The transition from business to government was interesting.

I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Colleagues told me to expect a different attitude to timescales, and to delivery. Politicians are often criticised for their lack of "real world" experience, although many do come from a wide variety of backgrounds, in health, education or business for example. So following a 30-year career in manufacturing, much of it running my own businesses with a focus on turnaround - helping organisations do better for their customers - I went into politics with my eyes open.

Five years as a government minister has given me some insight into how government works – good and bad.

What we call "government" of course consists both of elected politicians - ministers - and career civil servants, so regardless of the party in power the "machine" continues to do what it does. Anyone who interacts with government on a regular basis knows that engagement with senior civil servants is at least as important as with ministers.

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Recent press reports have focused on government credit card spend. It’s often easier to get a headline highlighting £100 spent on something that looks unnecessary than on £100 million incurred on inefficient, but opaque, processes. So does Scotland get value from the £740m it spent on its 8,500 civil servants last year?

The civil service is crammed full of great people. That isn’t the issue. The question is whether the organisation enables them to use their talents to best effect.

Culture is key. A culture where the initial instinct is to pretend that everything is fine, or seeks excuses for failure, is not one that can grow and learn. "Best in class" organisations do the opposite. They recognise that perfection is never attainted, they actively seek out errors and poorly-performing processes as the feedstock for driving structured continuous improvement. Government has lessons to learn in this regard.

From the apparently simple - how to process and respond to correspondence from members of the public - through to the more complex, including providing policy advice to ministers, most processes have grown topsy turvy over decades and are rarely proactively assessed for how they could be done better. The answer to any challenge is often to hire more civil servants than to ask: can things be done better or differently? The recent increase in the higher rate of income tax to 42p, impacting those earning more than £43k, raised an additional £90m. A welcome move if the funds are used to tackle challenges in public service delivery and child poverty. The increase in the cost of the civil service that year was £65m.

Lack of empowerment is a significant drag on organisational effectiveness. Most businesses removed unnecessary expensive layers of management decades ago. Government has about twice as many layers of management as would be expected in a best-performing organisation of similar size. Delayering not only makes the organisation more efficient, agile and responsive but also empowers those doing the jobs that matter. Trusting individuals and teams to get on with the job, to identify problems with processes and procedures and to have the authority and support to fix them is not only good for the organisation and those it serves, but also creates more fulfilling and rewarding roles.

Yes, the operating environment is different. The glare of media scrutiny is brighter and the temptation to liberally apply sticking plasters in place of more permanent solutions is stronger. Problem-solving far too often isn’t evidence-based and jumps to solutions that sound good rather than truly identifying and tackling root causes.

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There are pockets of good practice, individuals and teams who know what good looks like and work hard to deliver on that, but they do so in the context of a culture that values stability and conformance above challenge and improvement. Digitisation lags behind, although recent steps to drive automation and upgrade systems is delivering some results.

The move to working from home has freed up a vast amount of office space. Work has started on reducing government estate, and cost, including sharing with other public sector partners, but much more can be done here too.

So Scotland probably should be getting more value from its three-quarters of a billion pounds - not counting the additional billions spent on agencies and other public sector bodies adjacent to government but often with overlapping and duplicating responsibilities.

The good news is that the opportunities for improvement are immense. One of the reasons small countries are more successful is that they are able to be more agile, responsive and effective. A country of Scotland’s size can be very successful, but that doesn’t happen automatically without building on a solid foundation. When it comes to being best in class government needs to lead the way, and that requires ministers and senior civil servants working together to deliver that change.

Ivan McKee is an MSP and former Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise