WHAT is it with our Governments and major projects, particularly those involving information technology?
Westminster has a litany of failures across sectors as diverse as the health service and defence procurement. Some also blamed London for the Holyrood building debacle although the stain fell on the Scottish Parliament itself, and we have the recent examples of the capital's runaway trams project and the abortive plan for the Glasgow Airport rail link.
Scotland is about to take on more powers, some of them the baby steps emanating from the Calman project, but with bigger strides to come arising from the pledges made during the endgame of the referendum campaign. What our body politic needs is absolute confidence that this will go smoothly, and that Holyrood will prove itself fully capable of efficient governance of this new era in devolution, demonstrating competence for further devolution to come.
But the latest Audit Scotland Report does little to justify such confidence. Worse, the response from the Scottish Government seems to take us back to the familiar territory of wishful thinking, bluster and denial. To be clear, Audit Scotland is on the side, if not of the angels, then of the Scottish public. It has an axe to grind but a worthy, non-partisan axe.
The spending watchdog found a series of concerns which cannot be airily dismissed. Staffing appointment issues, no nailed-down agreements with other agencies, delayed appointment of IT specialists, and a lack of detailed resource planning all ring alarm bells.
Look at these phrases from the watchdog: "Staff were not in place early enough", "delays have reduced the time available to develop the IT system and appoint staff," and, "There is a risk that the IT system for collecting the devolved taxes will not be fully implemented by 1 April 2015."
As if these judgments were not alarming enough, already the cost of setting up a Scottish Revenue has risen from £3.2 million to £4.3m.
What we needed yesterday was a robust response from Mr Swinney, a firm acknowledgement that faults were recognised and that solutions were in place. Instead we got a ridiculous denial from the Scottish Government suggesting that Audit Scotland had spoken of "well-developed plans" and that "substantial activity is ongoing" to prepare for next May.
This is a wilful misreading of the watchdog's report, poor as a political response and worse as a statement of practical intent to resolve a recognised problem. Mr Swinney, faced with a report that painted a dull, grey picture, chose to respond in lily white terms. "Today's report shows that Revenue Scotland is on track to manage collection of the new devolved taxes from April 1st next year," he said.
Mr Swinney has an enviable record as a competent Minister. As Finance Secretary he enjoys approval ratings well above those of Westminster politicians or even some of these he has sat with around the Bute House table. But this response, saying all is well even as Audit Scotland lay out the potential problems for all to see, does him scant credit. He is better than that, and we expect him to recognise the problems and get them fixed. The last thing the cause of a more devolved Scotland needs next year is a shambolic start to its burgeoning bureaucracy.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article