It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry at Audit Scotland's scathing analysis of three notable public-sector IT failures selected, Agenda suspects, from a multitude of available Scottish examples.
Three bodies were pointed out last week for squandering public money – £9 million of it effectively poured down the drain or "written off".
The worst culprits were the Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service and Registers of Scotland, as, while Disclosure Scotland also made a dog's dinner of an IT project, it has not (yet) had to write anything off.
Audit Scotland, always anxious to give quango-dom the benefit of the doubt, is nevertheless extremely scathing about these public-sector bodies' "lack of specialist skills and experience which contributed to a lack of understanding about the complexity of the programmes and an over-reliance on the supplier for key decisions".
This might be taken to mean that private-sector IT companies, faced with gullible and badly organised clients who are not overly protective of their expenditure, were able to write their own cheques, for their own services, after spouting enough IT mumbo-jumbo to satisfy appearances.
Extra cash for sponsorships
WHILE it may be a relatively tiny figure in comparison to the sums above, it is nevertheless excellent news that the Scottish Government is extending its programme to encourage business sponsorship of the arts, allocating an additional £150,000 to the new arts sponsorship grants, announced today by Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop.
She notes that this brings the total level of Government support this financial year to £450,000.
The programme, administered by Arts & Business Scotland, provides arts organisations with £1 of funding for each £1 of sponsorship obtained and since 2006, has generated £4.3 million extra investment in Scotland's disproportionately rich and internationally impressive cultural sector
Speaking on the final day of the Edinburgh Festival, Hyslop noted that the scheme has attracted £300,000 of additional investment from 30 new businesses in this financial year alone.
