Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government remains committed to introducing a high quality and clinically safe thrombectomy service in Scotland. The thrombectomy service at NHS Lothian continues to complete cases, with 55 thrombectomies completed there as of 1 January 2023.

Work is ongoing to establish the most effective means of further expanding the national thrombectomy service and the appropriate timescales to achieve this, including at NHS Lothian. This includes seeking input from National Services Scotland, to ensure that regional plans are cohesive and maximise access to thrombectomy procedures nationwide.

The Scottish Government conducts audits of Health Boards considered to be operators of essential services to obtain compliance assurance. From October 2021 – December 2022 we have spent £220,498. The Scottish Government has entered a new agreement for the delivery of audits, with up to £900,000 reserved for a third party to conduct audits over the next six years.

In addition, the Scottish Government has established the Cyber Centre of Excellence to enhance its response to security threats. For 2021-2022 the total spend was £420,000.

The Scottish Government Cyber Resilience Unit hosts regular Public Sector Cyber Resilience Network webinars bringing together more than 150 information/cyber security experts from across the sector to raise awareness of the latest threats, share good practice and ensure that lessons are learned from incidents and exercises.

Specifically for the health sector, the Cyber Centre of Excellence (CCoE) has been established. The CCoE will empower continuous improvements by focusing on key enablement pillars including Centralised Security, 24/7 Monitoring, Threat Hunting, Incident Response and Training & Awareness. It is complimented by the Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre (SC3) which will be a key partner to the CCoE, enhancing our national incident response capacity and capabilities.

In 2019, Scotland undertook its first digital maturity assessment across health and social care which helped to identify key priorities. A second national digital maturity exercise will be undertaken in 2023 and will provide current picture of digital maturity. This will support us to develop our “What good looks like” model, identify resources required to support organisational development, and conduct further reviews and prioritisation.

One of the key areas identified for improvement through the previous Digital Maturity exercise was to improve access to digital channels for members of the public. Key scale up programmes such as Near Me and Digital for Mental Health have further supported this, whilst other national programmes are now underway such as the Digital Front Door which will build on this further.

This work is ongoing and is set within the context of the wider financial settlement.

This is a medium term commitment in the Women’s Health Plan, due for delivery by September 2024 at the latest. We are on track to meet this delivery date. An expert working group has been established and we are in the process of gathering evidence to inform the policy.

The Scottish Government has today launched a survey seeking views from the culture sector on the development of an International Culture Strategy. Scotland’s culture sector has an extensive international presence and a strong reputation. However, this is undoubtedly a challenging time and this strategy must seek to support the resilience and long term development of the sector through enhancing and developing its international links. The survey will be open for
‎ 3 months and in parallel to it we plan to undertake a number of focussed conversations with stakeholders to explore emerging themes in more detail. It will be essential for this work to draw strongly on the knowledge, expertise and lived experience of cultural organisations and practitioners, and I would encourage engagement to the greatest extent possible.

There was minimal impact, and no disruption to any of VisitScotland's services as a result of the Public and Commercial Services Union industrial action, on 1 February 2023.

Digital Health and Care provides funding to DHI which in turn supports enterprises of assorted sizes to develop ideas and solutions that can be applied in health and care settings. We support DHI with their industry leadership group which meets with medium sized organisations for input and feedback.

The Scottish Government held several roundtable meetings to bring together partners including representatives from the major events sector to discuss the prevalence of spiking and a range of initiatives and information available on spiking, which they are adopting.

With concerts, festivals and other events resuming following the pandemic, Police Scotland have been working with partners to identify appropriate vehicles for the delivery of the key messaging. For example, as an interim measure and in advance of the Harry Styles concert at Ibrox Stadium, Glasgow on 11 June 2022, an overview of ByStander theory was provided to the event organiser for inclusion in Steward’s briefings, in lieu of being able to facilitate a full ByStander awareness session. Feedback from this approach was very positive and Police Scotland rolled this out nationally for Event Policing Leads in advance of a number of events scheduled over the summer 2022 period.

We have also worked with members of the roundtable to bring together the range of initiatives and key messaging on safer.scot to reassure the public that there is a coordinated response to the dangers of spiking, in whatever form it might take.