Chamber and committees

Thank you. I remind witnesses and members that, if they wish to come in at any point, they should type R in the chat function.

As Mr Brannen has just told us, he is quite new to the post, so he should feel free to bring in John Kerr and Andrew Scott to answer the more detailed questions that members will wish to put to him. If there are any questions that you are not able to fully answer, there is the opportunity for us to receive evidence in writing after today’s oral evidence session, if that is a better way of communicating the information that we seek.

I will open with a couple of questions. My first is a fundamental question, which is to ask whether you accept in full all the findings and recommendations of the Audit Scotland report.

Thanks, John. I think there will be a return to some of those areas in further questions from the committee.

I wish to move on, and I invite Craig Hoy to ask some questions.

Dharshi Santhakumaran wants to give us a bit more detail.

Are you saying that you are satisfied about where things are with the ICT programme in relation to the skill sets that are required to oversee and run it, and its operational implementation?

The census that England and Wales carried out was, for the first time, a digital-first census. In Scotland, are we at a stage at which we could carry out that digital-first assessment, or are there still deficiencies or inadequacies?

You mentioned the options appraisal. All that I have seen in the public domain is two sides of A4. Has Audit Scotland had access to what would presumably be a much more detailed analysis that was put to the census programme board or the board of NRS? Have you had access to a more detailed report and would the committee be able to get access to that?

Sharon Dowey has a number of questions that follow up on the lines of questioning that Willie Coffey pursued.

It would be useful for us to have access to that more detailed work.

Thank you, Auditor General. We want to put several questions to you and your team, based on our reading of the report and the wider context in which it sits, part of which touches on our concern that ICT projects are not necessarily delivered on time and on budget, as you mentioned in your opening statement.

The section 22 report mentions almost as a passing reference that the census is one of the biggest ICT projects in Scotland. Could you tell us a bit more about the shape that the project takes? Is it an in-house ICT project or a new capital project, or are you just talking about the operational side of it?

We may well have the accountable officer from NRS at a future evidence session. This question may fall into the same category, but do you or your team have a view about the implications of any further delay to the census? It is planned for March 2022, but we could speculate about reasons why it might not go ahead.

I want to pick up on that last point. Over the past couple of days, I have been looking at the ONS’s summary of how things went in the March 2021 census. The document, which was published in October, says under “Main points”:

“Census 2021 exceeded expectations, with 97% of households across England and Wales taking part”.

The document also says:

“Use of cloud architecture allowed us to scale up to meet the very high demand experienced on Census Day”.

It was the first digital-first census to be held in England and Wales. The ONS says that the system did not crash, even though

“we were receiving just under half a million census submissions per hour at the peak.”

It also says:

“The success of the Census 2021 digital service shows that large government digital services can be securely delivered in-house using cloud architecture and Agile development.”

Do you have any reflections on that?