Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government do not centrally hold records by department for mobile phones. Mobile phones are purchased by individual business areas to meet their requirements. There are 3922 mobile phones in use.

All corporately managed Scottish Government mobile phone communications are secured in line with National Cyber Security Centre standards.

Scottish Government has entered into a contract with Vodafone Ltd for the supply of Mobile Voice and Data Services. This contract was arranged under Scottish Government’s national framework for Mobile Voice and Data services which was awarded to Vodafone Ltd following a robust competitive tendering process. The framework was tendered in accordance with the full requirements of the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015 and evaluated based on the published award criteria of 60% price and 40% quality. Vodafone Ltd was assessed as having submitted the most economically advantageous tender and their tariffs continue to be amongst the lowest available to the public sector. An annual benchmark exercise is undertaken to ensure that Scottish Government tariffs remain cost-effective and provide value for money.

The Scottish Government holds data provided by our mobile voice and data supplier, Vodafone in relation to our mobile contract, this includes call, SMS and data usage statistics and along with any associated charges.

As set out in our Draft Just Transition Plan, the Scottish Government is committed to supporting a long term and sustainable future for the Grangemouth industrial cluster.

Alongside the UK Government, we have jointly funded £1.5m to support the development of ‘Project Willow’ which has identified a shortlist of low carbon alternatives which could be deployed in the future at the Refinery site. These alternatives include low carbon hydrogen, eFuels and sustainable aviation fuel.

The work is due to conclude shortly and key outputs and recommendations will be made available via a public communication. As I set out in my reply to S6W-31864 on 10 December 2024, the Scottish Government will provide an update to Parliament on the findings of Project Willow in due course.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The mobile data used in terabytes (Tb) on the Scottish Government’s account as part of our mobile voice and data contracts is shown below. This data is only available from August 2020, it is not possible to separate the associated mobile data costs by department from the overall spend.

January 2024 to December 2024 - 82.59Tb

January 2023 to December 2023 - 94.87Tb

January 2022 to December 2022 - 97.77Tb

January 2021 to December 2021 - 125.07Tb

July 2020 to December 2020 - 39.99Tb

All corporately managed Scottish Government mobile phones are audited monthly for compliance in line with our Cyber Security principals. Any remediation actions identified are investigated and addressed as necessary.

The Scottish Government ensures that corporately managed mobile phones are replaced when they no longer receive operating system or security updates.

The Scottish Government has robust processes and procedures in place to ensure all corporately managed mobile phones are monitored and continually assessed using industry standard security tooling to ensure compliance with our policies.

All corporately managed Scottish Government mobile phones align with National Cyber Security Centre standards.