HR, finance and purchasing system replacement: equality impact assessment

Key Findings

Overview of key evidence gathered and analysed

All Equality Groups: There are issues with the collection of diversity data. There are a number of technical limitations have contributed to these issues. For example, radio buttons were not possible to enable multi-select so drop down menus had to be used. There were also character limits for both questions and answers. This meant that almost all the existing questions had to be modified. The new formatting of questions may result in a negative experience for many staff completing the data.

1. Disability: Disabled staff make up 14.7% of the Scottish Government workforce. Accessibility to current IT systems is patchy with no accessibility to some systems for some users of Assistive Technology. Information on the accessibility of the current systems is limited. An initial ‘lite audit’ of the ’demo’ system in 2022, before any configuration for SG, found areas that are non-compliant with WCAG 2.1. The Accessibility Workstream in Shared Services audited and tested a number of priority HR, Finance and Procurement journeys on the Dev 13 environment. This showed partial compliance with WCAG 2.1 before remedies are applied. Accessibility was covered in the procurement exercise through the Crown Commercial Services built-in Equalities Act 2010 compliance measure. As part of the reset, a User Experience workstream was added to the Shared Services programme in January 2023. Accessibility capabilities were embedded in the programme from late 2023 and an extensive programme of work around accessibility took place from this point through the Accessibility Workstream. As a result of this work, guidance and masterclasses for Assistive technology were put in place to support users to navigate and use the system.

2. Gender reassignment: The mandatory collection of ‘Legal sex’ data, for the purposes of taxation and pensions, will still be feature of the new system. We will use various tools available to us (including preferred name, gender neutral titles, and the ability to change the name of fields and sections within the system) to create the best experience for all. Oracle Cloud will be the master people data system in the Scottish Government, with the intention of using it as a ‘change once’ solution, once all integrations are enabled. It may take some time to fine tune the application, to work for all, and create the end to end experience we want for all colleagues.