- Asked by: Jim Mather, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 06 January 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 27 January 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive, in light of AxSys Technologies having been named as the successful bidder in NHS Scotland’s national generic clinical system procurement process, what milestones have been put in place to monitor progress against the planned overall implementation programme.
Answer
The first milestone is the delivery of standard GCS interfaces to the NHSScotland core integration products – i.e. SCI Store and SCI Gateway. Delivery of these interfaces is due for completion in early March 2006. Delivery of an appropriate training and support infrastructure is another major milestone for the programme, and the requirement will be informed by on-going work with the SCI-DC team. Planning work is on-going with the local projects involved in early implementation to agree milestones and delivery targets for their individual projects. The delivery of successful clinical systems in support of patient care is of course far wider than the development tools of choice, with development representing only a small proportion of the overall timescale.
- Asked by: Jim Mather, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 06 January 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 27 January 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive, in light of AxSys Technologies having been named as the successful bidder in NHS Scotland’s national generic clinical system procurement process, what other software suppliers were considered and what criteria were used to select AxSys Technologies.
Answer
The requirement was advertised in the
Official Journal of the European Union. From the initial responses to the advert, 12 companies were selected to respond to a detailed requirements document. Following an extensive evaluation process, the respondents were reduced initially to five and then to two. These two companies were then asked to respond to a tender following a process of contract negotiation with the winner selected largely on price.
The evaluation criteria included:
Experience of working in a broad clinical environment; availability of the toolset; technical merit of the proposed toolset and ease of use; ability to use the toolset in all types of clinical environment; value for money.
- Asked by: Jim Mather, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 06 January 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 27 January 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive, in light of AxSys Technologies having been named as the successful bidder in NHS Scotland’s national generic clinical system procurement process, what criteria will be used to monitor the development and implementation progress of the system.
Answer
There are two aspects to clinical systems delivery with the GCS toolset. The first is the on-going development of the toolset product itself, and its implementation within NHSScotland developer teams, or by third parties commissioned by NHSScotland, to enable clinical systems development. The second relates to the development of clinical applications with the toolset, and their subsequent implementation in the clinical environment. The contract is concerned with the first of these – i.e. the delivery, maintenance and continuous development of a robust and forward-looking toolset that keeps pace with technological advances and clinical requirements, and its successful implementation across NHSScotland. However, the usefulness of GCS-built clinical systems in the delivery of patient care will be the most powerful measure of toolset effectiveness, so benefits realisation measures will take both aspects into account. Criteria for measuring benefits realisation will therefore include the ease, flexibility and build-speed facilitated by the toolset during the development process, plus the clinical acceptability and level of usage of resultant systems.
The contract itself includes an enabling framework with AxSys for the development of applications although this is not an exclusive contract.
- Asked by: Jim Mather, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 06 January 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Andy Kerr on 27 January 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive, in light of Axsys Technologies having been named as the successful bidder in the NHS Scotland’s national generic clinical system procurement process, when the system planned will be installed and fully operational at both pilot and national roll-out levels
Answer
Use of the toolset by NHSScotland developers is currently being piloted by the SCI-DC (Scottish Care Information – Diabetes Collaboration) team based in the Clinical Technology Centre of Ninewells Hospital, Dundee. It is planned to develop the next version of the SCI-DC Clinical system, in support of diabetes hospital out-patient clinics, with the GCS toolset. A number of Early Adopter projects have also been identified for early development, in the clinical priority areas of cancer and mental health, and detailed requirements gathering is currently underway. Since the toolset will be used in a variety of settings and for different purposes, the timeline for individual developments will vary. However, it is planned that the GCS toolset will be made widely available to the service during the summer of 2006 – once training and skills prerequisites are established, and national guidelines for its optimal usage have been informed by the early work.
- Asked by: Jim Mather, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 16 January 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Tom McCabe on 27 January 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will liaise with HM Treasury to correct the figures for Enterprise and Employment, published in December 2005 in Government Expenditure and Revenues in Scotland 2003-04, given that in private correspondence, dated 23 August 2005, the Treasury indicated that there was a mistake in the classification of expenditure by Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise between the “Employment” and “Enterprise and Economic Development” categories in the Treasury’s public expenditure database and, if so, when it will publish corrected figures.
Answer
The Executive is working to establish the best functional classification for expenditure by the Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Any change in the classification will be reflected in Treasury’s Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses and therefore in Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland.
- Asked by: Jim Mather, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 13 January 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Nicol Stephen on 27 January 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will measure Scotland’s progress in innovation against the European Innovation Scoreboard and publish any such measurements.
Answer
The Scottish Executive uses a range of measures to monitor Scotland’s progress in innovation relative to our European comparators. The Community Innovation Survey (CIS) (
http://www.dti.gov.uk/iese/cis.htm) is the main innovation index for European comparisons and one which is monitored by the Executive. The CIS is also the main data source for the European Innovation Scoreboard.
