ON my computer I find the following press release from the Scottish Government, dated November 1, 2018: “A significant investment will see a new single digital platform installed across all NHS boards, improving efficiency and making it easier for staff to work together … including having access to shared calendars, video meetings, a single email system and centralised access to documents. Improvements in efficiency will allow staff to spend more time on treating and caring for patients.”

As capital investment this is in fact fairly low-grade stuff, just bringing the NHS into line with the standard presentation equipment available in private sector commerce for the last 20 or 30 years. Not exactly the cutting edge. Even so, I think it offers a conclusive retort to Julia Pannell of Friockheim, who wrote in doubting if many improvements in productivity were possible or desirable.

The key of the press release lies in its final few words explaining how, away from all the stodgy bureaucracy of any big organisation nowadays, this expenditure will free resources that can be better devoted to curing sick or injured people. So there is a net gain to the purpose of the NHS.

Here is also the essence of my answer to Ian Johnstone of Peterhead, Cathie Lloyd of Lochbroom and Tony Williams of Tarbert, who wrote in to protest my applying principles of efficiency in auniversal public service. Yet every week brings us news of its critical failings.

The NHS will soon take up 50% of the Scottish budget (a rise from 41% a decade ago), so nobody can accuse the Government of not trying. There just seems to be a disconnect between strategic decisions taken at the centre and individual problems on the ground.

Somehow higher spending, while of course important, is still not in itself the complete answer. It does not get through to the grassroots. That is why I argue we need to pay closer attention to the details of efficiency.

Actually I prefer to use the term productivity, the economic concept concerning the relationship between inputs of capital, labour or technology and the resulting output of goods and services. My column gave the small example of the preference in the NHS for snail mail over email in communicating with its millions of patients. It is an obvious waste of money, yet it creates jobs for the clerical staff who print out the letters and stick down the envelopes.

The trouble with the Scottish Government is that such things cloud what should be a clear and simple purpose with other objectives that confuse the issue. Ministers believe in full employment – fair enough, except in 2019 our economy has already achieved full employment with little input from them. In pursuit of their goal, they then impose regulations that stop our economy performing even better.

Mo Maclean writes in from Glasgow to complain at this kind of labour market.

It may bring us full employment, but only at the costof a gig economy, zerohours contracts and other horrors. Hold your hat, Mo – the rest of the digital 21st century will be like this. It is developing free of regulation because the regulation we have was designed for the economy of the 20th century. Today’s innovators and entrepreneurs get round it.

Take Scotland. As far as I can understand it, the Government’s ideal is an absolutely stable economy where everybody is employed in jobs that have been approved by the state and on politically correct terms imposed by the state. The belief in its own omnipotence is touching. Yet with this outlook we could scarcely be further from the reality of the digital revolution. From now on things are going to speed up, not slow down. Winnie Ewing said: “Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on.” Don’t let Nicola Sturgeon say: “Stop the world, Scotland wants to get off.”

This prospect is not mere speculation on my part. The letter from Roy Pedersen of Inverness showed how economic reality is already exposing our misguided approach in the quite unrelated field of shipping technology.

Following all conditions imposed by the Scottish Government, Caledonian MacBrayne is currently building ferries that cost £75 million each. The private operator, Pentland Ferries, is about to take delivery of a vessel that cost £14m.

The nationalised Caledonian MacBrayne cannot actually go bust, only fleece us for an awful lot of money. But which of these two outfits will in the long run flourish and better serve the people of the islands or the tourist industry?

That’s just one economic question among many. The answers we give to them all will determine whether Scotland is going to prosper, and so whether it will ever be an independent nation.