FutureScot - Reporting on the Scottish Digital Tech Sector ......tech sector FUTURESCOT | SPRING 2019 | 3 4 Digital Cities FutureScot’s young and & Regions 5 Turing’s tartan makeover

The magazine for Scotland’s digital technologies sectorDistributed with The Times Scotland | SPRING 2019

8 Why analogue still matters

10 A wake-up call for business leaders

20 Does data offer hope for cancer control?

34 Building a digital health platform

Holding up a mirrorReflections

on Scotland’stech sector

FUTURESCOT | SPRING 2019 | 3

4 DigitalCities&Regions

5 Turing’startanmakeover

7 Buildingthenewinternet

8 InterviewwithLinnarViik

10 SQAandCyberScotland

12 Keepingpacewithtech

13 BackingforHIEdigital

15 DataDrivenInnovation

16 CriticaltakeontheTay

18 Coverstory:JoeTree

20 Datascienceandcancer

22 BusinessviewsonBrexit

23 Deliveringondigital

24 Lookingaheadto2050

25 RegistersofScotland

27 ScottishFuturesTrust

29 CSIConBIMe-learning

30 LeicaGeosystems

32 Tribunal’snetworkruling

33 LawSocietyofScotland

34 Comment:AlistairHann

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It appears to be one of the best kept technology secrets in Scotland. In a town on the west coast, engineers are building a new internet. It promises “freedom of expression, control of personal data, private and secure communications, and a whole new economy”.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, is an admirer, has met the man behind it, and believes it can co-exist with his own attempt to wrest control of the existing internet from big corporations and governments.

There are some in Scotland’s tech community who know of David Irvine and his colleagues, who are creating the SAFE Network. But mention this to people who you think ought to know something ground-breaking is happening here and there is a surprising ignorance. David is speaking at FutureScot’s annual conference, Digital Scotland in Glasgow on 30 May (see p7).

Our interview is with Linnar Viik, the co-founder of the e-Governance Academy in Tallinn, Estonia. Linnar, who is also speaking at Digital Scotland next month, articulates a refreshing counter argument to the widely-held belief that for countries to achieve digital transformation of public services they should copy those who have achieved that goal.

For example, Estonia. As has been said, e-government fan boys enthuse over Estonia’s digital transformation. Yet, Linnar believes: “Successful implementation of a digital solution depends on a lot on factors which are analogue not digital; that is, cultural, social, economic, regulatory, and institutional” (see p8).

Another must read, our cover story; Joe Tree’s candid account of building a global platform from Scotland, only to see it fall into liquidation. “I discovered the striking parallels between a startup failing and a close relative dying,” he writes (see p18).

Why analogue still mattersEDITORIALKevin O’Sullivan

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William Peakin0141 465 7652

[email protected]

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COVER IMAGESelf portrait by Joe Tree

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CONTENTS

“Too often we see governments blindly copy

from each other…we are preaching diversity”

Linnar Viik

4 | FUTURESCOT | SPRING 2019

City Region Deals will inject vital cash into areas of the country where growth has been, accord-ing to Tim Allan, President of the Scottish Chambers of Com-merce, “anaemic” over the last decade. The deals are gradually ploughing cash into the coffers of austerity-blighted councils and communities which desperately need fresh impetus across skills, infrastructure and specialist target areas of the economy.

For Edinburgh & South East Scotland, the deal is laser-fo-cused: half of the available £1.3bn deal programme will go straight into what is termed ‘Data Driven Innovation’ (DDI); the DDI initiative will see the University of Edinburgh and Heriot Watt

Lord Ian Duncan, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Scotland, kicked off FutureScot’s annual Digital Cities & Regions at V&A Dundee last month.

The Conservative peer said he was “delighted” to be in the city at the inaugural event, which focused on the policy and technology implications of the Tay Cities Deal, whose ‘Heads of Terms’ agreement was signed in November last year.

“This area has been the centre of the world before and it has now joined the world again to see what it has to offer,” he said, addressing delegates at the venue on March 1.

Following the £1bn investment into Dundee’s waterfront, and now the collaboration between the city and council areas cover-ing Perth & Kinross, North East Fife and Angus, supported by a

joint UK and Scottish Govern-ment economic stimulus pro-gramme, he said the deal was an “historic” opportunity to put the region back on the map.

“The two governments col-lectively will spend £300m in Dundee but that is just the ingre-dients if you like; that will rise still further as others recognise what that investment will mean and what it can deliver,” he added.

John Alexander, Leader of Dundee City Council and Chair of the Scottish Cities Alliance, urged for clarity on the detail of the deal; currently there is funding allocated to a number of deal ben-eficiaries, including the University of Dundee, the James Hutton Institute and Abertay University.

But he said: “Heads of terms is a very important marker but there’s no detail yet on when

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland kicks off nationwide Digital Cities & Regions

BRIEFING

project owners can drawer down the funding so in a year’s time, in six months time, I hope we will have detail on exactly what those monies will mean to individual projects, when they will come on stream and when we will start delivering on the economic growth and jobs and once we’ve got that in place it will instil con-fidence in a way that we haven’t got at the current time.”

