Seòmar agus comataidhean

I refer the Member to the answer to question S5W-24023 on 29 July 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The Scottish Government has set out the Digital First Service Standard that aims to improve the ways in which services are designed, developed and improved. Scottish Government’s Digital Assurance Office carries out assessments during the development of new services and provides recommendations to ensure that the standard is met.

The Digital Transformation division includes specialists in areas such as service design, programme management and technical architecture and makes these skills available to other parts of Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government published the Public Sector Action Plan on Cyber Resilience in November 2017 and has provided public sector bodies with an implementation tool kit, draft supply chain cyber security guidance, Cyber Incident Response guidance and a Central Incident Notification and Coordination policy to support a consistent approach to cyber security across the public sector.

More than 45 public sector bodies are directly provided with ICT services and support from the Scottish Government and 62 public sector bodies have received funding towards Cyber Essentials pre-assessments to promote consistency across the wider sector in securing public sector systems against the most common cyber risks.

Scottish Government provides support to public sector bodies directly through the activities of the Digital Transformation Division. This has delivered over 90 projects over the past three years.

Technical staff within the division use common templates and approaches to create digital system designs. A resources website and document repository including a number of these templates is also available.

The Scottish Government Digital Transformation Division is currently supporting 14 programmes of varying size across government.

Collaboration across organisations and sectors is critical to achieving our digital ambitions for Scotland. Our national digital strategy aims to create an environment and culture of partnership working, underpinned by common standards and robust governance and assurance arrangements.

The governance structures we put in place during 2018 strengthened strategic oversight of our digital strategy, and brought together individuals from a range of organisations and sectors, to pool their expertise, share information and collectively drive digital transformation in the public sector.

The 2019-20 Budget Bill sets out the allocation for the Scottish Government to spend on the full range of digital priorities aligned with the digital strategy.

In addition to this central allocation, organisations advance their digital investment through individual budget allocations. Central Government Digital projects are registered with the Scottish Government, and the total of estimated whole life costs currently held for these projects is £1.1bn. A breakdown of this figure was provided by the Scottish Government to the Public Audit and Post Legislative Scrutiny Committee in May 2019.

The Scottish Government has a small team that provides software development services for other public sector bodies, including web development. The team can call on external partners for additional resources and support as necessary. They provide on-going changes to a large number of existing systems as well as the capability to build new services.

The Scottish Government is also building a Digital Publishing Service available to colleagues in Government and those in the public sector. This Service already provides guidance, support on developing web sites and technical assets to various government organisations and we are actively developing more shareable software and infrastructure.

Following publication of the digital strategy priority actions were identified, monitored, and reported to Ministers annually. This information is also used for updates to the governance board responsible for progress of digital transformation across Scottish central government.

Work began August 2018, scheduled to complete November 2019, to monitor all actions. This information will be reviewed on a quarterly basis and used in annual reporting to Ministers. It will also be used for updates to the governance board responsible for progress of digital transformation across Scottish central government.

I refer the member to the answer to S5W-24026 on 29 July 2019 for an explanation of budget allocation to date. Future investment is part of the challenging considerations we have in setting our 2019-20 Programme for Government and Spending Review plans.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx