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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Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Daniel Johnson
It might just have been a typo. [Laughter.]
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Daniel Johnson
On that point, as we brought up in other discussions, in some ways the SDGs seem to have a bit more purchase and currency. Do we even need the national performance framework? Should we just be focused on SDGs, because they are better understood and they are more comparable, because they are used internationally? I would encourage other people to pile in. Do not wait for one of us to ask you to speak.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Daniel Johnson
Finally, and briefly, when you look at the framework, you see the high-level outcomes and then you are straight into a sea of words and numbers being referenced. Do we just need to present this stuff a bit better so that, when people look at it, they get a sense of what is going on?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Daniel Johnson
Definitely not. The problem is that, all too often, when the national performance framework is referenced, you just see that diagram, but it is about the numbers. In this day and age, we have all seen wonderful infographics that bring data to life. However, my humble suggestion is that this data is not being brought to life.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Daniel Johnson
As a follow-up to that, should we be putting these things into much plainer language?
I also have a substantive question. Another observation has been that, frankly, the framework is not used as much as it was when it was first conceived of in 2007. Critically, one of the other observations that I found interesting was that it was part and parcel of the concordat—
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Daniel Johnson
I begin by reassuring Tim Kendrick about children’s perceptions of what we do. Last night, my daughter said to me, “Oh, daddy, I think you’re really good at your job,” and I was delighted. I asked, “Why do you think that is?” and she said, “I don’t really know because, whenever I listen to anything you have to say in Parliament, I find it too boring to listen to for very long.” I went from elation to deflation in a very short period.
I will move on to some substantive questions. John Mason touched on the point that has been raised by a number of people, both in writing and in person that, in essence, the national performance framework is being used in an implicit way and almost sits behind things as a set of values rather than anything else. I want to ask a less technical and perhaps blunter question than some of our more formal questions. Do you find the national performance framework useful and do you use it day to day? If so, how? If you do not use it daily, do you actively use it when you are framing policies, or is it just something that you refer to when you are engaging with the Scottish Government?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Daniel Johnson
That is absolutely fine. Those points are useful.
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Daniel Johnson
I will put two broad questions. One point that comes across loud and clear is, as Tim Kendrick has suggested, it is all a bit motherhood and apple pie—no one disagrees that any of these things are good things. Perhaps we need to ask how the framework can be influenced. If we are going to change the framework, is there a strategy that needs to layer on it so that agencies and ministers can seek to engage and contribute towards the strategies, so that the outcomes are a bit narrower? Structurally, does that need to happen? Do we need a point of view on the outcomes? How are the outcomes influenced and how can people contribute towards them?
My other point relates to what Mirren Kelly said about greater clarity on contribution. A suggestion that came up in previous evidence sessions was that, in essence, the framework needs to be embedded by agreement with individual agencies, so that there is a bit of clarity. That is not so much about particular outcomes being one person’s responsibility but, where public money is being handed out, there should be an agreement on how a contribution will be made to national outcomes.
Should there be a point of view and a change in structure, and should there be specific agreements on the contribution towards the national performance framework between Government and agencies?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Daniel Johnson
Mirren, do have anything to add, or do you broadly agree?
Finance and Public Administration Committee
National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action
Meeting date: 24 May 2022
Daniel Johnson
I have one final reflection and a comment that I did not manage to get in.
During the pandemic, I became addicted to looking at Public Health Scotland’s data dashboard. In a sense, it achieved something that the national performance framework has not achieved. For such things to be used, whether we are talking about qualitative or quantitative measures, they need to be engaging, and the NPF is not there yet. The Covid data on the PHS dashboard was complex, but it was rich and it allowed people to look at different things. That is a good example of what we might need to do.
From what has been said in today’s conversation and others, I am struck by the sense that there is a real desire for the NPF to work and for there to be a common language so that different agencies and different parts of the public sector can show their contribution. Ultimately, there has been a failure on the part of the sponsoring organisation to place sufficient emphasis on that. That is my reflection from today’s discussion and the preceding ones.
