require a re-categorisation of budget lines, which in turn could involve significant resource.

Both the Justice and Economy portfolio teams identified a tension between attempting to tackle cross cutting gender goals, whilst for practical reasons of the pilot, staying within the policy remit of their respective portfolios. Given this, Economy colleagues focused on the goal of closing the gender pay gap for women aged 50-64, and Justice colleagues focused on violence against women and girls – both areas with more direct portfolio control of policy programmes and spending.

The experience of the pilot exercise indicated that the resource required to take forward an approach, that would reconsider programme design and funding to then align with an overarching goal, could be significant. If fully rolled out, it would represent a fundamental overhaul to budgeting processes, and it would be a challenge to conduct this alongside the existing Equality Impact Assessment to ensure the Budget is compliant with all legal duties. Significant investment, including upskilling and possibly additional headcount, would most likely be required.

While analysts currently play a lead role in completing EFSBS returns, greater policy input would be required to adopt gender budgeting, and to set gender goals. Both pilot areas found that a mixed team of analysts and policy experts was required to identify a portfolio objective and consider gaps or changes to activity against the identified gender goals.

Overall, it is important to note however, that few OECD countries implement the OECD’s recommended approach in full, as adaptations are necessary in order to ensure the suitability of any new approach to the country-specific context. Further work to explore how gender budgeting could be implemented in Scotland is needed, and any changes to gender, or equality, budgeting should be supported by training and guidance for colleagues to ensure the required capacity and skills are available. However, any changes to the budget process are a second step to the development of overarching gender goals. The OECD suggest that without gender or equality goals in place to focus government activity, changes to the budget process may have only limited impact on addressing persistent inequalities.