Chamber and committees

The Scottish Executive has in place two licensing agreementswith Microsoft which provide significant levels of discount on published list pricesfor Microsoft software.

 We havea Select Agreement which offers participating organisations volume discount on Microsoftlist prices for their software licences. In addition, we have signed, in February2003, a three-year Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft which entitles us to receiveall upgrades for a defined list of software products (mainly MS Office) issued inthe agreement period. The terms of both agreements were negotiated by the Officeof Government Commerce on behalf of all government departments.

Expenditureon Microsoft software licenses in each of the past three financial years has been:

Year	2000-01	2001-02	2002-03
Select Licences	£191,368	£428,812	£489,956
Enterprise Agreement	-	-	£911,518
Total	£191,368	£428,812	£1,401,474

 

The figuresnoted include Value Added Tax at 17.5% and reflect the discounts the Scottish Executive receives from the licensing agreements.The costs in 2000-01 and 2001-02 do not include any elements of technology refreshupgrades.

Permitted development rights(PDRs) grant planning permission across Scotland for various classes of minor development. Where PDRsapply to the erection of agricultural buildings, there is a restriction on thesize of the building and a prior approval procedure exists. This provides anopportunity for the planning authority to examine the siting, design andexternal appearance of the proposed building and to seek amendments ifnecessary or to refuse to allow a development to go ahead.

We are satisfied that thereare sufficient safeguards in place to guard against inappropriate developmentand we have no plans at present to alter the existing arrangements.

Guidance on the use of opensource software by UK public bodies, including the devolved administrations, isset out in a policy statement, “Open Source Software, Use Within UKGovernment”, published by the Office of the e-Envoy on 15 July 2002. In supportof this policy, the Office of Government Commerce published a booklet “Guidanceon implementing Open Source Software” in September 2002. The Executive has notissued separate guidance.

The Scottish Executive’s use of proprietary and non-proprietary software conforms to the UK Government’s policy which is described in Open Source Software – Use Within UK Government, which was published by the Office of the e-Envoy in July2002. The Scottish Executive has not issued additional guidance to Scottishpublic sector organisations although open standards generally are promotedthrough the Information Age Government Framework.

The SPCB has spent approximately£449,000 on current Microsoft Software Licences. This includes licences for desktopsoftware such as Microsoft Office and XP, as well as server operating systems, databasesand email systems.

School pupils studying National Qualification courses in computing or in information systems will learn about the various sources for software. At Higher level and above the teaching of software development and programming places considerable emphasis on modularity and re-usability, providing opportunities for teachers to make reference to the principles of an open source approach.

The industrial sites included in the pollution emissions register recently published by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) are already tightly regulated by SEPA. All sites are regulated under the Pollution Prevention and Control (Scotland) Regulations 2000 and the requirements of that regime mean that installations will have demonstrated, or will need to demonstrate, that they are using the best available techniques to prevent or minimise pollution.The Scottish Executive will encourage SEPA to develop the pollution emission register as quickly as practicable and in particular to improve the online search facilities and expand the scope of the information included. Improving public access to environmental information will highlight the progress of measures being taken to reduce industrial pollution in Scotland. The answer given to question S1W-33969 on 13 February 2003 sets out how SEPA plans to develop its online register. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/search_wa.