Chamber and committees

Good morning, Auditor General.

Data is something that has come up just once or twice in the past in connection with the public sector. I am looking specifically at the drug and alcohol information system—DAISy—which is supposed to capture all the information from the services that are being delivered. Paragraph 32 on page 18 of your report states that there have been problems with uploading information to the system, and that it would appear that the figure for cases submitted is now down to only

“66 per cent of cases.”

That would appear to indicate that the Government is using limited figures in order to create policy.

What progress is being made to sort out those difficulties in uploading data? The issue seems so basic. The system was launched in April 2021, and we are now three and a half years on. What has been done?

I think that you have just answered my second question on this subject. Given that this particular lack of data across the public sector has been highlighted before, to what extent has the Scottish Government now got the data to assess the cost effectiveness of alcohol and drug services? You seem to be indicating that it still does not have it.

I just want to finish up with a question about young people and prevention. Your report says:

“More work is required in schools to engage with pupils and to understand which approaches are most effective in helping young people understand the risks associated with substance use.”

To what extent is good practice—something that we do not talk about as often as we should—such as the North Ayrshire alcohol and drug partnership’s engagement with young people being shared across Scotland?

Still on the data theme, I note that there is a problem with data sharing. Indeed, in paragraph 33 on page 18, you raise the issue of

“NHS and local authority patient information”

being

“held on different information technology systems”—

we have heard about that before—and the inability of workforces to share data in a joined-up way. What is happening with that? What action is being taken? Again, it seems fairly basic. I guess that third sector providers are caught up in it, too.

Are the legacy systems that are in place simply not flexible enough to be able to share data, or is it a question of layering something on top to permit data sharing to happen? I am thinking of the technical side of things rather than the more artificial side that we can deal with.

Two thirds of cases are uploaded, and one third is not. It seems extraordinary that some bits of the system are okay, and some people have no problem with it, while others have great difficulty. Has any analysis been done of why that is?

I come back to the question whether the Scottish Government is basing its policy decisions on the limited data that is being uploaded.

Finally, in paragraph 68, you talk about

“little evidence of tier 3 and 4 (acute) services addressing the specific needs of young people.”

Did you identify any reasons for that?

What concerns me about the situation is that, if a problem in the system is systematically affecting certain data that is input and if that data is excluded from consideration, because it has been rejected for some reason or is not working in some way, you will have only a partial picture of what is happening out there.

Has it been a problem from the beginning?

Is there any sort of robust system for picking out areas of good practice in this field and making use of them or, at least, making them known elsewhere?