Scotland’s performance relative to the European Innovation Scoreboard is published in recent Executive research (Scottish Innovation System: Actors, Roles and Actions) and is available via the following link http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/15689/9743.
- Asked by: Jim Mather, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 13 January 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Nicol Stephen on 27 January 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive where Scotland would rank were it included in the European Innovation Scoreboard 2005 and what the value and rank for Scotland would be for each of the European Innovation Scoreboard indicators.
Answer
The European Innovation Scoreboard 2005 was published on 13 January 2006. At this time we are not in a position to benchmark Scotland relative to the 2005 index, as the 2005 UK Community Innovation Survey results, which include results for Scotland, are not yet published.
A recent report by the Scottish Executive published 23 January 2006, Scottish Innovation System: Actors, Roles and Actions, benchmarks Scotland’s performance in innovation against other European regions. The report ranks Scotland’s innovation performance relative to the European Innovation Scorecard 2004 as follows:
Scotland is above average (top quartile) in terms of the overall regional innovation index, and again in terms of those indicators dominated by public investment decisions.
Scotland is below average (third quartile) in terms of the key measures of innovation outputs – the share of new-to-the-firm products in manufacturing.
Business research and development expenditure in Scotland is below average (third quartile).
Scotland has below average (third quartile) employment in medium or high-tech manufacturing although knowledge diffusion among Scottish manufacturing companies is still above average (second quartile).
Employment in high-tech services is above average (second quartile), while knowledge diffusion among Scottish service companies are below average (third quartile).
Full details of this benchmarking are available at the following web link:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/15689/9743.
- Asked by: Jim Mather, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 13 January 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Nicol Stephen on 27 January 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive what international comparators it uses when assessing the performance of Scotland in respect of innovation and research and development.
Answer
The Scottish Executive uses a wide range of measures to monitor Scotland’s innovation and research and development (R&D) performance against international comparators.
The key measure we use when assessing the performance of Scotland in respect to innovation, is the Community Innovation Survey (CIS). The CIS provides a range of indicators of innovative performance and allows comparisons to be made with other regions of the UK and European countries. Information on the CIS is available at the following link http://www.dti.gov.uk/iese/cis.htm.
The Scottish Executive also monitors research and development expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product in our key OECD competitors, to benchmark Scotland’s relative R&D performance. These data are published annually by the Executive in Business Enterprise Research and Development in Scotland. This can be accessed via the following web link:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/09/2991205/12064.
- Asked by: Jim Mather, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 16 January 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Tom McCabe on 27 January 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive, in light of the statement in Government Expenditure and Revenues in Scotland 2003-04 (GERS) that unidentifiable expenditure outside the United Kingdom was allocated to Scotland on the same basis as non-identifiable expenditure, in line with the principle that “expenditure outside the UK is non-identifiable from the perspective of the UK’s constituent countries, as the benefits are shared between them”, how much of the expenditure on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in 2003-04 was classified in HM Treasury’s public expenditure database as being outside the UK and, of this, what proportion the Executive allocated to Scotland in GERS; how much of the expenditure on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in 2003-04 was identifiable within the UK and, of this, what proportion was identifiable to Scotland, and whether the Executive considers the differences in proportions allocated to Scotland to be justifiable.
Answer
Expenditure on the Channel Tunnel Rail link in 2003-04 that is included in
Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses in identifiable expenditure outside the UK amounted to £166 million (43 per cent of all expenditure on the Channel Tunnel Rail link, corresponding to the share of foreign passengers using the service) and the estimate of the Scottish share of this is calculated using its population share.
£224 million (57 per cent of all expenditure on the Channel Tunnel Rail link) was identified within the UK and of this £1.2 million (0.3 per cent of all expenditure on the Channel Tunnel Rail link) was allocated to Scotland, based on information of passenger origin.
This methodology is used because expenditure outside the UK cannot be identified to any specific UK region and the estimated Scottish share of identifiable expenditure outside the UK is based on the assumption that the Scottish population benefits from the enhanced travel opportunities from outside the UK.
- Asked by: Jim Mather, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2006
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Current Status:
Answered by Tom McCabe on 27 January 2006
To ask the Scottish Executive what the (a) target and (b) average period of time is to process an application for a visa under the Fresh Talent Working in Scotland scheme and what the longest period of time taken to do so has been, expressed in weeks.
Answer
The Scottish Executive has no function in relation to the administration of the Fresh Talent: Working in Scotland Scheme. The Scottish Executive does not consider applications for the Fresh Talent: Working in Scotland scheme, although it can provide advice on the requirements. All applications are made to, and considered by, either UKvisas (for those applying from abroad) or the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (for those applying within Scotland). Processing times are a matter for them.
