Is It Groundhog Day for Scotland’s National Outcomes?

I suspect I wasn’t the only one listening back to the Scottish Parliament’s debate on the National Outcomes on 8 January 2025 and feeling a bit like it was Groundhog Day. If you missed it, you can catch the full debate here.

For those of us who have been working in this field for a while, the announcement of yet another review, this time led by Kate Forbes MSP felt all too familiar.

Since I started working on wellbeing governance in 2011, we’ve seen at least three, possibly four, reviews of the National Performance Framework (NPF). Each time, we’ve heard promises of improvement, but we’ve also seen the same fundamental tensions resurface—questions about ambition versus implementation, voluntary versus statutory duties, the role of data, and how the framework fits into global conversations like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

As part of my ongoing PhD research into multi-level well-being governance in Canada, Scotland, New Zealand, and Wales, I’m constantly comparing how other countries approach these challenges. It’s striking to see how Scotland’s ambition stacks up globally—but it’s equally striking how often we struggle to turn ambition into action.

Voluntary vs. Statutory

While MSPs’ favourite pastime seems to be asking passers-by and publicans if they’ve heard of the NPF, mine is asking civil servants if they know that the National Outcomes are statutory (they are).

The National Outcomes (which the MSPs were debating) are subsumed within the non-statutory National Performance Framework. By doing this, the Scottish Government has obscured the legal significance of the National Outcomes. This confusion has contributed to a lack of accountability and inconsistent adoption across public bodies, undermining the transformative potential of the framework.

Further, while the National Outcomes are statutory, departments and agencies are only required to “have regard” to them—this vague legal language leaves far too much room for interpretation. In practice, public bodies can easily tick the box without meaningfully integrating the National Outcomes into their work.

The question for Scotland is whether we can continue to rely on soft power or whether we need stronger statutory levers to embed the NPF into public life, following the example of Wales. A question the Scottish Parliament will no doubt return to when it considers Sarah Boyack 's private members bill on Wellbeing and Sustainable Development.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

One of the less contentious parts of the debate was the alignment between the NPF and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This alignment, though now widely accepted, was hard fought for by advocacy organisations, and it didn’t appear until a full decade after the NPF’s inception.

In my 2019 book Wellbeing and Devolution, I highlighted how little the connection between the NPF and SDGs was understood at the time. It was a key conclusion of my research, and it’s heartening to see this alignment now taken for granted. Wellbeing and Devolution: Reframing the Role of Government in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland | SpringerLink

But this acceptance raises new questions. What is the relationship between wellbeing outcomes and sustainable development? How do supra-national frameworks like the SDGs connect with national, devolved, and local governance in Scotland? Without clearer integration, there’s a risk of fragmentation—of frameworks overlapping without reinforcing each other’s strengths.

Are We Measuring Means or Ends?

Linked to this is whether we are measuring outcomes (the ultimate 'ends' of all our collective activity) or means (how we are achieving them). This was highlighted in the debate as the outcome on poverty is to reduce poverty rather than end poverty. A truly outcomes based approach, fully aligned with the SDGs, would seek to end poverty.

The confusion about means and ends relates to the two drivers of the National Performance Framework: public sector reform and sustainable development. The closer to a government framework it is, the more attention to means and deliverables, the closer to the SDGs, the closer to outcomes a framework can go. But Scotland's framework continues to try to be both things without addressing the differences between the efforts of government to achieve outcomes, and the outcomes themselves.

Further, the relationship between the indicators and the outcomes they seek to measure is not clear. GDP isn’t currently part of the national indicator set, but some argue for its inclusion, framing it as a measure of economic health. Yet few would argue that GDP is an end in itself—it’s a means to an end, a tool to achieve a flourishing society. So what is the relationship between the indicators and the National Outcomes? Daniel Johnson MSP (Scottish Labour) raised an important point during the debate about the need for a clear theory of change. Without a robust understanding of why some outcomes have been chosen or how specific indicators drive those outcomes, we risk collating data for its own sake rather than using it to guide impactful decisions.

Why Does Scotland Find This So Hard?

It’s worth asking why Scotland seems to struggle with something that other countries have implemented with relative ease. Ireland and Canada have both developed and launched wellbeing frameworks within 18 months of announcing intent, while countries like New Zealand and Wales, though longer established, can already point to tangible results.

As part of my PhD research I am exploring these very questions. Why do some countries seem to overcome implementation challenges while others struggle? What can Scotland learn from these examples to better align its ambitions with practical outcomes?

Scotland has the expertise and public support to make a wellbeing framework a success. But if this review is to avoid becoming just another chapter in a Groundhog Day saga, we need to go back to basics: what kind of Scotland do we want, how do we measure what matters and how do we embed that evidence in decision-making processes? Perhaps Kate Forbes is right—perhaps it is time for a root-and-branch review.