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.
Criathragan Hide all filters
Displaying 3298 contributions
|
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you, Auditor General. We want to put several questions to you and your team, based on our reading of the report and the wider context in which it sits, part of which touches on our concern that ICT projects are not necessarily delivered on time and on budget, as you mentioned in your opening statement.
The section 22 report mentions almost as a passing reference that the census is one of the biggest ICT projects in Scotland. Could you tell us a bit more about the shape that the project takes? Is it an in-house ICT project or a new capital project, or are you just talking about the operational side of it?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
We may well have the accountable officer from NRS at a future evidence session. This question may fall into the same category, but do you or your team have a view about the implications of any further delay to the census? It is planned for March 2022, but we could speculate about reasons why it might not go ahead.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
I want to pick up on that last point. Over the past couple of days, I have been looking at the ONS’s summary of how things went in the March 2021 census. The document, which was published in October, says under “Main points”:
“Census 2021 exceeded expectations, with 97% of households across England and Wales taking part”.
The document also says:
“Use of cloud architecture allowed us to scale up to meet the very high demand experienced on Census Day”.
It was the first digital-first census to be held in England and Wales. The ONS says that the system did not crash, even though
“we were receiving just under half a million census submissions per hour at the peak.”
It also says:
“The success of the Census 2021 digital service shows that large government digital services can be securely delivered in-house using cloud architecture and Agile development.”
Do you have any reflections on that?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
I apologise to Graeme Samson. We are not sure whether the problem is at our end or at his, but we cannot hear him.
The Auditor General’s undertaking to provide us with written evidence, which I suspect Mr Samson might be asked to write, is useful. I apologise to Mr Samson for being unable to hear him.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
Thank you very much.
I thank Graeme Samson—I am sorry that we were unable to hear you—Asif Haseeb and Dharshi Santhakumaran for joining us online. We very much appreciate your time and contributions this morning. I also thank, as always, the Auditor General, who joined us in person.
10:13 Meeting continued in private until 11:35.Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
I think that you also said that, because of the need to recover the census exercise, management consultants were brought in. I do not know whether it is cause or effect, but a decision was also taken around that time to widen the membership of the census programme board to include the ONS and NISRA, which oversees the census in Northern Ireland. Were they not already on the programme board?
Public Audit Committee
Decision on Taking Business in Private
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
Good morning, and welcome to the 11th meeting of the Public Audit Committee in this session. Before we begin, I remind people about the Parliament’s rules on social distancing and advise everyone that, if they are moving around, exiting or entering the room, they should wear a face covering.
The first item on our agenda is a decision on taking items 3 and 4 in private. Do members agree to take those items in private?
Members indicated agreement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
The second item on our agenda is consideration of an Audit Scotland section 22 report on the National Records of Scotland. We have a number of witnesses with us this morning. First of all, I welcome the Auditor General for Scotland, Stephen Boyle, who joins us in the committee room. Also from Audit Scotland, we are joined remotely by Graeme Samson, senior auditor, Asif Haseeb, senior manager, audit services, and Dharshi Santhakumaran, correspondence manager, performance audit and best value. You are all very welcome.
The Auditor General usually invites his colleagues in at the appropriate juncture. However, if any of you want to come in but have not been spotted, please put an R in the chat room function. I also extend that invitation to Willie Coffey, who also joins us remotely. I will bring him in as we go through the meeting.
Before we move to questions, I invite the Auditor General to make an opening statement.
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
However, the audit report from 2018-19 refers to a census recovery plan, and that was two or three years before the expected date for carrying out the census. Is it not fair to say that there were underlying problems, even before the pandemic struck?
Public Audit Committee
Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of National Records of Scotland”
Meeting date: 9 December 2021
Richard Leonard
That is helpful. I will move on. We will return to some of the themes of staffing and support, and some of the implications of the delay.
The delay has meant that data will be delayed in reaching public sector planners—the people responsible for delivering services. The census is in no small measure designed to inform decision making about those services. Have you assessed the impact of the delay on the planning decisions that public authorities will need to make?
