Chamber and committees

No. Funding under the Countryside Premium Scheme is allocated to those applications likely to deliver the greatest conservation benefit.

I understand that staff of the Controller of Audit's office have requested further information from the Council to assist their investigation and that they are currently unable to predict a probable reporting date.

29 deal with business processes such as modernising the Executive's procurement approach and piloting an important livestock support scheme to enable farmers to submit subsidy claims to the Department electronically; 27 are engaged in improving public services delivery, as in education services and the General Register for Scotland in connection with electronic access by the public to the indexes of certain records; eight are involved in the promotion and support of information and communication technologies (ICT), including policy work on business take-up and social inclusion. A further eight staff are engaged in activities which cut across these three areas, such as the work of the Digital Scotland team.

Scottish Ministers met with the e-envoy on 11 February and they discussed a range of issues relating to the knowledge economy including IT skills and training in the workforce. The Scottish Executive regards improving IT literacy as a priority and is taking this forward through a number of initiatives.

In fact, 41 Countryside Premium Scheme applications from Dumfries and Galloway were successful in the 1998 application round and 10 in 1999.

The target is for all pupils to have access to e-mail. At the last formal survey in October 1999, 1% of primary pupils and 7% of secondary pupils had their own, school provided, e-mail addresses. This represents an early stage in the development of the National Grid for Learning, particularly in primary schools, and we know that the situation is changing all the time. For example, since October 1999 Edinburgh has completed its network, giving 50,000 pupils and 3,000 teachers access to e-mail and Internet services.

The first live broadcast of a Parliamentary event on the Internet in the UK was by the Scottish Parliament on 1 July 1999, for the Opening Ceremony. This provided a 'proof of concept' that the Internet could be a broadcast medium for Parliamentary work, and also provide a diversity of visual and textual information at the same time. The service provided was more comprehensive than that at the Northern Ireland Assembly

Investigations are being carried out into the feasibility of broadcasting committee and plenary meetings on the Internet. This is particularly important for committee meetings since committee rooms have little space for the public.

The feasibility study concerns options for hosting the server for the Internet broadcasting, bandwidth to support demand for video streaming at the interim accommodation, and video player application software.

The tree felling and pruning work recently carried out along the A75 and A76 is in accordance with the Dumfries and Galloway Biodiversity Action Plan and the Scottish Executive documents Rural Road Management and the Environment and Cost Effective Landscape: Learning from Nature.

The Scottish Executive does not have powers to review the decision to grant planning permission.

The Executive has no such plans. The consideration being given to a Transport Authority for the Highlands and Islands reflects the potential for devolving central Government responsibilities for Caledonian MacBrayne and Highlands & Islands Airports Ltd to the local communities most affected by their activities.