Susan Love

Published just ahead of the Scottish budget, the report from ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants), A productive approach: finance professionals improving productivity in the public sector, provides a ten-point plan for finance professionals to drive productivity at every stage of public service delivery. Findings are based on six global roundtable discussions, including one in Scotland.

Picking up on key themes emerging during the discussion with Scottish participants, comprising finance professionals working across the public sector, the report highlights the importance of setting realistic budgets to minimise time spent on in-year budget changes; moving to multi-year budgeting for public sector organisations; the key role of technology in providing data to drive productivity insights; and encouraging better upskilling and cross-organisation learning for finance teams across the public sector.

“With governments worldwide managing unprecedented debt levels and competing demands, the call for innovation and efficiency in public finance has never been more urgent,” said Mark Johnson, ACCA’s Senior Subject Manager, Public Sector.

Susan Love, ACCA Scotland Strategic Engagement Lead, said: “Scotland’s finance professionals have a critical role to play in achieving greater public sector productivity.

“But too often their time is drawn away from strategic planning to managing in-year budget adjustments – either being asked for further savings after a budget has been agreed, or dealing with new costs, such as wage agreements, well into the budget year.

“We also heard that while technology and AI could help the public sector gather better data on costs and outcomes, public sector IT systems are often outdated, with different systems that don’t talk to each other. Indeed, one of the key issues cited by Scottish participants in our research was the urgent need to modernise the operational and financial IT systems used by the public sector.

“However, given the challenges, our report concludes that incremental tech improvements might be more helpful for many public sector organisations, rather than large scale transformations. This will help address the concern that investment in back-office systems, crucial to driving our understanding of where productivity can be achieved, was difficult to prioritise, given the need for investment in frontline public services.”

Mr Johnson added: “Finance teams are at the heart of public sector organisations, uniquely positioned to influence how public resources are allocated, processes are streamlined, and impactful outcomes are achieved. This report is a blueprint for transforming financial leadership into a driver of sustainable public value.”