He said also that he was pressing government to ensure the pro-gramme spans the next 10 financial years, rather than the 15 described in the original deal timeframe.

FutureScot ran a Digital Cities & Regions conference covering Edinburgh & South East Scotland on Thursday, March 7, at Edin-burgh City Chambers; for further Digital Cities & Regions in 2019 visit www.futurescot.com

Lord Duncan addressing delegates at V&A Dundee

Comment


Tartan makeover on the cards for Turing FestTuring Fest could be in line for a tartan makeover as it prepares to host over 3,000 delegates this August.

The annual tech conference, hosted during the Edinburgh Festival is looking to introduce the national weave to boost its ‘experiential’ offer to attendees.

Brian Corcoran, Chief Execu-tive of Turing Fest, said he was considering using tartan as a way of linking the event to the ‘place’ in which it is held.

Speaking at EventIt, the Scottish annual events show in Glasgow, he said: “Something I’d like to do and we haven’t done it yet, but I think we’re going to try and develop ‘Tartan for Turing Fest’ and maybe the speakers get a kilt, or something like that. And whether they ever wear it, who knows, but that becomes a unique thing, right. If you’re bouncing around your office in San Francisco in this bizarre pink Scottish kilt, people are go-ing to go, ‘woah, where did you get that?’”

Corcoran was taking part in a panel discussion on the importance of ‘festivalisation’ in business events, which has been led by the technology indus-try in introducing elements of

Exascale can help prepare us for disasters, says supercomputing expert

both delivering upon ambitious aims to make the city-region the ‘data capital of Europe’. At the FutureScot conference on March 7, it was clear that the fiv e ‘data hubs’ – the Bayes Centre, the Usher Institute, the Edinburgh Futures Institute, Easter Bush and The National Robotarium, all backed by ‘world-class data in-frastructure’ and supercomput-ing capacity – will herald a new era of economic development, which will see the training up of 100,000 data-skilled workers in the next decade. In contrast, and although still in its infancy, there was concern that the Tay Cities Deal was spread too thinly across a range of sectors to position the region as a world leader in any one field. One of the most interesting observa-tions came from Sir Michael Ferguson, Regius Professor of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee, who said that the city lacked suitable accommodation for spin-off companies in bio-tech, bio-pharma and med-tech Too often, he said, fledgling life sciences businesses were lured out of the city, which he said is rated among the top places in the world for life sciences, by better offers. He said of three re-cent spin-off companies, two are in Canada and one is Germany. “I don’t want to see that hap-pening anymore,” he said. His three-point plan was that there needs to be greater investment in “pre-incubation” facilities to keep new companies growing on campus before they transfer, there needs to be “excellent ac-commodation” to put them in when they move and that there needs to be a package of special-ist business support and training to help them grow. Above all, there needs to be seed funding which is the vital ingredient in scaling them up to succeed in the era of unicorn companies. Sir Michael is one of the UK’s leading life sciences experts, and on the Board of Governors for the Wellcome Trust and Deal partners will no doubt pay heed to his comments as they move towards the drawing down of funding for the various projects. l

entertainment to traditionally business-focused conferences.

Turing Fest has grown from 600 attendees in 2016 to an expected 3,000-plus this year, putting it on a growth trajectory which is similar to the world-leading event Web Summit in its early years.

Corcoran paid tribute to Woodstock and the hippy move-ment in the US, which laid the foundations for the technol-ogy industry of today, particu-larly from tech hotbeds such as San Francisco. He said it is not unsurprising that festivals

have played a part in creating a ‘cultural shift’ that shapes the modern tech conference experi-ence. He said delegates expect to be educated, enthralled and entertained and leave an event feeling like they have learned something about the place in which it is hosted.

Turing Fest announced its first round of 2019 speakers last month, with Hana Abaza, direc-tor of marketing at £17bn ecom-merce platform Shopify and Erin Platts, incoming Head of EMEA at Silicon Valley Bank, topping the bill. Visit turingfest.com l

A new wave of supercomputers that calculate at a rate of a billion-billion calculations per second can help predict the impact of hurricanes.

The coming era of exascale machines have the potential to transform our understanding of the world, through modelling complex weather patterns.

Mark Parsons, Director of the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre at the University of Edin-burgh, described just one of the applications of exascale models at FutureScot’s Digital Cities & Regions conference for Edinburgh & South East Scotland last month.

He said how an exascale model was able to predict the height of a

buoy at the entrance of New York Harbour after Hurricane Sandy hit the US east coast in 2012.

He said: “You can see from an economic point of view..the value to knowing the damage that will be done by a hurricane is vitally im-portant. There are direct economic reasons we can argue we should invest in this.” l

Brian Corcoran, pictured left, speaking at EventIt, the annual Scottish events show


BRIEFING

54%

49%

42%

41%

33%

33%

EU workforce

Pricing and finance

Regulatory and compliance concerns

Supply chain disruption

Export and import red tape

Obtaining goods/services/components from the EU

Data science and clinical medicine need greater integrationA new report from the University of Glasgow has suggested the lack of integration between data science and clinical medicine in Scotland is a ‘major missed op-portunity’ for the UK.

