Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government’s Agriculture and Rural Economy (ARE) Directorate relies on several IT systems, integrations and infrastructure to conduct its business with appropriate cyber security and supporting applications to protect and operate these systems and infrastructure effectively.

In addition to rural payment systems, we maintain and rely on a number of other IT systems such as the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS), Estate Management Database (EMA), Drawing Office, Plant Health, Livestock Inspection System (LIS). These systems collectively assure eligibility for payments, support of inspections, responding to legislative requirements and supporting corporate systems.

ARE IT/Digital services and the data within them support a range of other government departments, functions and agencies including NatureScot, Forestry, Estates Management, Plant Health and Livestock Inspections meaning our IT/Digital services support a wider range of stakeholders.

The IT costs are those costs (not including the Scottish Government’s employees) required to operate and maintain the reliability and resilience of rural payments and are made up of many aspects such as recurring maintenance charges for software and hardware, licence charges, major upgrades in infrastructure that are needed from time to time, and charges under the Maintenance and Modernisation service contracts which includes the cost of service providers. It is also essential that we continue to make proportionate investment in our cyber capabilities to protect these systems and customers’ data. There is an on-going programme of modernising or decommissioning of older IT systems to reduce costs and obtain the efficiencies possible from more modern technology. The costs do not include those associated with the design and development of completely new services.

Many of these IT systems also rely on the Scottish Government’s Shared IT infrastructure and services that are maintained as a common service to deliver economies of scale. These costs are not included in the following table.

Due to sharing of common services and the integration of IT systems, it is not possible to separately identify the cost elements that relate specifically to rural payments systems from the overall cost for all systems.