Launch of the Scottish Public Spending Dashboard

The Fraser of Allander Institute and Joseph Rowntree Foundation have collaborated to launch the Scottish Public Spending Dashboard, a new tool allowing detailed government spending figures to be accessed and analysed by a broader set of people, combining public data from high-quality government sources.

Click here to access the Scottish Public Spending Dashboard

The Scottish Government produces a series of documents every year which outline what it plans to spend money on for the forthcoming year, most notably the annual Budget. While these are useful in detailing what the Scottish Government plans to spend, there is much less insight into what is actually spent (outturn expenditure) and on what areas.

Compounding this, government progress reports often do not distinguish between outturn expenditure and budgeted or forecast spending, limiting the extent to which figures can be externally scrutinised. Where figures can be cross-checked, researchers often find inconsistencies across different official sources, with no single ‘source of truth’ on expenditure.

While expenditure data is produced after the fact and released, this is not readily available in a format that even expert users can easily get to grips with. Some data is available at the functional level – that is, the ultimate purpose of the expenditure (health or education spending, for example) – but there is less focus on the type of transaction involved (such as whether it is on wages or procurement), which is known as an economic category. The two can then be combined into a more detailed breakdown of expenditure, allowing us to understand trends at a more granular level.

To facilitate more informed public debate, to aid in transparency and to improve public confidence and trust, it is our view that this data should be made publicly available in an accessible and understandable format.

The Dashboard adds value through several features that we believe will allow for greater insight for a greater number of people into Scottish Government spending. This report outlines some of the analyses that can be carried out using this dashboard, as well as the implications of those insights and some of the limitations of the data. Below are a few examples of such features:

• The combination of outturn data enables us to show whether money is being spent directly by the Scottish Government or by local government in specific areas. In this briefing, we use education as an example, as the vast majority of government spending is on schools – which are administered at local level.
• The dashboard highlights emerging patterns and trends in spending. For instance, within health expenditure, while pay remains a major component, it has now been surpassed by procurement – covering goods, services, and staffing purchased by the NHS from external providers. But it is also
• The dashboard includes a tool that allows users to model how Scottish Government spending may change based on increases or decreases in particular areas. This feature helps decision-makers and analysts anticipate potential gaps between current spending levels and future budgets.

Read our report and watch our tutorial

We have produced a short report accompanying this release, which highlights some of the key analysis from the dashboard, as well as limitations of this analysis. There is also a video tutorial for accessing the dashboard. You can access both resources here.

Click here to access the Scottish Public Spending Dashboard