Digital publishing, digital identification and payments: FOI release

The answer to your question is:

Digital Publishing
1. How much has been spend in total in developing the platform so far (both internally and externally) and over what time period?

The Digital Publishing Platform is being developed as part of the wider Digital Publishing Programme, which aims to standardise the way that Scottish Government and Scottish public sector content is published online. The programme includes the creation of the Digital Publishing Platform.

The development commenced in July 2019.

The annual capital spend of the programme is £279,176. (Inc. Vat)

The total staff cost for the development and implementation of the platform year to date is £470k. (Inc.VAT)

2. Please provide the artefacts that have been developed during this process (user stories, enterprise architecture diagrams and so forth)

The Digital Publishing Platform is at an early stage of development; the source code for the alpha version of the Platform can be found in a Digital Publishing Platform code repository.

The pattern library is scheduled for publication in early 2020.

As the Digital Publishing Platform is still in development, there are limited artefacts which are available to be shared. A list of user requirements were gathered as part of the procurement for a content management system, which can be found attached.

3. Which organisations are using or planning to use the platform?

The Digital Publishing platform is a key element of Scottish Government's approach of providing information from across the public sector in a way that meets user needs. The Platform is currently only being used to publish the ‘A Trading Nation’ website as part of a Scottish Government pilot project. Source code for this project can be found in the code repository.

Further websites will be migrated to the Digital Publishing Platform in 2020.

Payments
1. How much has been spend in total in developing the platform so far (both internally and externally) and over what time period?

The project was initiated on 1 September 2018. Total spend from 1 September 2018 to end FY2018/19 was £335,541 (inc. VAT). This includes the costs of the software development in the prototyping phase and costs of both internal and external contractors in the team at that time.

Year to date spend for 2019/20 is £464,975 (inc. VAT). Again, this includes the costs of software development for this phase as well costs of internal staff time spent on the development.

2. Please provide the artefacts that have been developed during this process (user stories, enterprise architecture diagrams and so forth)

We have attached information that has previously been made publicly available. This includes: Alpha ITT Specification

• Alpha ITT Technical response template
• Alpha bidder day presentation (19 June 2019)
• Alpha bidder day questions and answers (19 June 2019)

3. Which organisations are using or planning to use the platform?

Digital Identification
1. How much has been spend in total in developing the platform so far (both internally and externally) and over what time period?

The Programme was initiated in November 2017. Total spend from 01 November 2017 to end FY 2017/18 was £222,750, comprising:

• £180,000 (inc. VAT) for Discovery partners (including user research/service design and technical discovery research)
• £72,750 for internal staff costs.

Total spend for FY 2018/19 was £490,972, comprising:

• £234,000 (incl. VAT) for Alpha partners (including Technical Proof of Concept and Standards workstreams, production of Outline Business Case and Independent Expert Review)
• £295,972 for staff costs, including external contractors

Year to date spend for FY 2019/20 is £517,983, comprising internal staff costs and external contractors.

2. Please provide the artefacts that have been developed during this process (user stories, enterprise architecture diagrams and so forth).

DIS follow the principles of open government and publish as much as possible through our blog, excepting that which place the programme at commercial or security risk, including technical architecture and some other artefacts.

During 2018, we conducted a Discovery process with user research undertaken in conjunction with We Are Snook. The Discovery sought to identify and understand the range of users’ views on online identity, as well as a review of the technical landscape by ASE and Consult Hyperion. The key outputs of this phase were the service design report and technical research outputs - these and other relevant documents were published as Board Papers.

During this phase, a National Stakeholder Group and Expert Group, as well as the Programme Board, were established to ensure the programme was fulfilling its Programme for Government commitment to work with stakeholders, privacy interests and members of the public. These groups continue to meet regularly to advise the programme.

The Programme was formally renamed Digital Identity Scotland (from Online Identity Assurance) in January 2019. DIS then conducted an Alpha process between January and May 2019 in partnership with Open Identity Exchange (OIX), a non-profit cross sector consortium which aims to accelerate the adoption of digital identity services based on open standards. The Alpha had two parallel work- streams - a technical proof of concept and a standards work-stream. The outputs of both are summarised in the Alpha whitepaper. User research continued to be fundamental to the programme during this phase, with several rounds of research and testing conducted with both service providers and citizens, including with members of the Social Security Experience Panel.