Chamber and committees

Thank you.

Yes—good morning and thanks for coming along, Jennifer. I want to explore a wee bit more about the IT contractors. Your annual accounts give the costs

“primarily to meet the digital requirements of updating legacy IT systems and evolving our IT estate onto a long-term sustainable basis”

as about £132,000 a year, which looks to me like folk working for 11 months a year on a day rate of £600, roughly.

How, specifically, do you plan to do what you have set out and get the crossover that you have alluded to—building the skills of the permanent staff while starting to move the fairly high numbers for contractors. Can you tell me a wee bit more about that?

Yes. I do not know whether I am right on the day rate, because it was just a quick calculation. I am asking about types of skills, because people who have skills such as Java will be picked up. Although your plan to get your staff up to speed on those skills addresses one problem, it also introduces a new organisational risk, because those staff will have skills that are sellable at a daily rate of £600, which most people would consider useful. Can I assume that the risk side, from an IT perspective, is also in your personnel planning?

I suppose that the framework is attempting to do that as we all move beyond a difficult financial time.

One of the committee’s other concerns is the general lack of understanding of how the budget process works for the Scottish Government and the impact that it has on everyone else’s budgets. You are clearly across that and you will understand that, for example, the final figures came in literally at the 11th hour—the night before stage 3. However, how clearly is that understood by your colleagues in CIPFA and the council? I think that it was the finance secretary who said that it is like trying to land a 747 on a postage stamp, which describes it well. What is your perception of how clearly the process is understood across the board among your colleagues in CIPFA and the council?

Yes, it does. Going to your accountancy background, I have asked on a number of different occasions whether data on how much time is spent on the process—you spoke earlier about opportunity cost—is collected when we go through that curmudgeonly process? Doing projections that are promptly zapped is often a waste of time. That is one area where I would be looking to note how many days are being used in order to illustrate inefficiencies, when it is all changed at the 11th hour. Does CIPFA or COSLA collect that data?

Do you know what the aggregated percentage is for the rest of the UK? I am just interested.

I knew that you would enjoy that opportunity. Thank you for that.

Would the other two witnesses like to add anything on that question with some thoughts that might have been triggered by today’s discussion?

I see that Paul Bradley is taking a deep breath.

Thank you very much for that.

I have a couple of questions for you, Eileen. A number of times, the committee has had a discussion about the benefits of multiyear versus single-year budgeting. In principle, everyone understands that issue. How aware are you of the challenges that the Scottish Government has had because of its inability to undertake multiyear budgeting?

That leads me on to my main question. The committee was helped ably by the clerks in devising the call for evidence for the inquiry. One of the questions that was asked was:

“Does the framework properly reflect the current economic and political context?”

I was a bit surprised that neither the SCVO submission nor the Universities Scotland submission reflected on the political context. In the answer that you just gave, you clearly highlight a political context: the rest of the UK has gone down a fees route and levied loans on students, but the Scottish Government has elected not to do that. I do not know whether this figure is correct—it is probably a few years out of date—but in Holland, for example, the aggregated figure for funding to universities from central Government is 61 per cent. There is clearly a stark difference.

I was surprised not to see a reflection of the political context in the Universities Scotland submission, given the comment about

“attracting a working-age population from outside our borders”.

As we know, Scotland has been greatly affected by Brexit.

Paul Bradley mentioned SNIB. I agree that £2 billion in capital expenditure is a low figure. I would like it to be much higher.

My question to all three witnesses is: what makes you avoid that political context? I am well aware that we live in polarised times in Scotland. I understand that, and I do not see it from one side of the fence; I merely recognise it as a fact. As a relatively new member, I see that people who give evidence to this committee and to the Economy and Fair Work Committee are reluctant to tell it how it is for fear of getting into a debate that is quite polarised at the moment. From my point of view, as a member of this committee, which is interested in the numbers and the financial transactions, that reluctance inhibits understanding. We saw that earlier when we talked about COSLA and CIPFA.

In the light of your comments this morning, would you like to add anything that is not in your submission in relation to the question:

“Does the framework properly reflect the current economic and political context?”