Social Security Scotland Digital Strategy: FOI release

Information requested

1. Number of Sites
2. Number of Employees
3. Number of IT Staff
4. Annual IT Budget for current financial year
5. Number of Datacentres and locations, owned or third party
6. What storage vendor(s) and model do you currently use?
a. When was the installation date of above storage vendor(s)?
b. When is your planned (or estimated) storage refresh date? (Month/year) c. What is your estimated budget for the refresh?
d. What date does your storage support contract end? (Month/year) e. What is the value of your storage support contract?
f. What is the capacity of the storage data in TB?
7. What compute vendor(s) and model do you currently use?
a. Number of servers?
b. Virtualisation platform?
c. When is your planned (or estimated) compute refresh date? (Month/year)
d. When does your compute support contract end? (Month/year)
8. Do you currently utilise VDI?
a. How many desktops do you delivery VDI to?
b. What infrastructure underpins your VDI environment?
c. What broker do you use for VDI
9. Do you utilise public cloud?
a. How much is your annual spend on public cloud facilities?
b. What cloud provider do you use?

Response

I am responding to your request on behalf of Social Security Scotland. Chief Digital Office (CDO) is developing the technology for Social Security Scotland. CDO sits within the Social Security Directorate of the Scottish Government and is separate from Social Security Scotland.

The answers to your questions are:
1. Social Security Scotland has three main sites in Dundee and Glasgow. Social Security Scotland also has the use of 28 office spaces throughout the country for local delivery.
2. Social Security Scotland routinely publish Official Statistics on workforce numbers, including permanent staff, as part of the quarterly release ‘Social Security Scotland Workforce Information’.
Information on workforce numbers was last published on the 17th March 2020 and covered workforce numbers as at the 31st December 2019. This information is available from:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/social-security-scotland-workforce-information-december-2019/
The quarterly period of reporting and the publication dates of Social Security Scotland’s Official Statistics on workforce are aligned with the both the Scottish Government’s ‘Workforce Information’ and the Office For National Statistics’ ‘Public Sector Employment’ statistics releases.
These Official Statistics are produced and released in line with the professional standards set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics.
3. The Chief Digital Office in the Social Security Directorate of the Scottish Government is responsible for developing and providing the technology for Social Security Scotland. Social Security Scotland:
digital and technology strategy 2018-2021, which is available online at https://www.gov.scot/publications/social-security-scotland-digital-technology-strategy/pages/4/, gives more detail on this.
4. As mentioned in 3 above, the Social Security Directorate of the Scottish Government holds the budget for the IT implementation for Social Security Scotland. You can find information about the IT costs for the Social Security Programme within the Scottish Government in the recently published Social Security Programme Business Case, available online at https://www.gov.scot/publications/social-security-programme-business-case-executive-summary/
5. Not applicable
6. Not applicable
a Not applicable
b. Not applicable
c. Not applicable
d. Not applicable
e. Not applicable
f. Not applicable
7. Not applicable
a. Not applicable
b. Not applicable
c. Not applicable
d. Not applicable
8. Social Security Scotland does not currently utilise VDI.
a. Not applicable
b. Not applicable
c. Not applicable
9. Social Security Scotland does use public cloud.
a. Social Security Scotland does not spend money on public cloud facilities, as the Chief Digital Office in the Social Security Directorate of the Scottish Government is developing and providing the technology for Social Security Scotland.
b. Amazon Web Services

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.