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Scottish Ministers greatly value the selfless work carried out by all of the Scottish volunteer mountain rescue teams, who stand ready to help those in need of assistance, often in dangerous conditions, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. In recognition of that, the Scottish Government continues to provide annual grant funding via Scottish Mountain Rescue (SMR), to help all of the civilian mountain rescue teams, in Scotland, to carry out their essential work.

The annual grant funding provided helps maintain the individual volunteer teams, as well as their dogs, bases, vehicles and equipment, so that they are more sustainable going forward and available to Police Scotland whenever they are called upon. In 2022-23, despite the challenging fiscal context, the Scottish Government increased the amount of grant provided to SMR, to distribute to the teams, from £312,000 to £330,000 – an increase of around 5.8%. Grant funding for 2023/24 is scheduled to be paid before the end of June.

The Scottish Government is also responsive to important emerging needs and helps out SMR, financially and otherwise, whenever possible; in the 2021/22 financial year, for example, SG provided £70,000 towards replacement specialist stretchers and casualty bags. And from 2016-2019, collectively with other partners, raised over £1 million towards new VHF radio communication equipment, and assisted with advice on its procurement, towards a successful contract award.

In addition, the Scottish Government contributes funding to NHS Lothian’s Rivers Centre for Traumatic Stress, to deliver the Lifelines Scotland programme, which supports the mental health and wellbeing of volunteer emergency responders in Scotland, including mountain rescue volunteers. Scottish Government officials also work collaboratively with Police Scotland, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, and Scottish Mountain Rescue to help resolve any issues around search and rescue which arise from time to time.

The action was carried out and completed as part of the first 100 Days of the AI Strategy.

As reported in the 2021-22 State of AI Report we shared the following –

Capability Directory

The Scottish AI Alliance connected with ScotlandIS regarding their existing Data Capabilities Directory back during the First 100 Days. The Directory was recently refreshed. Another update took place in Autumn and the Support Circle team worked with the ScotlandIS team to ensure that AI capabilities are incorporated sufficiently into the directory. The Directory was also actively promoted by the Scottish AI Alliance to the AI community across Scotland and has been added to the Scotland’s AI Strategy website as a resource. Investigations of future format of the directory have started and there is potential for it to be incorporated in a larger piece of work in collaboration with the Scottish Tech Ecosystem Review (STER) and Digital Strategy teams at Scottish Government.

We will continue to monitor and contribute to this work as required.

Scottish Enterprise are in the process of commissioning a landscape review of AI businesses in Scotland. The database gathered by the review will be incorporated into the Scottish AI Playbook in due course. The review is currently being finalised and will be released in the coming weeks.

Following a fair and open recruitment exercise three successful candidates were selected by the DML recruitment panel. Two candidates subsequently withdrew their interest and pre-appointment checks are being completed for the remaining candidate.

A new recruitment exercise will be announced shortly to fill the remaining non-executive Director position on the Board.

The Community Bus fund will support local transport authorities to improve local public transport in their areas. The Scottish Government continues to work with ATCO and COSLA in developing the Community Bus Fund. The 2023-24 budget allocates £0.75 million in resource, and £5 million in capital for the fund.

The Scottish AI Playbook is a “one stop shop” for anyone in Scotland embarking on a journey involving AI whether it’s learning, using, developing, deploying or just exploring. It is a shared and living asset, embodying Scotland’s AI Strategy ethos of openness, transparency and collaboration. With this in mind, the Scottish Government has focused on the development of meaningful partnerships within the Playbook to support and demonstrate wider impact.

To date, the Playbook has established partnerships with CyberScotland, Fintech Scotland, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Jisc National Centre for AI in Tertiary Education and Scotland’s Futures Forum. A further five partnerships are currently in the development phase.

Further collaborative opportunities are in development, namely through the creation of Playbook hubs. The first of these hubs currently in development is focused on Data and AI in the Healthcare space. As part of the development of this hub, a quantitative approach to measuring impact will be initiated, through namely through Google Analytics integration into the Scottish AI Playbook MediaWiki platform.

The Scottish Government also understands that impact can be both felt and measured qualitatively, in the feedback and experiences of Playbook users. With this in mind, the next phase of Playbook development also includes a period of user consultation and feedback in order to measure experiential impact. This will be subject to resourcing and budgetary considerations, as it is recognised that measuring impact in this way, while highly valuable and beneficial, is resource intensive.

While the impact of the Scottish AI Playbook either is or will be measured in several different ways, it is noted that an overarching approach to impact and impact measurement is currently in development by the Scottish AI Alliance. Once this impact measurement approach and associated framework is in hand, it is likely to have an effect on the way in which the impact of the Scottish AI Playbook is measured.

The Scottish AI Alliance is a partnership between The Data Lab and the Scottish Government and is led by a Minister-appointed Chair and overseen by Senior Responsible Officers from The Data Lab (CEO) and the Scottish Government (CDO).

The team consists of 4 Scottish Government Civil Servants and five individuals who are based at the Data Lab, Scotland’s innovation centre for data and AI, which is administratively hosted by the University of Edinburgh.

An annual grant is paid to the University to cover the cost of staffing and activities carried out by the Data Lab team, including the delivery of the annual Scottish AI Summit, – the cost of this is as follows –

2021-22 - £265,000.00 – Grant awarded via Scottish Funding Council

2022-23 - £505,593.15 – Grant awarded directly by Scottish Government Digital Directorate

This is therefore all public funding and there is no private funding of the Alliance.

While entries have been increasing, rising from 88 in 2017-18 to 172 in 2022-23, no specific targets have been set for the uptake of this qualification.

The National Progression Award (NPA) in Rural Skills is one of a wide range of qualifications related to the land-based sector. Skills for Work and other National Certificate courses in related areas are also available.

With the support of Skills Development Scotland (SDS), the Scottish Government funds a pre-apprenticeship programme through Ringlink Scotland - providing work experience linked to jobs in the local economy particularly relevant in rural areas.

The Commission for the Land-based Learning Review published its report in January 2023 including 22 recommendations on how to improve learning pathways to equip more people with the skills and knowledge needed to work in Scotland’s land-based and aquaculture sectors. Scottish Government is currently considering its response.

The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) has confirmed that they are not aware of any reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete within the SPS estate.

Following a recent review of its estate, Police Scotland identified reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) in three of its buildings.

Police Scotland took immediate action to ensure that there was no risk to officers, staff or the public, and continues to work with structural engineers to identify longer term solutions for these buildings.

We are investing £1.45bn in policing in 2023-24. No additional funding has specifically been provided to Police Scotland for this issue.

The Scottish Government and COSLA agreed a joint funding model in 2018 to support the training of new Educational Psychologists. This model was agreed and developed by the National Scottish Steering Group for Educational Psychologists (NSSGEP). The NSSGEP is chaired by the Scottish Government and includes representation from professional bodies, ADES, COSLA and EIS.

The training programme is evaluated by Dundee University in several ways. A six-yearly cycle of periodic programme review is undertaken and was last completed in September 2021. This review concluded with a very positive evaluation of the training programme. The British Psychological Society re-accredits the programme every three years, and provided a positive evaluation in September 2021. The University also conducts an annual programme evaluation to ensure the training programme is meeting the needs of students and to make small improvements as required.

The Scottish Government and COSLA engage and work closely with our training and delivery partners to ensure that the training programme remains robust and sustainable.