Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
The Official Report search offers lots of different ways to find the information you’re looking for. The search is used as a professional tool by researchers and third-party organisations. It is also used by members of the public who may have less parliamentary awareness. This means it needs to provide the ability to run complex searches, and the ability to browse reports or perform a simple keyword search.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
Depending on the kind of search you want to do, one of these views will be the best option. The default view is to show the report for each meeting of Parliament or a committee. For a simple keyword search, the results will be shown by item of business.
Search by MSP
When you choose to search by a particular MSP, the results returned will show each spoken contribution in Parliament or a committee, ordered by date with the most recent contributions first. This will usually return a lot of results, but you can refine your search by keyword, date and/or by meeting (committee or Chamber business).
We’ve chosen to display the entirety of each MSP’s contribution in the search results. This is intended to reduce the number of times that users need to click into an actual report to get the information that they’re looking for, but in some cases it can lead to very short contributions (“Yes.”) or very long ones (Ministerial statements, for example.) We’ll keep this under review and get feedback from users on whether this approach best meets their needs.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
If you select an MSP’s name from the dropdown menu, and add a phrase in quotation marks to the keyword field, then the search will return only examples of when the MSP said those exact words. You can further refine this search by adding a date range or selecting a particular committee or Meeting of the Parliament.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
There are two ways of searching by date.
You can either use the Start date and End date options to run a search across a particular date range. For example, you may know that a particular subject was discussed at some point in the last few weeks and choose a date range to reflect that.
Alternatively, you can use one of the pre-defined date ranges under “Select a time period”. These are:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
If you search by an individual session, the list of MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs and committees will update to show the information that was current at that time.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
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Displaying 917 contributions
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Public Audit Committee [Draft]
Section 22 Report: “The 2021/22 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 15 December 2022
Craig Hoy
The census in England proceeded on the planned timetable, but the census in Scotland was delayed. Have you been able to make any preliminary judgment on whether the decision to delay meant that we improved the data capture rate in Scotland or whether, for some reason, that decision impeded management of the census?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Craig Hoy
That was going to be my next question. Identifying it as a digital academy puts it into a silo. Is there a broader suite of training and skills provision in the Scottish Government or the Scottish public sector with which you could come together to create a more holistic approach?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Craig Hoy
If you push up against any resistance, whether institutional or from individuals, what form, typically, does that resistance take?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Craig Hoy
Good morning. I have a few questions about the Scottish digital academy. I want to explore the impact of the academy and the courses that you have put in place. The First Minister’s digital fellowship and digital champions programmes have been launched and undertaken. What impact are they having on the ground?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Craig Hoy
That pre-empts my next question. How do you determine which courses to offer in-house and which ones to bring in external suppliers for? What drives the choice of course subject matter?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Craig Hoy
On driving take-up, will you give us an indication of the methodology—you have identified one part of it—and the marketing that you are engaged in to make sure that you get buy-in and take-up from the broader range of Government organisations in Scotland?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Craig Hoy
I have a brief question. The last time that you were before the committee, you referred to the cost of the infrastructure and the architecture for the Covid passport scheme. There was a fee per person who registered that was paid to a third-party agency or something for the verification. Do you know whether the total published costs included that nominal subscription fee per registrant?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Craig Hoy
Have you done any benchmarking to assess the level of investment that you are putting in relative to Governments such as the Singapore Government, which have adopted a digital-delivery-first principle? Are we lagging behind those Governments that are taking an ambitious approach in this area?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects
Meeting date: 8 December 2022
Craig Hoy
What has the total cost of the academy been to date?
Public Audit Committee
“Scotland’s public finances: Challenges and risks”
Meeting date: 1 December 2022
Craig Hoy
Good morning, Mr Boyle. I want to take up the point about local government flexibilities and ring fencing. Obviously, when the UK Government hands consequentials to the Scottish Government, they come with no strings attached and little in the way of hypothecation, other than, I think, some elements in relation to national insurance contributions. When that money flows to councils, however, there is a significant degree of ring fencing. With the flexibility that you have identified in-year this year, and given that the cost of living crisis and the pressures that we see are likely to last into next year and possibly the following year, should we expect that greater flexibility will be given to councils in their budgets? Would that be desirable at this time?
