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Thank you. I think that there is a disconnect there and we need to do more on that.

Earlier, Mirren Kelly quite rightly said that what works in Fife might not work in the Borders, that what works in Glasgow might not work in the Highlands and so on. The dilemma that the committee faces as we scrutinise the national performance framework is that there is broad agreement across the board as to what we should be trying to achieve in improving the wellbeing of communities across Scotland, but the measures that will ensure that that happens could be very different in different parts of the country. I am interested to know whether you feel that the structure of the national performance framework allows for that or whether we should have a slight change in approach.

That begs the question whether a national performance framework is needed.

Good morning. I want to flag up to you some of the evidence that we took when we went out from Parliament to visit two local authorities. At the workshop that I attended, senior local government officials said that everybody is agreed that, in principle, the national performance framework is a good thing, because it focuses minds on what we ought to be doing, and because central Government and local government come together to decide on it.

However, there is a big dilemma at the heart of delivery in practice because, if you make the prescription too state-orientated and too cumbersome, it is difficult for local authorities and other stakeholders to have the freedom to do exactly what you have both said this morning, which is to deliver where you know that things will improve most at local level. Do you agree with the perspective of those senior officials?

If I follow the logic of that, are you saying that it is beneficial and helpful to somebody like you who makes local decisions on what is best for, say, Fife to have considerable flexibility and autonomy in what you decide to do; to have less ring fencing of money so that you can choose the priorities that you feel will deliver the best outcomes; and not to have anything too prescriptive at national level?

My final question is for Mirren Kelly. One of the people who gave evidence to us was clear that, when there is good practice in another local authority, they pick up the phone and speak to their counterpart there, then agree to follow their practice because it worked for them. Does COSLA have any way of collecting in all 32 local authorities the data and the delivery improvements that are working? How do you measure what is and what is not working?

Do you mean on the collection of data?

On that point, I draw the panel’s attention to the letter that the committee received from the Presiding Officer, in which she said:

“Officials have also recognised the need to provide increased detail on major multi-year project costs as part of the annual budgeting process”.

She goes on to say that the committee should note that, because it is one of the Parliament’s larger investments,

“the project is scheduled to be reviewed as part of our internal audit programme.”

When is that audit due? Can you confirm that its results will be passed to this committee?

That leads on to my second question. Do you accept comments made to the committee during the workshops that ring fencing can be a bit of an issue? It was largely participants from local government who said that. They commented that there was almost too much ring fencing and that they would like the autonomy to spend some money on areas of policy where they knew that there had been good effects. That was not to do with economic statistics and much more to do with social wellbeing. Do you accept those points?

Following on from Mr Mason’s point, I think it is important for us to be able to scrutinise multi-year projects. Obviously, we have to look at things on a yearly basis, but the forecasting for projections is important to the scrutiny of this committee, so any information that we could possibly have at the time of the internal audit would be immensely helpful to the committee.

The second thing I want to ask about is also in the Presiding Officer’s letter. She says that the investment has achieved certain things, and that the website is

“more resilient, stable, flexible, and robust”,

although we have heard varying views on that. She also says that it has reduced the possibility of a really awful cyberattack, which, as public bodies, we all have to accept can happen. We saw what happened to SEPA recently and how it made life very difficult for at least two Parliament committees—the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee and the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee in the previous parliamentary session—which had implications for the work that the Parliament could do. I am not asking you to give away any state secrets, but why are we confident that the possibility of a cyberattack has been addressed by the new system? It is a very important point. If we were to have a cyberattack, it could cause huge problems.