Scotland’s public sector needs to be ‘rewired’ to drive improvements and protect services for future generations, a Scottish Government minister has said.
Ivan McKee, cabinet secretary for public service reform, said inefficiencies need to be tackled to deliver ‘high quality, sustainable public services with a focus on better outcomes for the people who use them.’
Speaking ahead of a crunch debate at Holyrood today, Mr McKee, formerly public finance minister, said: “At its heart, public service reform is focused on delivering meaningful improvements and ensuring services are sustainable for generations to come. Key to that is making them more efficient and focussed on what matters most to people.
“Efficiencies isn’t shorthand for cuts to the frontline, quite the opposite. It’s about tackling unnecessary duplication, sharing services across organisations and making better use of data, digital tools and our public estate.”
Mr McKee will say hundreds of millions of pounds of savings has already been delivered through efficiencies such as smarter procurement, digital transformation and collaborative working.
He will also highlight analysis that shows targeting investment in preventative efforts such as reducing overall poverty by a quarter by 2030 could avoid £2.9 billion of public spend and ease long-term pressure on services.
He said: “No-one who uses, or works in, public services would argue they are perfect. No-one wants to spend more money on corporate costs than is necessary when we can instead target investment to improve frontline delivery and work to stop problems before they start, not just respond when they reach crisis point.”
He added: “Poverty, poor health and inequality are not inevitable, they are challenges we can address earlier and more effectively with better outcomes for people. Empowering staff, service users and local communities to help rewire the design and delivery of services is key as every pound saved from inefficiency is a pound we can invest in care, education and communities. People working on the frontline will know all too well where improvements can be made and we must ensure their voices are heard.”
The Public Service Reform Strategy, published last year, showed that reducing overall poverty by a quarter by 2030 could avoid £2.9 billion of public spend.
In addition, the Single Scottish Estate, National Collaborative Procurement, Commercial Value for Money and digital programmes saved more than £330 million over a two-year period to the end of 2024-25, the strategy showed.
The strategy also highlighted how the Scottish Government Intelligent Automation Centre of Excellence is transforming how public services are delivered – deploying AI enabled automation technologies to ‘unlock capacity, reduce costs and improve the experience for citizens and staff.’
Since 2021, that work has delivered ‘cost avoidance’ of between £15 million and £21 million, while increasing compliance, improving data quality and expanding operational capacity.
While the government committed to identifying opportunities to pilot the use of AI technology in public sector processes, adoption has still not been widespread in terms of public services.
