Fears are growing that much of Scotland's current public services will be unsustainable within a few decades. But, says Herald columnist Mark McGeoghegan, there is a way out of this malaise

The news that the birth rate in Scotland has fallen to its lowest level since records began in 1855 was a stark reminder of the depth of the underlying challenges facing our nation. Even with immigration, most of our current system of governance and public services, from education and healthcare to pensions and social security, paid for by a declining working-age population, will be unsustainable within a few decades.

The First Minister, John Swinney, acknowledged this earlier this summer when he called for public service reform, commenting that our “public services first built in and for the 20th century must become rooted instead in the realities of the 21st”. The Scottish Government’s reform strategy is rooted in digital transformation and greater coordination across services, both of which anyone who works in, for example, the NHS would tell you are sorely needed and would deliver significant productivity gains.

But I fear this will not be sufficient. Digital transformation is an easy answer that can be devilish to implement. Efficiencies are always harder to find on the frontline than in a budget sheet. And a national strategy to achieve either goal, however laudable, smacks of the kind of centralised approach the SNP have taken to governing since 2007 and has largely failed to deliver better public services.

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