Cost and duration of major IT projects: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/17/02947
Date received: 4 December 2017
Date responded: 4 January 2018

Information requested

The name, cost and duration of any major IT projects (total project value of over £100,000) undertaken by the Scottish Government or any of its arms-length organisations, NHS Scotland or its individual Boards, the Scottish Prison Service, Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service that began after 2011.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have all of the information you have requested. The Scottish Government does not currently hold any information on Scottish Fire and Rescue Service IT projects. Information on NHS Scotland IT projects is not held centrally as it is the responsibility of each of the 21 Health Boards (14 Territorial NHS Boards and seven Special NHS Boards) and the one public health body (Healthcare Improvement Scotland) to fund and manage their own IT projects.

You may wish to contact the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and NHS Scotland (and its Boards) direct to request information on their major IT projects.

Whilst the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) does not hold a central register with the type of information requested, it does administer the Technology Assurance Framework which supports senior responsible owners and accountable officers across the Central Government sector, excluding NHS bodies, in assuring the delivery of projects and programmes involving an investment in technology. This framework includes a register of projects, introduced in 2012, which lists the estimated whole life costs of a particular project. It does not monitor actual financial expenditure of all such projects as it is intended as a vehicle for identifying major programmes and enabling predominantly technical and process assessments of their progress, rather than as a central spend control mechanism.

The nature of this register means that some estimates will include projected costs that are not related directly to the IT delivery element of the project. It should also be noted that the Register is updated regularly through a process of engagement between the OCIO and participating organisations and that therefore the nature of the information held will change over time.

I have attached the project information, in ranges of whole life cost, in Annexes A, B and C as follows:

Annex A – Projects with whole life cost below £1 million
Annex B – Projects with whole life cost above £1 million but below £5 million
Annex C – Projects with whole life cost of £5 million or more

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses

FOI-17-02947 - Annex A- Projects with whole life cost below 1 million .pdf

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11 page PDF

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