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Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S6W-14146

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Digital Health and Care Strategy, how much it has invested in information governance and cyber skills within health and social care.

The Scottish Government is supporting staff to develop digital skills through the Building Digital Skills and Leadership Programme.

Specifically, to support IG and cyber security across health and social care, the Scottish Government has provided funding to NHS boards for programmes of work specifically relating to Information Governance and Security. For example:

The National IG Programme
The Digital Workforce Programme
NIS Competent Authority for Health.

This is in addition to bespoke spends on this topic area, such as the Public Sector Cyber Upskilling fund, which was targeted at Emergency Services, Local Authorities, Health Sector, SEPA and Scottish Water.

As these programmes often rely on appropriate use of allocated funding to NHS boards, we do not hold information centrally on the amount specifically on the development of information governance and cyber skills.

For more information on the Building Digital Skills and Leadership Programme, I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-14150 on 2 February 2023. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

Question reference: S6W-14117

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Digital Health and Care Strategy, which health and social care organisations it has provided support to in order to have access to the basic resources required to develop as digital organisations.

Question reference: S6W-14142

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Digital Health and Care Strategy, what work it has done with senior leaders within health and social care to develop the skills needed to embed digital technology and literacy across their organisations.

We have recently agreed the arrangement for a new post-graduate course in Scotland. The 'Leading Digital Transformation in Health and Care' (MSc) will provide up to 60 funded places aimed at senior and aspiring leaders across the health and social care sector. Year one commences in April 2023.

Work is also underway designing the 'Executive Leadership in a Digital Age' Masterclass programme. This will equip Board-level executives and non-executives with the necessary understanding of digital health, governance and leadership skills to support transforming service delivery.

Question reference: S6W-14115

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Digital Health and Care Strategy, how it plans to provide better access for health and care staff to appropriate data, to better analyse, understand and improve processes and services at different levels and better inform strategic planning priorities.

The Scottish Government continues to invest in platforms that will improve access and analytic capacities across health and social care. For example, we continue to invest in the development of our National Digital Platform and the Seer platform which will improve access to latest analytical tools and increase access to data for staff.

For further information on this question, I refer the member to the answer to questions S6W-14125 and S6W-14129 on 2 February 2023. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

Question reference: S6W-14070

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Claire Baker on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether the Parliament has faced any challenges in preparing for the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme.

Question reference: S6W-14145

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to increase awareness of cyber security and cyber threats within the health and social care sector.

The Scottish Government Cyber Resilience Unit hosts regular Public Sector Cyber Resilience Network webinars bringing together more than 150 information/cyber security experts from across the sector to raise awareness of the latest threats, share good practice and ensure that lessons are learned from incidents and exercises.

Specifically for the health sector, the Cyber Centre of Excellence (CCoE) has been established. The CCoE will empower continuous improvements by focusing on key enablement pillars including Centralised Security, 24/7 Monitoring, Threat Hunting, Incident Response and Training & Awareness. It is complimented by the Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre (SC3) which will be a key partner to the CCoE, enhancing our national incident response capacity and capabilities.

Question reference: S6W-14134

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what it has done to modernise its core health and care business systems.

Scottish Government is undertaking a wide range of digital programmes to support partners including work on Microsoft 365, the roll out Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (HEPMA),the rollout of new General Practice IT systems, development of the National Digital Platform and Digital Diagnostics. Delivery is ongoing, as set out in the annual delivery plan for Digital Health & Care (see Care in the Digital Age: delivery plan 2022 to 2023 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Question reference: S6W-14136

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in relation to its last conducted digital maturity exercises in the health and care sector, which areas were identified as areas for improvement, and what funding was allocated to support these.

Despite the digital maturity assessment taking place in 2019, the findings were not made available until early 2020. Unfortunately, much of the work planned to take forward the learning from the assessment was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As referenced in question S6W-14135 on 2 February 2023, we will take forward the new digital maturity programme in 2023 to re-establish those areas of key priority.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

Question reference: S6W-14141

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Digital Health and Care Strategy, what it has done to streamline the information governance landscape setting out the roles of key organisations within health and care.

The Scottish Government has undertaken extensive engagement with stakeholders across health and care, including health boards, the research community, industry and many other stakeholders, in order to understand the information governance landscape and identify opportunities for improvement.

The executive summary of our Information Governance review was published on 1 April 2022. As a result of the recommendations from the review, The National Information Governance Programme had been established to streamline the Information Governance landscape with focus on the following key areas:

Co-designing options for a more balanced, federated IG model
Improving the Information Governance maturity across the Health and Social Care Ecosystem
Empowering People in digital and data
Delivering the right Information Governance tools
Co-designing transformative participatory public engagement models and
Enhancing transparency

Furthermore, the Scottish Government recently funded and launched Research Data Scotland ( RDS). RDSis working to create a new Researcher Access Service that will provide streamlined lawful, fair and safe access to health and care data for the public good.

Question reference: S6W-14133

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has developed a (a) commercial and (b) procurement strategy that covers all national, regional and local approaches to (i) developing and (ii) buying digital products for health and social care.