Current status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 16 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-29916 by Gillian Martin on 30 September 2024, whether it will provide details of the work that (a) it, (b) Zero Waste Scotland and (c) SEPA has carried out on digital waste tracking since 2010, including a breakdown of (i) how much has been spent on and (ii) the staff resource allocations to such projects.
Officials operate flexibly across a range of policies and programmes according to the specific requirements of their work at any given time. They do not, as a matter of course, record the proportion of their time spent working on particular project. It is therefore not possible to provide an expenditure figure regarding how much the Scottish Government has spent on work by officials involved with the development of Digital Waste Tracking.
As a four nations programme, staff resource contributing toward the development of Digital Waste Tracking is shared across UK Government and the devolved nations, with the UK Government, through Defra, providing the majority of resource and funding.
Zero Waste Scotland
We are not aware of any money spent specifically on Digital Waste Tracking within Zero Waste Scotland. A Zero Waste Scotland employee provided a response to the consultation on Digital Waste Tracking on behalf of the organisation in 2022. Some preparatory research went into the preparation of this response. Zero Waste Scotland does not have a record of any further staff allocation to the development of Digital Waste Tracking.
SEPA
SEPA staff work also flexibly across a range of priority projects and work areas, and do not, as a matter of course, record the proportion of their time spent working on different activities. Due to the cyber-attack SEPA experienced in December 2020, data is not available on resourcing of digital waste tracking work prior to December 2020. It is therefore not possible to provide a complete and detailed expenditure figure regarding how much existing SEPA resource has worked on Digital Waste Tracking.
Since December 2020 SEPA has used existing staff resources to provide:
Additional funding was secured from the Scottish Government to employ a User Researcher in 2022 at a cost of approximately £80k. The focus of the above-noted posts was on supporting the establishment of the UK Digital Waste Tracking project, engaging with industry and SEPA teams to define user requirements for the system
Since March 2022, additional funding from the Scottish Government has supported the recruitment of two fixed-term Senior Policy Officers to work on the project at a cost in the region of £530k. They are supporting both the UK Digital Waste Tracking project, further refining the detail of SEPA’s operational requirements, and preparing for agency readiness.
Management oversight for the project has been provided from existing resources, taking on average no more than the equivalent of 1 day per week. Given the complexity of SEPA’s interaction with the UK project and requirement for a robust governance framework for SEPA’s Digital Waste Tracking implementation project, a Senior Project Manager has also been provided to support Digital Waste Tracking from existing SEPA staff resource since May 2024.