Precision Medicine Innovation in Scotland: Accelerating Produc-tivity Growth for Scotland and the UK, a Science and Innovation Audit Report sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, published

last month, says Scotland ‘has a potentially transformational opportunity to combine the re-gional strengths in data science and PM, particularly in Edin-burgh and Glasgow, to acceler-ate the implementation of PM and achieve long term economic impacts for Scotland through NHS savings, a healthier and more productive workforce, and growing Scotland’s PM focused business base.’ l

Survey confirms Brexit workforce pressure on firms

Scotland’s national centre for business resilience has moved to a new showpiece head-quarters. The Scottish Business Resilience Centre (SBRC) has signed a long-term lease with the Oracle Campus in Linlithgow, moving from offices in Stirling, where it has been based for more than 10 years. SBRC announced key

NHS Education for Scotland has issued a £15m contract notice to procure public cloud services to host the new Na-tional Digital Platform.

Scheduled to last 10 years, the notice was posted on the Public Contracts Scotland website and describes services required for the NDP, which includes the creation and

Access to the European work-force has emerged as the most significant concern for Scottish businesses, according to a survey of more than 250 senior execu-tives across industries by law firm Anderson Strathern. More than a third of Scottish companies rely heavily on highly-skilled EU staff and almost a quarter rely heavily on low-skilled EU staff. Regard-less of how Brexit develops, there will be a continued demand for an EU workforce in Scotland, the survey found. More than a quarter of Scottish business’ are expecting to recruit EU workers, post Brexit, than they plan to recruit from non-EU countries. lFull story: p27

Striking the right balance between the opportunities of digital learning with the harm that spending long periods on devices can cause will be debated at a FutureScot event on May 15.

EduTech 2019, a full-day policy and technology confer-ence, hosted at the Technology & Innovation Centre in Glasgow, will focus on the upsides and downsides of digital.

Neil Ó Tarráin, Vice Princi-

SBRC to work closely with police at new centre

EduTech event will debate balance of tech in classrooms

pal IT, at Gaelscoil Uí Fhiaich primary school in Maynooth, County Kildare, will present findings of his school’s ‘Social Media Detox’ and the effect on children.

Dr Jo Inchley, a specialist in public health research at the University of Glasgow, will also present on some recent research findings on the effect of digital on children. lhttp://bit.ly/EduTech-2019

£15m contract notice issued for new National Digital Platform

deployment of ‘real-time data at the point of care’; operating to a ‘predictable architecture which.. enable[s] new and in-novative products to be devel-oped and implemented across the health and care system; and to ‘enable the use of data at scale for quality improve-ment and to support research and innovation’. l

appointments recently including the recruitment of its first Chief Operating Officer and further senior secondments from Police Scotland. It now has its sights set on further expansion of its capa-bilities and greater opportunities for collaboration with Police Scotland at the larger office space in Linlithgow. l


Thursday, May 30, and will feature numerous spotlight sessions from public and private sector innova-tors and entrepreneurs on ‘tech for good’ and how it is reshaping the public sector technology landscape. The event will explore the ‘Future of Government’, the ‘Future of Busi-ness’ and The Future of Technology, featuring over 60 top-class national and international speakers. l

For tickets and registration visit http://bit.ly/DigitalScotland2019

A Scottish internet pioneer working on the world’s first ‘autonomous network’ will de-liver a public lecture on a project endorsed by the father of the web – Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

David Irvine, founder of Maid-safe, a little-known decentralised web company based in Ayr, will be among a stellar cast of keynote speakers at FutureScot’s annual ‘Digital Scotland’ conference on May 30.

Irvine, an engineer and inventor with over 40 patents in the area of networking, security and privacy, started his career as an apprentice mechanical engineer, before tak-ing the electrical and electronics route at college. He will address delegates on the subject of, ‘Saying goodbye to the internet: Freedom of expression, control of personal data, private and secure communi-cations, and a whole new economy:

welcome to the new internet, a solution we can all be part of’.

Maidsafe is building the SAFE Network, which is designed to run completely without human inter-ference; all data is anonymous, ex-changed and stored randomly from computer to computer, and nothing is kept on centralised servers. Irvine has been working on his vision for over 10 years and last year met cre-ator of the world-wide web Sir Tim Berners-Lee at a decentralised web conference in San Francisco, where

‘We’re building the new internet’

the two embarked on the shared ‘Safe and Solid’ project.

Linnar Viik, Co-founder of the e-Governance Academy in Estonia – regarded by many as the leading digital nation globally – will also speak at Digital Scotland, along-side Theo Blackwell, London’s first Chief Digital Officer. Digital Scotland – the leading public sector digital transformation conference in Scotland - is set to host over 500 delegates at the Technology & Innovation Centre in Glasgow on

David Irvine will speak at FutureScot’s annual conference on May 30

Videogames conference set to feature “world-leading” games innovators A full-day conference on the videogames industry is set to be held at V&A Dundee next month. As part of the new exhibition Video-games: Design/Play/Disrupt, the venue will host Arcadia on Saturday, May 18, featuring a ‘world-leading group of diverse designers and radical thinkers whose work covers the spec-trum of game-making, from practical design, to soundscapes and future technologies, as well as exploring games as a cultural force’.

