ALEX Salmond will pledge to end the culture of "tick-box form-filling" in the Scottish public sector as part of an American-style reform of Government to be unveiled this month.
Instead of measuring their progress by the number of reports filed or initiatives launched, ministers will order civil servants to judge their work against the Government's five "strategic objectives" – to make Scotland wealthier and fairer, smarter,
healthier, safer and stronger, and greener.
The results will then be displayed on an online scorecard where the public will be able to see whether Government policies are helping to improve the country.
If policies such as the plan for 1,000 extra police or cutting school class sizes are not working, the SNP says it will then abandon them, as having failed to achieve the "strategic" goal. The programme is to be called 'Scotland Performs', a title borrowed from the US state of Virginia which has pioneered the scheme.
People can go online to look at "indicators" such as levels of obesity, college graduation or workforce quality. Arrows will show whether the "indicators" are improving, stationary or getting worse.
In Scotland, Salmond has drawn together 45 such "national indicators" which will be publicly measured. They include generating 50% of electricity by renewable sources, reducing the number of public sector bodies by 25% and cutting treatment waiting times for all patients to 18 weeks.
Salmond said: "This is not just about a Government getting plaudits and popularity by launching individual initiatives. It's not just about the SNP proceeding to its constitutional objective of an independent Scotland. It's about changing the nature and style of governance of Scotland so that we measure ourselves by what is actually happening and not by the number of initiatives."
He added: "It's not modern or appropriate or efficient to judge things by the number of initiatives or task forces that you launch or the cash you spend. It's not even efficient to test things by the output – such as the number of papers that are generated or strategies initiated. You have to measure it by outcome, by what happens to the fundamental measurements of how Scotland is performing."
Aides say the programme marks a major change to the way in which the previous Lib-Lab administration ran the country, when a partnership agreement or some 300 objectives were laid out. "The approach was to go and tick each one off as they went along," said an SNP source.
The SNP says it will continue to set national targets – such as the commitment to find an extra 1,000 police officers – but that generally it will "back people to know how to improve things in their own area".
In a briefing to mark his first year in power, Salmond also said that if he failed to secure an independence referendum in this Parliament, he would bring forward plans immediately if he won the 2011 Scottish elections.
He said: "If you care to reflect, in 1997 there was an election in the May and a referendum on a Scottish Parliament held in September 1997… we wouldn't be waiting three years into the next term in office for the referendum."
Salmond also again backed the idea of keeping the Queen as the head of an independent Scotland and said he would oppose holding a referendum on the monarchy post-independence. He said: "We can see no reason for not having the Queen as the head of state. Any Parliament of Scotland can determine any referendum it wants but I don't suggest we should do such a thing."
The First Minister also expanded on his belief that a 'social union' would continue with England following independence. "Independence will mean a new relationship between the countries of these islands. We put it as the United Kingdoms."
The full article contains 647 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
