Shaping Scotland's economy: inward investment plan

9 Measurement and Evaluation

The actions identified in Sections 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 are collated in a table in the Executive Summary and in Appendix A of this Plan.

Current inward investment measurement frameworks such as EY’s annual UK Attractiveness Survey, focus largely on the creation of projects and direct jobs. In the Plan we highlight the shift to a more focused approach on the delivery of, not only new projects and direct jobs, but also wider spillover benefits to the whole of Scotland’s economy. We need to measure what matters. We are developing a new appraisal, performance measurement and evaluation framework for inward investment.

This will shape the public sector’s response to inward investment projects that are aligned to Scotland’s values and are likely to deliver the widest range of benefits to our economy.

It will support and enable policy makers and practitioners to make informed choices about how they prioritise their efforts in-market and in Scotland and can be used to help galvanise wider public and private sector actors in support of new opportunities.

In the Plan we highlight the shift to a more focused approach on the delivery of, not only new projects and direct jobs, but also wider spillover benefits to the whole of Scotland’s economy

As well as capturing the direct benefits of individual projects this framework will enable colleagues to consider the widest range of potential impacts projects could deliver for Scotland and will incentivise collaboration throughout the system to achieve them.

• Action 17: We will review the process used by our enterprise agencies to ensure the return on investment criteria encompass both direct, and wider, spillover benefits in our economy.
• Action 18: We will benchmark our current response timescales against comparable international standards to understand where we can make improvements to remove any unnecessary barriers to inward investment.

We will drive implementation of the actions listed in this plan through a regular structured review process across government and agencies to track progress.