The conference will be co-curated by Biome Collective; speakers will include Hilary O’Shaughnessy, Producer at Watershed; Kirsty Keatch, musical artist; Yann Seznec, artist and musician, founder of Lucky Frame; Lynn Love, Abertay University and Jim Cope, Ruffian Games. For tickets and information visit https://www.vam.ac.uk/dundee/event/102/videogames-conference-arcadia

Scottish web pioneer working with Sir Tim Berners-Lee set to speak at DigitalScotland

Arcadia takes place at V&A Dundee on May 18


Linnar Viik: “Nations need to find their own roadmaps”

BY WILLIAM PEAKIN

As the Berlin Wall fell, Linnar Viik was a student travelling in Europe. In Dresden, he witnessed crowds gather in the central square; one crowd in one corner, in favour of a united Germany, the other opposite, in favour of remaining part of the Soviet Bloc. After 90 minutes, they would dis-perse, and then reconvene at the same time the following day. In Prague, he found, it was very dif-ferent; intellectuals would gather in studios to debate the seismic political shift.

Culture matters, said Viik, when countries are going through change. Viik is from Estonia and in Tallinn, its capital, those involved in re-establishing their country as an indepen-dent nation came from a variety of backgrounds, including the sciences. But, fortuitously, he added - only half joking - “not so many lawyers.” When the newly installed prime minister went to his office, after giving his oath to parliament, he was confronted by a desk with a row of rotary telephones. “Why so many,” he asked, “and if the red one rings, who will it be?” “We don’t know,” came the reply, “better answer it so we can find out.”

hand what was to be discussed by the cabinet, with all the background papers, and know decisions seconds after they had been taken. It was building another bridge between govern-ment and society.”

The digital cabinet progressed to laptops, then to tablets, and now today it is a ‘bring-your-own-device’ cabinet. “It takes time,” said Viik, co-founder of the e-Governance Academy in Tallinn, “sometimes five or 10 years for digital innovations to become norms. Spending has remained steady, no peaks or troughs. None of the projects have been a success from day one. It can take two or three iterations.”

Next month, Estonia is host-ing the fifth e-Governance Conference. Its strapline: ‘Same goals, different roadmaps’. “The conference has become a bit of a religious pilgrimage,” said Viik, “governments and countries who are converted to a belief in the power of e-government gather-ing on an annual basis. We have found that while their goals are similar – for IT to amplify en-trepreneurship, the knowledge of their people, the efficiency of government – their roadmaps are very different.

The early days of trying to build a digital society were not easy; metaphorically and physically. Estonia’s communica-tions network was a traditional tangle of copper wire, linking the military police to the KGB and, somewhere in between, the trade unions. At a meeting with IBM to discuss new infrastruc-ture, they were congratulated on their new-found independence and asked: “What’s your IT budget?” It was $1.3m. “For that, you can look at our mainframe,” Viik recalls them saying. “For ten times that, you can touch it; for 100 times, we can talk business.”

So, Estonia built from scratch, using whatever technologies were easily available and afford-able. “We didn’t know we were doing anything different,” said Viik, “we were so busy building basic public services.” While government services were being established online, Estonia’s gov-ernment was still paper-based. Viik commandeered the remain-ing photo-copying budget and built an IT system for cabinet decision-making.

“The greatest achievement was not saving money,” he said, “it was creating transparency. The public could see online before-

From Soviet-era rotary phones to public services run on artificial intelligence, Estonia has pioneered digital government. But an architect of its transformation says success depends on “analogue factors, not digital”

Not high-tech, just tech savvy

INTERVIEW

SPRING 2019 | 9

“Too often we see governments blindly copy from each other…we are preaching diversity” Linnar Viik

Citizens can monitor their data and see if any government or private institution has sought access. The aim is to replicate the ease with which a child can be registered, and parents receive entitlements, right across gov-ernment services.

Another novelty now is the ‘digital agent’; whereby citizens can hand-off decision-making – should a parking ticket be paid on the due date or straight away, for example - to the agent which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect when a decision is required and makes the choice, based on the citizen’s preferenc-es. “But what is going to people’s comfort zone in allowing artifi-cial intelligence to act on their behalf?”, asks Viik.

The Estonian Government is already using AI to oversee some services. For example, inspectors no longer check on farmers who receive government subsidies to cut their hay fields each summer. Satellite images taken are fed into a deep-learning algorithm which assesses each pixel in the images, determining if the patch of the field has been cut or not. Two weeks before the mowing deadline, the automated system notifies farmers via text or email that includes a link to the satellite image of their field. The system has saved more than $1m a year.

