Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
The Official Report search offers lots of different ways to find the information you’re looking for. The search is used as a professional tool by researchers and third-party organisations. It is also used by members of the public who may have less parliamentary awareness. This means it needs to provide the ability to run complex searches, and the ability to browse reports or perform a simple keyword search.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
Depending on the kind of search you want to do, one of these views will be the best option. The default view is to show the report for each meeting of Parliament or a committee. For a simple keyword search, the results will be shown by item of business.
Search by MSP
When you choose to search by a particular MSP, the results returned will show each spoken contribution in Parliament or a committee, ordered by date with the most recent contributions first. This will usually return a lot of results, but you can refine your search by keyword, date and/or by meeting (committee or Chamber business).
We’ve chosen to display the entirety of each MSP’s contribution in the search results. This is intended to reduce the number of times that users need to click into an actual report to get the information that they’re looking for, but in some cases it can lead to very short contributions (“Yes.”) or very long ones (Ministerial statements, for example.) We’ll keep this under review and get feedback from users on whether this approach best meets their needs.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
If you select an MSP’s name from the dropdown menu, and add a phrase in quotation marks to the keyword field, then the search will return only examples of when the MSP said those exact words. You can further refine this search by adding a date range or selecting a particular committee or Meeting of the Parliament.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
There are two ways of searching by date.
You can either use the Start date and End date options to run a search across a particular date range. For example, you may know that a particular subject was discussed at some point in the last few weeks and choose a date range to reflect that.
Alternatively, you can use one of the pre-defined date ranges under “Select a time period”. These are:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
If you search by an individual session, the list of MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs and committees will update to show the information that was current at that time.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
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Displaying 2443 contributions
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Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects (Accountability and Governance)
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Colin Beattie
In view of the time, I will pass back to the convener.
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects (Accountability and Governance)
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Colin Beattie
I will build on what the convener has been talking about. Over the past 11 years on the committee, I have seen a whole progression of ICT projects that have failed, or that have failed to deliver what was expected. In some cases, they were abandoned.
We have had responsible officers and accountable officers in front of us. We have heard assurances that there was an acceptance that accountable officers did not necessarily have the skills to manage those projects, and that, within the organisations, there was a lack of end-user understanding of how to interface with the technical experts who were building the programme. Again and again, that has created unwarranted optimism, followed by dismay, when what is delivered does not comply with what was sought.
Over a period of years, the response was for layers of management to be thrown in centrally. At one point, it was bewildering to try and understand which layer did what. I am assuming from what you are saying that that has now resolved itself somewhat, but I do not understand where the change is. We still have the accountable officers being accountable for the projects. The idea was that a central capacity would be created to provide those officers with support to help them identify providers and to help them, as end-users, to gain the skills that were necessary to ensure that the projects delivered what they were supposed to deliver.
We received all those assurances, but I am not clear from what you are saying whether they have actually been delivered. I would be interested to get a little more information on that.
Public Audit Committee
“Drug and alcohol services: An update”
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Colin Beattie
We certainly hope that the situation will look a bit better.
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects (Accountability and Governance)
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Colin Beattie
If we look back at previous ICT projects that have failed, we can see that it is almost invariably the case that those are projects in which an NDPB has been involved. That has been the picture historically. How do you provide NDPBs with support? How do you ensure that they do not just go off on their own and create rubbish, which, in some cases, has happened in the past?
Public Audit Committee
“Drug and alcohol services: An update”
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Colin Beattie
Before Antony comes in, I want to put another question to you. Given the complexity and diversity of the stakeholders that are involved, is it inevitable that funding will be fragmented? How could that situation be improved? It is not good that funding arrangements are “complex and fragmented” when you are trying to put together a strategy. Does the system have to change?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects (Accountability and Governance)
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Colin Beattie
Earlier, you said that you were expecting technical expertise to reside within the different areas, and the accountable officer would be able to access that expertise internally within his area.
Again and again, what has come to light is that there is not enough technical expertise in the market—there is a huge shortage. Scotland is not alone in that regard. The last estimate that I saw, which was several years ago, was a shortage of 300,000 of such people across Europe. That is a big number and those who are available are demanding salaries that are way above the normal scales. At one point, they were being paid off scale to try to get them in.
Is it realistic to expect that each area will be able to recruit, at some considerable expense, that sort of skill to enable them to build a system? Would it not make more sense for the skills to be available centrally to give that support in a rather more cohesive way?
Public Audit Committee
“Drug and alcohol services: An update”
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Colin Beattie
I will move on to a slightly different topic. I am sorry—Jillian, do you want to come in?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects (Accountability and Governance)
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Colin Beattie
Although the NHS and Police Scotland have their own digital people, they have still had IT projects that failed because they did not have the skills to manage the contract. Even contract negotiation has been an issue in some cases. How are we providing them with support in such things? From what I understand from what has been said, the individual accountable officers within the areas in which those projects fall would still have the final say in how the project is managed. Do you have the authority to overrule them if you feel that they are going adrift?
Public Audit Committee
Major Information and Communications Technology Projects (Accountability and Governance)
Meeting date: 31 March 2022
Colin Beattie
Most of the projects that we have seen fail have failed not because they were delivering something that the public did not want but because they eventually delivered something that the department or division concerned did not expect, and it was a case of a difference of interpretation between the end users and the techies building the system. It is vital that there is an understanding between the two, yet, again and again, what is being delivered is less than or different from what was expected and unable to be used for one reason or another. Given all that, I would have expected stronger central support.
You have talked about contracts, but surely each individual accountable officer does not have to be trained in the intricacies of a contract to build new software. Is that not the sort of thing that could be centralised, with experts going through contracts and ensuring that all the safeguards are in place? We have seen systems built that had no safeguards at all—there were no penalties on delivery and all sorts of basic things. Is that not the sort of thing that could be usefully and helpfully centralised?
Economy and Fair Work Committee
Town Centres and Retail
Meeting date: 30 March 2022
Colin Beattie
My second question was whether you could point to any successful examples elsewhere, particularly south of the border or in Europe.
