Tackling the Wicked Issues
| Author | John Elvidge |
| Published date | 01 October 2007 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0952076707081591 |
| Date | 01 October 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
© Public Policy and Administration
SAGE Publications Ltd
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi
and Singapore
0952-0767
200710 22(4) 475–478
Tackling the Wicked Issues
Sir John Elvidge
Permanent Secretary, Scottish Executive
The key challenges facing the Scottish Executive, as we enter the third period of
devolved government in Scotland, are the key challenges facing Scottish society.
Is this a statement of the obvious? It seems so to me; but I am sometimes bemused
by debates about public policy which assume that issues related to the characteris-
tics of the public sector have a significance in their own right, which can be
divorced from the question of whether the potential of the public sector to support
improvement in the quality of the life of the people of Scotland is being fully
realized. This article is therefore about the nature of the additional public value
that I believe we shall be seeking to create over coming years and the relevance of
that purpose to the way in which the public sector operates, including the relation-
ship of public policy practitioners to the wider social science community.
My starting point is the proposition that the post-devolution period in Scotland
has been one of demonstrable success in the creation of public value. Within the
accepted realm of the public sector, average life expectancy has risen and the rates
of avoidable premature death from heart disease or cancer have declined sharply;
educational attainment levels during secondary education and participation rates
in tertiary education have risen; and levels of violent crime have fallen substan-
tially, alongside a sustained increase in detection rates for all crime. Within other
realms where the influence of the public sector relative to other factors is open to
greater debate: the Scottish economy has experienced nine successive quarters of
economic growth above its long run annual average of 1.8 per cent, while employ-
ment levels are the highest ever, with Scotland’s employment rate above that of
the UK and among the highest in the EU25; and in-migration now exceeds out-
migration, with net in-migration in 2004 and 2005 higher than at any time since
records began in the 1850s.
One part of the current public policy debate is...
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