Question reference: S6W-02498
- Asked by: Donald Cameron, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 25 August 2021 Registered interest
-
Current status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 10 September 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of the costs associated with establishing ScotMoves+.
Answer
ScotMoves+ is a software module added to the current ScotMoves system which has been used by cattle keepers since 2017 to record cattle movements within their business. ScotMoves+ will provide functionality to record calf registrations, deaths at abattoirs and on-farm, and business-to-business moves within the multi-species ScotEID livestock relational database.
The estimated costs for development, release, support and management of the ScotMoves+ system is approximately 12% of total ScotEID operational and support systems costs for 2021-2022, equating to £136k. The development of ScotMoves+ during 2019-2021 is estimated to be an additional 5% of total ScotEID operational and support systems costs for those years, equating to £89k, with a total cost over 3 years of £225k.
There are also costs for producing and distributing paper passports, these are estimated to be £479k annually - equating to £0.83p per cattle passport. These costs will be fully realised as work progresses across GB when England and Wales disaggregate from the Cattle Tracing System (CTS) and they make the transition to their new systems. Passports are currently undertaken by the Rural Payments Agency who operate CTS.