Transport Scotland financial accounting and legacy business applications: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/18/01608
Date received: 8 June 2018
Date responded: 27 June 2018

Information requested

Information concerning types of accounting software and applications used by Transport Scotland.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Transport Scotland does not hold some of the information you have requested. Turning to your request in detail, I ask you to note the following:

Q1. What financial accounting software do you use?

A1. Transport Scotland uses the Scottish Government's accounting system; the accounting software used is Oracle e-Financials running on an Oracle e-Business Suite platform.

Q2. Who supplies your financial accounting software (name of vendor or supplier)?

A2. Oracle Corporation UK Limited through the auspices of the Scottish Government.

Q3. What was the original date of purchase or contact start date for your accounting software?

A3. The Scottish Government has been using Oracle accounting software since 2001.

Q4. When is the contact renewal or expiry date for your accounting software?

A4. The Scottish Government has perpetual user licences. The contract for software support will expire on 31 March 2019.

Q5. If relevant, what is the cost of annual support and maintenance (last financial year April 2016- March 2017) for your accounting software?

A5. The cost of support and maintenance for the Oracle accounting software was met by Scottish Government on behalf of itself and the other public sector bodies that share its financial accounting system i.e. including Transport Scotland. The cost for the year to 31 March 2017 was £594,560 excluding VAT.

Q6. Is Your IT in-house or outsourced, if outsourced, who is it outsourced to, and when is this contract up for renewal?

A6. Transport Scotland receives a managed ICT service from the Scottish Government. SCOTS Connect is the name used to describe the suite of products and services provided through this service. The Scottish Government provides a common hardware and applications infrastructure including administration, support, maintenance and security of the services provided.

Q7. Could you confirm if your organisation has any applications (computer systems) running on the Fujitsu (formerly ICL) VME operating system?

A7. Transport Scotland do not have any applications that utilise that operating system.

Q8. If so, please list the names of these applications and their main role within your organisation?

A8. N/A

Q9. Please also confirm if you have applications;

Qa. Operating on any other legacy platform such as OpenVME, IBM iSeries or written in legacy code such as Powerbuilder, COBOL etc. ?

Aa. Transport Scotland do not have any applications of that nature.

Qb. Any operating system considered expensive or (technically) challenging to enabling digital transformation?

Ab. Transport Scotland do not use any operating system that we consider falls in that category.

Qc. That are critical to the business but are at risk due to the scarcity of ageing support personnel or limited documentation?

Ac. Transport Scotland do not use any operating system that falls in that category.

Q10. Please confirm if these applications have been developed in-house i.e. they are bespoke to your organisation and that you own the source code.

A10. N/A

About FOI

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