Analysis

Message to John Swinney's friends: don't expect to see much of him for the next while. The new Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth is facing an in-tray that threatens to bury him in paperwork.

His job involves no less than 32 responsibilities. That can be said of many jobs, but this one includes the annual allocation of £30bn of taxpayers' money, steering that through parliament while 19 votes short of a majority.

If that only takes him to breakfast time, he can plan the reform of public services, pushing councils and quangos to work closer together. The SNP also needs to identify huge efficiency savings if it is to fund its election pledges.

Over morning coffee, the Cabinet Secretary might usefully ponder how to abolish Communities Scotland, much of which is his fiefdom, while also fulfilling the promise of sweeping changes to Scottish Enterprise: slimming it down, chopping off its training and careers role, winding up VisitScotland, creating a new Welcome to Scotland agency and boosting Scotland's international trade effort.

By lunch, he could make a tidy trim of red tape, a task which no previous minister has delivered. Over a sandwich, he could consider the gaps left by reduced European Structural Funds and decide how building standards can be raised to improve energy efficiency.

That may require a chat with Michael Russell, the Environment Minister. There is bad blood between the two and the division of environment responsibilities is the least clear part of the new framework.

That leaves the afternoon to figure out how to improve rail journey times, plan a new crossing of the Forth, dual the A9 through Mr Swinney's North Tayside constituency and regulate buses. The voluntary sector might get five minutes before he phones his Norwegian counterpart to discuss how to build an energy supergrid across the North Sea.

As Energy Minister, delegations will be waiting to tell him they want more windfarms, others want fewer and no pylons through the Highlands. SNP councillors, now running much of Scotland, will be battering at his door for support for their pet projects. Meanwhile, Scottish Water could drench him in Edinburgh's effluent if the Seafield sewerage needs replacement, putting on pressure to transfer it to mutual status.

Evening relaxation could be finding the money to freeze council tax, and later figure out how to replace it with a local income tax that is already billed as the new executive's biggest nightmare.

Plus, he will have to read his civil service briefs for the next day on how to handle the committees who want to quiz him across the range of his responsibilities, the parliamentary questions he has to sign off and the negotiations in which he will have to secure voting support from his Labour opposite number, Wendy Alexander.

To achieve all that, Mr Swinney need look no further than one of his two deputies, Jim Mather, who claimed during the election campaign that SNP policy could be delivered with some "fiscal fairy dust".