A strong foundation for the development of outcome based budgeting in the Scottish public sector has been identified following a trial project carried out by the Improvement Service, co-funded in partnership with the Scottish Government and delivered in partnership with Deloitte.
The project reviewed the potential for outcome based budgeting in the Scottish public sector – supporting Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) to understand how their budget decisions affect the delivery of their Single Outcome Agreement (SOA) outcomes.
The initial work has led to a focus on how effectively resources (staff, equipment, premises and budgets) are used in the activities which have the greatest impact in achieving improved outcomes for communities.
A two-stage methodology was used with two volunteer CPPs, Fife and Aberdeen, whose co-operation was invaluable. This demonstrated a strong foundation for the development of outcome budgeting in the public sector. All stakeholders agreed that a focus on outcomes is important and they all make efforts to apply this in daily work at local level.
Barriers currently preventing this outcomes approach from being fully implemented were also identified, but it was found that a consistently applied and mainstreamed outcome planning framework could help to tackle these issues.
Moving forward, the project identified a need for significant local and national change in processes, cultures and ways of working. This could require a longer-term project, aimed at examining resource use and activities, and helping CPPs to develop improvement plans for aligning their resources and activities to their outcomes.
Overall, there is a clear consensus that a stronger focus on outcomes is needed, as demonstrated by the recent Christie Commission report and the Scottish Government's approach to this.
At the same time, it is important that the practical value of an outcomes focus for communities is demonstrated. This project has laid the foundations, but it is recommended that the opportunity to demonstrate that value is seized quickly.
The IS is currently considering options for applying the findings from the project in a further phase of work with CPPs.
Project context
The local authorities, health boards and other partners in CPPs are increasingly seeking to align their activities and budgets for the shared delivery of the outcomes in their Single Outcome Agreements.
There is a growing need for support in this area, reflecting three pressures: financial necessity; the reality that no partner can deliver improved outcomes for local communities without the contributions of other partners; and the expectation that CPPs should be managing the total available public resources in their area in order to achieve improved outcomes.
In 2010 the Improvement Service surveyed Community Planning Partnerships and partners on their needs for support in delivering their SOAs.
Their highest priority was for support in aligning organisations' budgets to their outcomes and to their partners' budgets. Their second highest priority was for support in understanding 'what works' and in understanding where costs and benefits for different partners lie in respect to their contributions to SOA outcomes.
Project stages
Stage One mapped budget and performance data against the CPPs' priority outcomes (such as improving children's early years development) to look at how outcomes were currently being delivered.
Stage Two used focus groups with service managers to look at how successfully outcomes were being delivered, the barriers to the delivery of outcomes and whether improvements could be made in this area.
Next steps
It is recommended that a longer-term project is implemented to undertake more work at a local level with volunteer CPPs.
This work should:
- support the localisation and integration of public services
- support the shift to prevention and early intervention
- be more focused on understanding activities and the use of resources
- support CPPs to find more effective ways to deliver outcomes at a lower cost
- support CPPs to address the challenge of very local concentrations of interlinked negative outcomes.
More information
Download 'Outcome budgeting in the Scottish public sector: final summary report'.
For further information, contact Bob Christie on 01506 775569.
