The Scottish Government has published “Renewing Scotland’s Public Services: Priorities for reform in response to the Christie Commission” as a background document to its spending review. It states:

“Our approach closely reflects the key themes and aims of the Christie Commission’s report. It is built on four pillars:

• a decisive shift towards prevention;
• greater integration of public services at a local level driven by better partnership, collaboration and effective local delivery;
• greater investment in the people who deliver services through enhanced workforce development and effective leadership; and
• a sharp focus on improving performance, through greater transparency, innovation and use of digital technology.”

This appears to miss one of Christie’s ‘key objectives’:

• “public services are built around people and communities, their needs, aspirations, capacities and skills, and work to build up their autonomy and resilience”

Although later the paper does argue:

• “The focus of public spending and action must build on the assets and potential of the individual, the family and the community rather than being dictated by organisational structures and boundaries”.

Nevertheless the impression remains that the paper focuses less clearly on capacity building, engagement and perhaps inequality than did the original report.

Under ‘prevention’, three funds to support preventative spending are announced:

• a continuation of the Change Fund for older people’s services.
• an Early Years and Early Intervention Change Fund
• a Reducing Reoffending Change Fund.

Under ‘integrated services’ come the announcement about the Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill quoted above, and statements about the “development of place-based partnership” including:

• “supporting continuous improvement of Community Planning Partnerships and Single Outcome Agreements as key drivers for partnership working and delivery of outcomes”
• “Increasingly, we will look to leaders of Community Planning Partnerships across Scotland to disrespect boundaries between public services and focus on the achievement of shared outcomes”

The ‘workforce development’ section does not mention the need for community engagement skills.

The ‘performance improvement’ section announces:

• “We will continue to promote and extend Scotland Performs as the vehicle for transparent reporting on progress towards the Government’s Purpose and National Outcomes, and will encourage the rest of the public sector to contribute to this monitoring framework through Single Outcome Agreements.”

A newly convened Cabinet sub-committee on public service reform will take forward the recommendations.