Governing the City State - Chief Minister and Treasury Directorate ...

concrete activities and areas of focused effort. In this model, the Budget process is themechanism by which articulated priorities are translated into action through allocation ofresources, implementation of specific programs, and monitoring and evaluation ofperformance.This is a deliberately different approach, founded in a logical hierarchy of specification ofintent, determination of priorities, and allocation of resources that will allow the ACTPS tosupport the government of the day better.Aligning Priorities, Resource Allocation and PerformanceThe approach taken by the Review is consistent with the principles proposed to be adoptedfrom the Scottish National Performance Framework model as described in Chapter 3. Thatmodel is focused clearly on the achievement of priorities which are expressed as meaningfuloutcomes. It is the simplicity and coherence of this sort of model that is appealing for a citystate government like the ACT. The Scottish model:articulates fifteen national outcomes and forty-five measurement indicators that sitbelow the overarching purpose and five strategic objectives. The national outcomesare clustered around the strategic objectives in a cross-cutting way, so that individualoutcomes contribute to more than one strategic priority. 263The United Kingdom’s National School of Government notes that taken together, theelements of the National Performance Framework (set out at Appendix 1):focus the resources of government in a new way, and describe the link betweengovernment’s activity and what it is ultimately there to achieve. This creates greaterclarity, and gives government and public services a sharp focus on a national Purposethat all of Scotland can recognise and endorse. Through this alignment of publicpolicy and the resources, government in Scotland is equipped to deliver a step changein the prosperity of Scotland and in the nation’s future success. 264If, in keeping with the Review’s Terms of Reference, the ACTPS is to support thegovernment of the day better, improve “across-government coordination of service delivery”and improve its “effectiveness in delivering on government policies and objectives” it will becrucial to ensure that the Government’s strategic priority setting process produces amanageable number of clearly articulated priorities, behind which the collective efforts of theACTPS can be marshaled. The risks in getting this aspect of government wrong are outlinedin the Review of the Centre:fragmentation occurs partly because there are too many agencies, and partly becausethere is an inadequate unifying vision and purpose for these agencies, within whicheach can make its own contribution to the Government’s objectives. … The Statesector works best when it has a clear sense of where it is going, and what has to bedone to achieve the desired results. Ministers have an important role in this, both263 National School of Government (2009a) p.6.264 National School of Government (2009a) p.6.Strategy, Resource Allocation and the Vacant Middle Ground: 212