Chamber and committees

Is that not part of the problem, Auditor General? The language that you use in the report and which you have repeated in your opening statement is relatively harsh in its analysis. You say that

“leadership ... has weakened”,

that

“momentum has ... slowed”

and that there is a lack of an action plan and a lack of lines of responsibility. These are common themes that we on the committee hear arising from a wide range of public services and from Government management and oversight of them. Do those things come as a surprise to you? Is there a feeling that it is perhaps not that the Government has taken its eye off the ball, due to pressures on public finances, but that its eye was never on the ball in the first place? I am trying to get a feel for whether the direction of travel is towards a worsening situation or whether the strategy was never there in the first place.

That is great news. I was really taken aback by the statistic that one in six Scots lack foundation-level digital skills—not advanced digital skills, but basic digital skills. How does that compare with other parts of Europe and the United Kingdom? Are we faring well, or is that the world average at the moment?

I might come back in with other questions later.

Good morning to you, Auditor General, and your colleagues. I will start with a question that is less about the specific content of the report and more about the overarching theme that you want us to take away from it.

On the one hand, I am getting the impression that, as the committee often hears with such reports, we are pushing the Government to go further and faster on public service reform. It is said that too many public services still involve clunky, physical, paper-based systems that are not digitised and not modern in ways that they could and should be. On the other hand, though, we seem to be beating the Government with a stick for moving too fast and leaving people behind.

I am therefore not quite sure what the overarching theme of this report is. Is it that the Government is going too fast and needs to take people with it, or is it that it needs to pick up the pace of digital reform while not leaving people behind—or is it perhaps both?

That timeline is stark. To put a pin point on it, when I joined the Parliament in 2016, I sat in a committee room not far from here, in which we discussed the procurement of the reaching 100 per cent—R100—programme, yet your report points to the fact that around 10 per cent of people still do not have access to the internet. Some eight years—nearly a decade—on from that time, a large chunk of people do not have digital skills or digital access. That speaks for itself.

Is there any particular reason why progress on the R100 programme—which means, presumably, reaching 100 per cent of the population—was not quite included in this report? I appreciate that there is some overlap with some of the work that Ofcom has been doing, but surely the infrastructure needs to be there before you can start teaching people the skills to use it.

Obviously, addressing the associated effects of rural depopulation and tackling digital exclusion are key drivers to repopulating rural and island communities.

This is perhaps a more macro question. Was there any expectation in the draft report that some of those issues might have been addressed in the human rights bill that we expected to see in the programme for government? Is there any feeling of disappointment that that has not featured in the Government’s legislative plans? What effect will that have on the ability to ensure that everyone in Scotland is digitally included?

The five major providers of internet and mobile telephony in the UK made more than £10 billion profit last year alone. If Government has no money, might there be a role for the private sector to chip in and show its charitable arm?

I will be as quick as I can. I will do it in two halves.

Did any analysis take place around the mygov.scot portal, which seems to claim glowing success, with 2.3 million users in Scotland and the sign-up of more than 40 organisations? Not many of my constituents who I speak to have ever heard of it or use it, but it seems to be a glowing success. Was that part of the analysis?

I have a few supplementary questions resulting from that conversation before I move into my main line of questioning.

I should say good morning. I know that it is a Monday morning, but we will get through this together.

Following on from the staffing issue, I want to look at staffing costs and pay rises, in particular. I have just spotted year-on-year changes on page 48 of your 2023-24 annual report and accounts, under your fair pay disclosure arrangements. This is backed up by looking at the table. It seems to me that the average year-on-year increase for employees is around 5 per cent—I presume that that is a general inflationary measure that you have introduced—but the increase is much higher for the higher earners in the organisation. In particular, the highest-paid individual received an 8 per cent increase. Is there any particular reason for that?

That is understood. Obviously, there are some very high-profile areas of the public sector in which requests have been made for double-digit increases in pay and staff. I am not expressing a view on that; I am simply stating a fact. However, that leads to the question how much money you will have to budget for and to ask for. There seem to be a lot of known unknowns in that, but it is a well-established process. Is that a fair description?