“The e-Estonia story is a parable of the young nation become high-tech Shangri-La,” observed Peter Ferry, Estonia’s Honorary Consul in Edinburgh, “e-government fan boys enthuse over Estonia’s digital transforma-tion. A nation enabled by leading edge technologies - which built world-leading digital public services that pulled the state and its economy up by its bootstraps. They ask why their own home governments, with greater resources, can’t ‘digitalise’ and achieve half of the Estonians success? But Estonia isn’t hi-tech. It’s just tech savvy.” l

Linnar Viik will be speaking at the second annual Digital Scotland Conference in Glasgow on 30 May https://bit.ly/2HVn2GE

“Nations need to find their own roadmaps and not copy what others have done. Too often we see governments blindly copy from each other. We have heard it said within the World Bank, the UN and the European Com-mission: ‘Let’s have a standard cloud-based e-government ap-plication for poor countries.’

“That’s a very technocratic approach and is not focussing on the real issue; what is the benefit and how in a proper way can my community, my society, implement digital solutions? Successful implementation of a digital solution depends on a lot on factors which are analogue not digital; that is, cultural, social, economic, regulatory, and institutional. We are preaching diversity.”

For Estonia, Viik and his com-patriots are looking ahead; what is novel now, that will become

the norm in five to 10 years? So-called zero bureaucracy is one; for example, from the moment parents register a new-born child with a swipe of their digital ID card, and receive a welcom-ing email from the government, they are able to record the name online, will automatically receive child support and a place at nursery, as well as parental rights for work-leave.

The platform is underpinned by software called X-Road, a decentralised data exchange system that links databases. Outgoing data is digitally signed and encrypted, and all incoming data is authenticated and logged.


Demand for cyber security qualifications ‘skyrockets’

Since its launch in 2017, the Scottish Qualifications Author-ity (SQA) has seen interest and demand skyrocket for its National Progression Awards (NPA) in Cyber Security, at levels 4 to 6 on the Scottish Credit and Qualifica-tions Framework (SCQF).

And according to Alistair Wylie, Head of Qualifications – Technol-ogy, Engineering, and Construc-tion at SQA - it is easy to see why the course has struck a chord with schools and colleges keen to offer young people the chance to hone valuable digital skills.

“We’re talking about a topic that is of fundamental impor-tance. It impacts on every single person,” he said. “The demand for skilled individuals who are able to share knowledge and experience of cyber security, and add value to potential future employers is huge.”

Last year, the number of young people achieving an NPA in Cyber Security grew by over 40%, and already this year there are over 1,000 candidates studying the course in schools and colleges across the country.

Bobby Elliott, Qualifications Manager at SQA, said the appeal of the NPA is the nature of the topics taught.

“No other school-level course offers candidates the chance to take on these topics – Data Secu-rity, Digital Forensics, and Ethical Hacking – or opens candidates up to the opportunities that could be available to them,” he said.

Scott Hunter was part of the team that developed the NPA, and has seen first-hand how young people have benefitted from undertaking the course. Hunter,

Principal Teacher of Comput-ing at Kyle Academy in Ayr, said: “Two pupils from my first class to complete the course have since gone on to university to study Ethical Hacking. Without the NPA giving them an insight into that world, I suspect those pupils wouldn’t be where they are now.”

Hunter added: “The course provides fantastic opportunities for young people to develop their problem solving skills.

“We worked with Developing the Young Workforce Ayrshire, Ayrshire Chamber of Commerce, and the Prince’s Trust to identify local start-ups who could benefit from receiving advice about how to protect their businesses from online threats.

“In October, the pupils delivered workshops to the start-ups advis-ing them on a number of issues

the HND Cyber Security and I’m going to go on to university after-wards. The pathway is very useful – the NPA helped lead me on to what I needed to know to do the HNC, and I’m sure the HNC will help me with my HND studies. I think the HND will link well with university, and then employment afterwards.”

SQA is also working on a Professional Development Award (PDA) in Cyber Security at SCQF levels 7, 8, and 9, which will help those already in relevant employ-ment broaden their skills, or even help them make the transition into a new career. Available dur-ing 2020, the PDA will be the latest step in widening access to careers and learning opportuni-ties within cyber security.

Alistair Wylie added: “By ex-panding our suite of cyber secu-rity qualifications, we are helping to address the well-publicised skills shortages within the sector. We’ve worked with leading aca-demics, employers, and industry specialists at every stage of each qualification’s development to make sure the skills, knowledge, and experiences candidates acquire are credible, relevant, and valuable.

“By doing so, we are meeting our responsibilities to provide schools, colleges, employers and training providers – and thereby candidates at all levels – with the opportuni-ties to succeed within this exciting and growing sector.” l

www.sqa.org.uk/cybersecurity

SQA courses are paving the way for school and college students to enter a rapidly expanding tech industry

CYBERSECURITY

including how to manage their own and their customers’ data, how to write a firewall, and how to manage their digital footprint.”

Hunter said: “The students have also worked with pupils at our local primary schools to talk to the children there about Internet safety. The students are adding vital soft-skills to their bank of knowledge and experience, add-ing value to their learning.”

