Across government, particularly in the Digital Directorate, a number of teams meet regularly with OfCom and mobile phone providers to discuss a wide range of issues. As social tariffs remain a reserved matter for the UK Government, the majority of these discussions do not focus on social tariffs however the exceptions to this are listed below:

Scotland’s Digital Inclusion Charter is delivered by SCVO as part of an annual grant of £308,000. This funding supports a much wider programme of activity delivered by SCVO to tackle digital exclusion. SCVO estimates that around 10% of the annual grant covers staff time and costs directly associated with development and promotion of the Charter.

The launch event in August 2024 was hosted as an in-kind contribution from Standard Life plc, a Charter signatory, which covered the costs of the event.

The targets set out in SCVO’s grant agreement are 200 signatories by the end of March 2025. To date we have attracted 42 organisations, across the public, private and voluntary sectors, who have made a range of pledges to support the Charter.

Current signatory organisations include large businesses (Standard Life plc), public sector organisations (e.g. Edinburgh City Libraries) and local community projects (e.g. Milan Senior Welfare).

SCVO will be running a campaign focusing on each of the 5 pledges from November 2024 to March 2025, with examples of best practice and video case studies from existing signatories.

As stated in the answer to question S6W-30954 on 7 November 2024, there are 95,000 accounts, as at 4 November 2024. All of these are active. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

ScotPayments is currently in the private Beta phase of delivery, with the first Beta partner fully transitioned onto the platform (including a new fund launched in June 2024). Feasibility assessments with three additional public bodies responsible for large volume and value outbound payments concluded in May 2024. A new Beta partner is planned to onboard to the service in January 2025 before the programme moves into public Beta phase in late 2025. Currently two public bodies and three internal Scottish Government departments use the ScotPayments Confirmation of Payee feature.

ScotAccount launched in private beta with Disclosure Scotland in February 2023, and with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service Witness Gateway in February 2024. As at 4 November 2024, there are 95,000 accounts across these services.

Since the Scottish Digital Academy was established in 2018, it has recorded 19,209 registrations from people working across the public or third sector.

There have been 1,116 courses delivered since 2018. By the end of October 2024, 92 percent (1,030) were delivered fully or in part online. This does not include non-course events such as workshops, symposia or other types of professional learning.

In total, there are 7,710 registrations from Scottish Government employees, which represents 40 percent of all registrations over time.

The total cost of the Scottish Digital Academy since its commencement in January 2018 to September 2024 is £4,320,722. This includes staff and programme delivery costs.