Mr. Robert Watt:

I believe we must continue improving every year and we must say that. We must have targets whereby we will improve by 1.5%, 2% or 2.5% each year. We must have clear targets for seeking output improvements. Consider the example of digitalisation within the Civil Service and moving from paper applications or engaging with people through traditional means or channels to using digital and portals. There is enormous scope there for greater integration across the system to share data more effectively, so we do not keep asking people for the same data and do not have large systems in terms of communicating it in a cumbersome way, but have a much more integrated system. I think we can make enormous strides there both in improving how people interact with us and improving how we work the system in terms of the number of people we have doing clerical and administrative jobs. There is enormous scope within the system for us to continue driving change and improving. We must do better in digitalisation and we have mentioned that we can do better in public procurement. We think we can squeeze more from the shared services agenda and we think we can improve in terms of better management of sick leave and see it in improved performance.

There is no doubt that we can do much more. Perhaps what we require now is a culture of continuous improvement, similar to what happens outside the public sector. Every year businesses have to continue to improve and drive down costs to maximise outputs. That is the culture we need. The challenge for us is how to incentivise all parts of the system to operate like that. However, we are not finished yet and it will be an ongoing challenge for us to continue doing more.