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The Scottish Government has invested some £25m over the past 6 years in supporting businesses and individuals to develop their digital skills.

Almost £8m has funded DigitalBoost, the digital skills support programme for SMES delivered by Business Gateway across Scotland. The programme offers a variety of training from 1-2-1 support and advice, as well as seminars and workshops throughout Scotland to digital the skills and capabilities of SMEs.

The Scottish Government also fund a Digital Development Loan launched in 2018. Loans of up to £50k are available at 0% rates to eligible Scottish SMEs looking to future proof their business and invest in building their digital capabilities.

In May 2018 I launched a new inclusive fund called the Digital Start Fund to support those who are out of work or those on low incomes seeking to train or retrain in digital skills to support businesses with their digital skills gaps.

I refer the member to the answer to S5W-24035 on 29 July 2019 for an explanation of how the Scottish Government monitors progress on delivering its digital strategy. Included in this monitoring process are actions pertaining to Scottish public sector bodies.

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

Our Digital Strategy for Scotland sets out our ‘Cloud First’ ambitions for public sector data hosting. We support the adoption of Cloud solutions and are working with public sector partners, such as Disclosure Scotland and the Scottish Social Security Agency, to move their services to the Cloud.

The Scottish Government has developed a suite of Cloud-based services and our Digital First Standard enables us to monitor the adoption and use of Cloud solutions by central government organisations. The new Cloud Service Procurements Framework reinforces our ‘Cloud First’ ambition by providing access for the Scottish public sector to services that will enable cloud migration.

The Digital Directorate both arranges and attends a number of public sector conferences to promote its transformation capability.

Senior members of the directorate also sit on corporate and programme boards where they are able to identify where support is required and signpost the services on offer.

The Digital Directorate’s IT desktop and infrastructure services are publicised through the Scottish Government intranet, Saltire. This includes a service catalogue where employees can request licenses, software etc. and such requests are processed through authorisation and delivery. Services are also promoted by a small group of digital business partners who are able to work with different teams across the Scottish Government and resolve issues as they arise.

We are expanding the Saltire catalogue to include a wider range of services in particular software development, digital publishing and digital advice.

All significant digital projects undergo a number of Digital First Assessment as part of the governance process. This is also an opportunity to offer specific assistance from the Digital Directorate if it is appropriate.

The strategy includes a measurement framework which sets out our high-level approach to monitoring benefits. Individual workstreams responsible for specific strategy actions have methodologies setting out our in-depth approach to monitoring benefits – these methodologies are commensurate to the size and maturity of each workstream. We have also commissioned reports from external consultants to provide independent view of progress on benefits.

The total amount spent on digital skills training within Scottish Government is not held centrally. Each Scottish Government Directorate manages their own training budget and training is based on workstream /individual requirements. The information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

In September 2017, the Scottish Government’s Digital Directorate increased the training options available through the launch of the Scottish Digital Academy. This aims to close recognised skills gaps through courses, in subjects such as agile project management, and has delivered training to over 1,200 delegates since that time.

There is no legislation specifically relating to the management of open spaces within woodlands for fire prevention. However the UK Forestry Standard (UKFS) – the reference standard for sustainable forest management - requires that forest managers consider the risks of fire when designing their woodlands.

Guidance to support the UKFS was published in 2014 to help reduce the likelihood and severity of wildfires in forests and woodlands. The guidance - Building Wildfire Resilience into Forest Management Planning – covers management of open spaces as well as other issues.

Scottish Forestry assesses woodland creation proposals and management plans against the UKFS, and takes into account the supplementary guidance when doing so. Forestry & Land Scotland follows the UKFS, and takes into account the supplementary guidance, in managing national forests and land.

The Government’s STEM Strategy specifically highlights the importance of providing opportunities for young people to develop their digital skills. In line with the Strategy, we are providing dedicated support for digital learning and teaching through a range of projects for early years, primary and secondary schools. We have updated the school curriculum guidance to introduce a clear expectation that young people learn the fundamentals of computing science and digital skills from the earliest years.

Education Scotland is continuing to provide professional learning opportunities for teachers, including through the establishment of Computing Science Lead Teacher networks (one for primary and early years and 6 regional networks for secondary) whose members will receive national-level training to be cascaded to local practitioners.

Education Scotland has also worked with the Barefoot Computing programme to ensure that teaching resources are linked to the curriculum. The latest available data shows that 69% of schools in Scotland have engaged with the programme through workshops or by teachers downloading resources. In addition, Education Scotland along with British Computing Science has published “Quick Start” guides for primary schools along with a Computing at Schools Scotland resource for early years and primary. Other support activity has included work with Police Scotland to promote a resource it created for Cyber Resilience aimed at pupils in S1 to S3 .

The Digital Schools Award provides primary and secondary schools with a framework to embed digital technology within learning and teaching. The scheme offers a step by step framework for primary and secondary schools to support the best use of technology in learning.

We are determined that the R100 programme delivers the best possible value and benefit for Scotland. The highly competitive procurement process we have designed seeks to achieve this. The R100 procurement is ongoing and delivery timescales will be confirmed once we have a supplier in place. Given the complexity of the procurement, legally, financially and technically, we have always acknowledged 2021 would be a challenging target to meet.

The initial 6-week extension was granted in May 2018. This extension did not represent a material change nor would it have impacted on the overall procurement timetable so was not referenced in previous answers.