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It is an interesting one. Michael Barber’s book "Instruction to Deliver" sits on my bookshelf.

I am interested in the IFG’s proposal that there should be a new civil service bill that clarifies the role. We need to think about more than just function; we also need to think about structure. One of the things that strike me about the Scottish Government is that there is no direct mapping at director general level and cabinet secretary level, and below that, at director level, some directors feed into multiple ministers and cabinet secretaries. I am not arguing that a direct one-to-one system is needed, but it relates to what was said about wiring diagrams; we do not want too many connections.

Critically, there is an issue if there is not a clear line of accountability and delivery at Cabinet level. Does the Scottish Government need to think about that, and are there examples of good and bad practice from Whitehall? I guess that different departments manage relationships between civil service roles and ministerial roles quite differently.

I have found the discussion fascinating. The public sector could really benefit from the twin concepts of the lean methodology—both Six Sigma and the kaizen principles of ensuring that everyone is involved in improvement.

I want to continue with the compare and contrast approach. I take the points about rapidity and the difference in the private sector—or the successful private sector, which is an important distinction, because not everything in the private sector is good—with strategic alignment. Do you agree that there is also an issue with overemphasis on policy? In successful businesses, operations and delivery tend to be much more important than, or at least have equal weight with, idea origination. Do you think that that overemphasis of policy and a lack of depth in understanding delivery and managing that side of things is an issue in Government decision making?

We have heard a lot about the lack of consistency between portfolios around policy making and, even more so, implementation. The explanation is that the things that the Government does are so different that there cannot be an identical approach. I would push back and say that, with some of the large organisations with which I have come into contact, they might have different approaches at a technical level, but they typically have common approaches, which somebody from one part of the business would recognise in broad terms.

Is it a lesson from business for the Government that there can be different detailed implementation but very strong core principles with regard to policy design and implementation?

Do you agree with that, Mr Sheerin?

That was very helpful. Dr Foster, do you have anything to add?

One of the typical reactions that you get when you are trying to implement a consistent methodology across an organisation is, “Well, that all makes an awful lot of sense, but our area is special so we don’t need to follow it.” We see quite often in the public sector that public bodies will try to get around that by presenting their findings or thoughts publicly in line with the methodology while, behind the scenes, they carry on doing what they were doing. To what extent has that been apparent? How much has the approach driven fundamental change in practice, and how much is it simply about presentation of existing practice? How much resistance has there been to that approach, overall?

Thank you very much. That is very helpful. I will hand over, at that point.

I will move on, thematically. We embarked on our inquiry into Government decision making in a very broad sense by thinking as much about how the Government makes decisions on managing changing day-to-day circumstances as about policy making, which is about what Government wants to do in the future.

It is interesting that when we speak to politicians and officials, they naturally talk only about policy; only when they are prompted or prodded do they talk about delivery. I wonder whether there are comparable approaches to looking at how, once a policy is set, it is implemented and then managed in the steady state. Those things are often as important, if not more important, than up-front initial analysis and policy for the future.

That is interesting. One of the things that probably strikes most of us as interesting is the move by the New Zealand Cabinet to publish all of its Cabinet and Cabinet sub-committee papers in public within 30 days. That is quite a striking contrast with how things are done in Scotland and Westminster, where there are 30-year rules and things do not emerge until decades after the discussion. To what extent has that made a difference?

We have also seen that when transparency measures are brought in, the Administration and ministers essentially do everything that they can to avoid channels on which they might be recorded. It is the rise of government via WhatsApp. Have transparency measures improved things, or have things been pushed into the shadows?

The balance between private and public sector productivity is also key for exactly those reasons.

It strikes me that we are not alone, but that countries such as Japan and Finland have had a much sharper focus on the issues than we have had. Do we need to do more international comparisons, not only at the quantitative level but at the policy and qualitative levels, to better understand the challenge?