The data has shown strong support for cyber security as a dedicated subject but how is SQA planning to expand on its success in delivering comprehensive courses for young people in this field?

Elliot added: “We now have fantastic off-the-shelf learning and teaching resources available to schools and colleges, mean-ing the course is now easier to deliver, thanks to special funding from the Scottish Government’s Cyber Resilience Strategy for Scotland. We also launched the Higher National Certificate (HNC) in Cyber Security, meaning the programme is now gearing to-wards getting candidates ready to access the work place.

“Currently three colleges – West College Scotland, City of Glasgow, and Fife – are delivering the programme, and we’re busy finalising the Higher National Diploma (HND) and hope to have it available in August this year.

“Once the HND is available, we’ll have opened up routes into employment within the cyber security sector that was tradi-tionally only available to those who had completed degree level computing programmes.”

Cameron Wylie, HNC Cyber Security student at West College Scotland, said: “I got attracted to the HNC Cyber Security when I took the NPA while in fifth year at high school. I’ve applied to do

No other school-level course offers candidates the chance to take on these topics or opens candidates up to the opportunities that could be available to them


BY WILLIAM PEAKIN

Important measures to protect businesses and organisations from cyber-attack are “still relatively uncommon”, a UK Government-commissioned sur-vey has found. The critical actions include board-level involvement in cyber security, monitoring suppliers, and planning incident response.

The finding comes ahead of the launch on Tuesday of Cyber Scot-land Week, a joint initiative be-tween ScotlandIS and the Scottish Government. A first of its kind, the week draws together events across the country to showcase innovation in the sector, while

raising awareness of good cyber resilience practice and promoting a career within the industry.

The survey highlights the “per-sistent threat” of cyber-attacks fac-ing businesses and charities. Ac-cording to the UK Government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2019, around a third of businesses (32%) and a fifth of charities (22%) have suffered a cyber breach or attack in the past 12 months.

That represent a “significant fall” in the number of businesses identifying breaches (down from 43% in 2018, and 46% in 2017). The charities result was similar to last year. However, cyber security is a growing priority for senior management, with over three-quarters of UK businesses (78%) and charities (75%) saying that cyber security is a high priority, an increase on last year.

Europe’s General Data Protec-tion Regulation has “encouraged many organisations over the past year to engage formally with cyber security for the first time,

and others to strengthen their existing policies and processes,” it said. But the survey also shows that there is more that organisa-tions can do to protect them-selves. This includes “important actions which are still relatively uncommon”, such as board-level involvement in cyber security, monitoring suppliers, and plan-ning incident response.

Among organisations iden-tifying breaches or attacks, the most common types identified are phishing attacks, followed by instances of others impersonat-ing an organisation in emails or online, and viruses or other, spyware or malware, including ransomware attacks.

One of the headline events taking part in Cyber Scotland Week is the UK Government’s flagship cyber event, CYBERUK 2019 which will take place for the first time at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow.

Other events during Cyber Scotland Week include:

l A cyber-themed event for 500 school children at the Glasgow Science Centre offering three floors of interactive exhibits, hands on workshops, including a Cryptog-raphy and DIY Gamer workshop, with opportunities to ‘meet the ex-pert’ and learn about cyber career paths and opportunities.l The Big Data Show, an interac-tive and fun piece of theatre that helps young people to see for themselves how criminals can hack their devices and steal per-sonal data, performed in Glasgow and elsewhere.l LEAD Scotland will be hosting a cyber resilience workshop for people with disabilities, carers and volunteers with the aim of encouraging those who attend to pass their learning on to others.l ‘Cyber Security for the SME’, an event hosted by the Perth College, University of the Highland and Islands, will provide an overview of the cyber risks associated with doing business in the modern landscape, and the approaches that can be employed to prepare and respond to incidents should they happen.

Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, said: “Cyber Scotland Week will see people of all ages and backgrounds come together to share and collaborate on how to become more cyber resilient.” l

Survey reveals failures in cyber measuresLack of board-level involvement and incident response among criticisms

Cybersecurity is a growing

priority for senior management


UK Minister says government services must keep pace with pace of change set by tech giants

EXCLUSIVE BY KEVIN O’SULLIVAN

Oliver Dowden, the Minister for Implementation at the Cabinet Office, is the man charged with shaking up the UK Government’s approach to digital public services and procurement. On a fact-find-ing visit to CodeBase in January, he toured the country’s largest technology incubator and got a feel for how Scottish tech entre-preneurs are working ever more closely together with government in the attempt to bring ‘tech for good’ into the public realm.

At the invitation of CivTech – the Scottish Government’s own digital accelerator programme - Mr Dowden was in the capital in the wake of the second round of the UK Government’s own £20m GovTech Catalyst competition (which features Scottish Natural Heritage as one of five public bodies which is seeking to solve a business ‘challenge’, specifically to find a tech solution to improve the way it alerts developers to plan-ning restrictions) and praised the “cross-fertilisation” of ideas be-tween CivTech, launched in 2016 and GovTech, whose first round was launched early last year.

