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We certainly hope that the situation will look a bit better.

If we look back at previous ICT projects that have failed, we can see that it is almost invariably the case that those are projects in which an NDPB has been involved. That has been the picture historically. How do you provide NDPBs with support? How do you ensure that they do not just go off on their own and create rubbish, which, in some cases, has happened in the past?

Before Antony comes in, I want to put another question to you. Given the complexity and diversity of the stakeholders that are involved, is it inevitable that funding will be fragmented? How could that situation be improved? It is not good that funding arrangements are “complex and fragmented” when you are trying to put together a strategy. Does the system have to change?

Earlier, you said that you were expecting technical expertise to reside within the different areas, and the accountable officer would be able to access that expertise internally within his area.

Again and again, what has come to light is that there is not enough technical expertise in the market—there is a huge shortage. Scotland is not alone in that regard. The last estimate that I saw, which was several years ago, was a shortage of 300,000 of such people across Europe. That is a big number and those who are available are demanding salaries that are way above the normal scales. At one point, they were being paid off scale to try to get them in.

Is it realistic to expect that each area will be able to recruit, at some considerable expense, that sort of skill to enable them to build a system? Would it not make more sense for the skills to be available centrally to give that support in a rather more cohesive way?

I will move on to a slightly different topic. I am sorry—Jillian, do you want to come in?

Although the NHS and Police Scotland have their own digital people, they have still had IT projects that failed because they did not have the skills to manage the contract. Even contract negotiation has been an issue in some cases. How are we providing them with support in such things? From what I understand from what has been said, the individual accountable officers within the areas in which those projects fall would still have the final say in how the project is managed. Do you have the authority to overrule them if you feel that they are going adrift?

Most of the projects that we have seen fail have failed not because they were delivering something that the public did not want but because they eventually delivered something that the department or division concerned did not expect, and it was a case of a difference of interpretation between the end users and the techies building the system. It is vital that there is an understanding between the two, yet, again and again, what is being delivered is less than or different from what was expected and unable to be used for one reason or another. Given all that, I would have expected stronger central support.

You have talked about contracts, but surely each individual accountable officer does not have to be trained in the intricacies of a contract to build new software. Is that not the sort of thing that could be centralised, with experts going through contracts and ensuring that all the safeguards are in place? We have seen systems built that had no safeguards at all—there were no penalties on delivery and all sorts of basic things. Is that not the sort of thing that could be usefully and helpfully centralised?

My second question was whether you could point to any successful examples elsewhere, particularly south of the border or in Europe.

Correct me if I am wrong, but are you saying that we must almost reinvent regeneration for each community and town, and that there is no template that we can use or example that we can look at that would help us to develop a policy?

To my mind, regeneration is not top down, insofar as you cannot have a successful regeneration project without the community being fully engaged and all the different elements being brought together. However, we are talking about identifying what we should be doing to regenerate town centres. If there are examples that we can look at, that is really helpful. Each community is different, but there must be places where regeneration has taken place and has been relatively successful. It has been extremely difficult to identify those places.