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The current Leadership group of the Scottish AI Alliance is made up as follows –

Chair:

Catriona Campbell, Client Technology & Innovation Officer, EY UK&I (appointed as Chair - March 2023, appointed as Leadership Group member May 2021)

Senior Responsible Officers for Alliance partners:

Tom Wilkinson, Chief Data Officer, Scottish Government

Brian Hills, CEO, The Data Lab

Leadership Group Members:

Leadership Group Recruitment Process Details

The Leadership Group was recruited by a public application process, initially in April/May 2021. Four Leadership Group members stepped down at the end of their initial 2 year term in March 2023 whereas the remaining 7 members extended their tenure for another term. Four new Leadership Group members were appointed in March 2023. The application window for the most recent recruitment process was open from 7 November 2022 to 19 January 2023. We advised that we sought representation from a range of sectors and backgrounds, and would welcome perspectives from within Scotland and beyond. Four positions on the group were advertised and we received thirty two applications.

The assessment panel consisted of –

• Gillian Docherty OBE, CCO University of Strathclyde and inaugural Chair of the Scottish AI Alliance
• Tom Wilkinson, Chief Data Officer, Scottish Government
• Jeremy Darot, Head of AI, Scottish Government
• Steph Wright, Head of Scottish AI Alliance, The Data Lab

Nine of the thirty two applications were regarded as of a suitable high level to move to the next stage and these were considered by the panel in a review meeting on 26 th January, where the final recommendations were made. Given the level of consensus on the appointments it was agreed that no further assessment was required and the successful candidates were offered the posts.

Chair Recruitment

Due to the inaugural Chair, Gillian Docherty OBE, indicating that she will step down from the role at the end of her two year term in March 2023, the Alliance began discussions around about potential chair candidates in October 2022. They identified a shortlist of people to approach.

In January 2023 there were a number of informal interviews with the shortlisted candidates, and the unanimous decision of the panel was that Catriona Campbell was the most suitable candidate. She accepted the role and was announced in post on 28 th March 2023 by then Minister Ivan McKee at the Scottish AI Summit 2023.

The cost for the Scottish AI Playbook build to date has been £17,820 including VAT.

The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) has confirmed that they are not aware of any reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete within the SPS estate.

Following a recent review of its estate, Police Scotland identified reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) in three of its buildings.

Police Scotland took immediate action to ensure that there was no risk to officers, staff or the public, and continues to work with structural engineers to identify longer term solutions for these buildings.

We are investing £1.45bn in policing in 2023-24. No additional funding has specifically been provided to Police Scotland for this issue.

The Scottish AI Playbook is a “one stop shop” for anyone in Scotland embarking on a journey involving AI whether it’s learning, using, developing, deploying or just exploring. It is a shared and living asset, embodying Scotland’s AI Strategy ethos of openness, transparency and collaboration. With this in mind, the Scottish Government has focused on the development of meaningful partnerships within the Playbook to support and demonstrate wider impact.

To date, the Playbook has established partnerships with CyberScotland, Fintech Scotland, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Jisc National Centre for AI in Tertiary Education and Scotland’s Futures Forum. A further five partnerships are currently in the development phase.

Further collaborative opportunities are in development, namely through the creation of Playbook hubs. The first of these hubs currently in development is focused on Data and AI in the Healthcare space. As part of the development of this hub, a quantitative approach to measuring impact will be initiated, through namely through Google Analytics integration into the Scottish AI Playbook MediaWiki platform.

The Scottish Government also understands that impact can be both felt and measured qualitatively, in the feedback and experiences of Playbook users. With this in mind, the next phase of Playbook development also includes a period of user consultation and feedback in order to measure experiential impact. This will be subject to resourcing and budgetary considerations, as it is recognised that measuring impact in this way, while highly valuable and beneficial, is resource intensive.

While the impact of the Scottish AI Playbook either is or will be measured in several different ways, it is noted that an overarching approach to impact and impact measurement is currently in development by the Scottish AI Alliance. Once this impact measurement approach and associated framework is in hand, it is likely to have an effect on the way in which the impact of the Scottish AI Playbook is measured.

The Scottish AI Alliance is a partnership between The Data Lab and the Scottish Government and is led by a Minister-appointed Chair and overseen by Senior Responsible Officers from The Data Lab (CEO) and the Scottish Government (CDO).

The team consists of 4 Scottish Government Civil Servants and five individuals who are based at the Data Lab, Scotland’s innovation centre for data and AI, which is administratively hosted by the University of Edinburgh.

An annual grant is paid to the University to cover the cost of staffing and activities carried out by the Data Lab team, including the delivery of the annual Scottish AI Summit, – the cost of this is as follows –

2021-22 - £265,000.00 – Grant awarded via Scottish Funding Council

2022-23 - £505,593.15 – Grant awarded directly by Scottish Government Digital Directorate

This is therefore all public funding and there is no private funding of the Alliance.

During the creation of the Scottish AI Strategy, the Scottish Government worked closely with colleagues across the SG and further afield, to ensure that we move forward in a joined up manner. We have continued to offer input to the development of related strategies both internally and nationally.

For example, as part of the development of the Digital strategy we specifically focused on the ethical considerations key to delivery of an ethical digital nation, and we worked more widely to consider how the emerging use of AI could help us deliver more focused and effective public services and economic benefit as part of the Scottish National Strategy for Economic Transformation. We have also both contributed to and taken direction from the Scottish Innovation Strategy. We have considered the types of support required by innovative and new businesses, whilst also supporting training and upskilling opportunities for those working in the technology sector.

In terms of UK wide developments we have engaged closely with UK Government colleagues around the creation of their draft white paper and we will continue to input to this discussion as the regulation of AI technologies continue.

This question relates to operational matters that are the responsibility of the Scottish Court and Tribunals Service (SCTS) corporate body. The question has been passed to the Chief Executive of the SCTS who reply in writing within 20 days.

Marine Scotland has referred a total of 148 cases of breaches of marine and fisheries offences between 2010 and June 2023. We do not have data for 2019 due to a system change.

The following table details the number of referrals by year.

The action was carried out and completed as part of the first 100 Days of the AI Strategy.

As reported in the 2021-22 State of AI Report we shared the following –

Capability Directory

The Scottish AI Alliance connected with ScotlandIS regarding their existing Data Capabilities Directory back during the First 100 Days. The Directory was recently refreshed. Another update took place in Autumn and the Support Circle team worked with the ScotlandIS team to ensure that AI capabilities are incorporated sufficiently into the directory. The Directory was also actively promoted by the Scottish AI Alliance to the AI community across Scotland and has been added to the Scotland’s AI Strategy website as a resource. Investigations of future format of the directory have started and there is potential for it to be incorporated in a larger piece of work in collaboration with the Scottish Tech Ecosystem Review (STER) and Digital Strategy teams at Scottish Government.

We will continue to monitor and contribute to this work as required.

Scottish Enterprise are in the process of commissioning a landscape review of AI businesses in Scotland. The database gathered by the review will be incorporated into the Scottish AI Playbook in due course. The review is currently being finalised and will be released in the coming weeks.