He said: “All roads lead back to data and clearly Edinburgh’s a big leader in data. We are doing our thing through a GovTech Catalyst;

The Spotify, Netflix and Amazon way

and how people consume other goods and services like music and entertainment – through the likes of Spotify, Netflix and Amazon. And he insisted that Verify would continue to be supported but with an emphasis on ‘increasing the amount of commercial flexbility’ around the platform to the point where it no longer “needs the ad-ditional subsidy”.

He said: “I’m confident we’re on this path and we’re actually accelerating progress now, but clearly what we also need to do is do this alongside the private sector as well. So, working with DCMS and others we need to continue to encourage identity in the private sector through banks having verified identity there, us having verified identity in the public sector, having interoper-ability between the two, so you foster that development.”

He added: “I think we can make the experience of govern-ment a much better thing, so whether it’s the use of data ana-lytics in health or whether it’s the

GOVTECH

there’s an awful lot of cross-fertilisation and sharing of ideas between the lessons that are be-ing learned through CivTech and the lessons that we are learning through GovTech.

“I think what they both have in common is [that] historically with procurements you look too much at the existing solution and re-procure the solution. What we’re trying to do through Gov-Tech and what CivTech is trying to do is to say, ‘what is the actual problem and how do we have a.. way of initially understanding that problem through a competi-tion that looks at lots of different options before you go through a more formal procurement?”

Mr Dowden said schemes like GovTech and CivTech are a way to ensure government can reach smaller suppliers in the tech market which may be where the “greatest areas of innovation” lie but they have been alienated in the past by the traditional, opaque procurement processes; however, he said that there is now a pressing need to move from the “micro challenges” that have been addressed through the schemes to the “broader” challenges around government delivery of services.

He said: “At the moment the challenges are focused around very important but very specific things,

but over time using that model to look at some of the more structural problems that government faces.”

In that sense, he said Govern-ment must ensure it works to “break down barriers” and that there is a “flow of ideas” between the private and public sector. The UK Government has been lauded for the way it streamlined govern-ment services onto the GOV.UK platform – but the senior leader-ship within the Government Digi-tal Service which masterminded the development has since moved on; recently, there has been criti-cism that the GDS has lost its way. Many departmental bodies have since sought to reassert their own distinctive approaches towards technology – for example, HMRC – and there have been question marks over big projects such as Verify, which is an online identity assurance programme.

Mr Dowden says, however, government must continue to innovate, otherwise there will be an “enormous gap” between the way it delivers its services


Government backing for Highlands and Islands digital projects

BY WILLIAM PEAKIN

Studies have indicated that the ‘data opportunity’ has the po-tential to deliver an estimated £20bn in business benefits to Scotland’s economy between 2015 and 2020. Digital Econ-omy Minister Kate Forbes has highlighted the recent Phase 2 funding to support The Data Lab, Scotland’s data innovation centre, with Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) con-tributing £500,000, alongside £1m from the Scottish Govern-ment’s Digital Directorate, £2.5m from Scottish Enterprise and up to £9.5m from the Scot-tish Funding Council.

Phase 2 will see the creation of an Inverness hub of The Data Lab (or TDL²), supported by HIE and The Data Lab. TDL² hub will be co-located with HIE’s Innovation and Technol-ogy team in Inverness and will focus on data-driven innova-tion across Scotland’s rural digital economy. The hub will be the fourth Data Lab location in Scotland along with Aber-deen, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

A TDL² staff member based in Inverness will also focus on data science skills and talent, events, and new collaborative projects. Local businesses will

use of robotics and over time AI [artificial intelligence] in process-ing everything from tax returns to welfare payments through DWP, it offers the prospect of a better, more accurate and more efficient service.” he says.

He said: “I want to make sure that the kind of ease, convenience and diversity that we are seeing more and more in the private sec-tor is also available in the public sector. I think that’s the right thing to do because people expect their public services to reflect what they have in the private sector; it’s the right thing to do in terms of delivering greater efficiency and it’s the right thing to do in terms of delivering better outcomes. We’re on the cusp now, we’ve been talking for a long time now about data, but I really think we’re on the cusp of a data revolution in terms of our ability to use data analytics. Govern-ment holds huge amounts of data and if we get this right, the UK is incredibly well placed….to im-prove the services to citizens but

have access to exciting new na-tional and international contacts and opportunities. The hub will have a specific focus on develop-ing data talent in collaboration with Scottish universities and industry.

“The new hub in Inverness will help develop the rural digital economy locally as well as nationally,” said Forbes, “helping to fulfil the Scottish Government’s vision that data, digital, and technology can be used to stimulate economic growth across the country.”

Theresa Swayne, senior devel-opment manager (Digital) at HIE added: “The opportunities from the data revolution are enor-mous and we want to ensure that the Highlands and Islands is best placed to exploit them. Our new relationship with The Data Lab provides our busi-nesses and communities with access to world class support to develop data science knowledge, skills and data driven innova-tion.”

Gillian Docherty, CEO of The Data Lab, said: “It is fantastic to have HIE as a key partner for phase two of The Data Lab, and we look forward to expanding our joint work further to support the community in the region on their digital journey.” l

New hub in Inverness will boost economy locally and nationally

also to foster a genuinely globally leading sector in terms of the use of data.”

Mr Dowden said he would like to see government open up its data and, as per the UK Gov-ernment’s Industrial Strategy, which has a big focus on AI, to use that information to improve the way government delivers its services to citizens. He said there is a “huge amount of legacy” to overcome, in terms of the way the bureaucracy works in the UK – and that we cannot be like Esto-nia, which is often trumpeted as the leading tech nation (Estonia started from scratch, effectively as a ‘new country’ when its inde-pendence was restored in 1991).

But he said: “There’s a tremen-dous vibrancy and strength in Scotland and in particular in Ed-inburgh. Scotland is a real global leader in data – it’s getting that aspiration but also the practical steps towards that there’s the same sort of energy around the tech sector here that you get in other hubs around the world.” l

Oliver Dowden, Minister for Implementation at the

Cabinet Office, pictured right with Stephen Coleman,

CodeBase co-founder

Gillian Docherty, Kate Forbes and Theresa Swayne

REGIONS

Enhance your career in data science with flexible online study

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Contact usIf you have any questions, please email [email protected] more information, visit www.ed.ac.uk/data-science/postgraduate

PG DSTI_FutureScot_full page.indd 1 02/04/2019 15:04


New institute heralds a radical reengineering of the way a university worksBY WILLIAM PEAKIN

“It was designed,” said Lesley McAra, “to limit infection. We are going to transform it, so that it will have contagion; to bring the outside world into the univer-sity and the university into the outside world, for a common pur-pose and for common benefit.”

McAra was speaking of the Old Royal Infirmary which has been bought by Edinburgh University to be the permanent home of the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI). The development, which will include a significant amount of new-build, will create a “highly connected range of diverse ac-commodation”; teaching and event spaces, major lecture halls, meeting rooms, and IT hubs.

The project will restore and connect six historically significant Nightingale wards and make use of the building’s unusually wide cor-ridors to create space for informal encounters and break-out areas. Below the new public piazza, the development will create a multi-functional space for events and major lectures. “The building will live up to the motto inscribed on its wall; Patet Omnibus,” said McAra, the EFI’s Director, “open to all.”

McAra said: “The world is always changing. However, many signs suggest that we are entering into a new era. Old certainties in societ-ies, democracies and the economy are being disrupted. Inequality is rising. Mass displacement of people is at its highest level in decades. The rise of artificial intel-ligence and big data both threatens job security and promises huge opportunities. The climate is changing. No one is immune.

“These challenges stretch across the traditional boundaries of national borders, institutional walls and areas of expertise. We need a response that does likewise; the Edinburgh Futures Institute is our answer.”

The EFI heralds a radical reengineering of the way the university – any university – works: “The Institute brings together people from across the university and beyond to grapple with some of the world’s most

ciplines, we can take on real-world challenges in the cause of the pub-lic good and in support of inclusive economic growth. We believe that by forging collaborations, we can produce practical solutions for the common good. My role is to trans-late that ambition into action.”

The so-called fourth industrial revolution – the fusion of the digi-tal world with the physical one, brought about by breakthroughs in areas such as AI, robotics, virtual reality, 3-D printing, and energy storage – is, said McAra, “forcing us to think differently about every-thing and about its consequences for the economy, society, politics, culture and the environment.”

It is, added McAra, also forcing the university to think differently about how it operates: “Universi-ties have traditionally hierarchical structures and used to work in departmental silos. We will be radi-cally multi-disciplinary and work in a much more ‘porous’ way with the outside world, working in collabo-ration with government, industry, and the wider community. We will also deliver a radical programme of genuinely life-long learning, using education as a means for social transformation.” l

When contagion is good

The Edinburgh Futures Institute will move to its new home, a transformed Old Royal Infirmary, in 2021

REGIONS

The EFI is one of the five hubs that form the Data-Driven Innovation initiative - part of the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal - which aims to help organisations and all citizens benefit from the data revolution. The initiative will increase the contribution of university research and in-demand graduate skills to the region’s economy, launching more spinout companies, attracting start-ups and established businesses, and driving public and private sector investment.

Edinburgh University hosts the

Data Driven Innovation

pressing questions,” said McAra.“The institute will spark new

connections, internally and ex-ternally, to bring together people and organisations from across the university and beyond. It will be where our world-class inter-disciplinary expertise in social and data science, the arts, and humanities meets the external organisations that are tackling society’s most pressing needs.

“By harnessing the revolution in data and artificial intelligence (AI), by bringing together different dis-

Bayes Centre, the EFI, Easter Bush campus, and Usher Institute for Population Health Sciences and Informatics. The National Robotari-um is a collaboration between Her-iot-Watt University and Edinburgh University. Supporting the work of the hubs, is a new super-computing facility for the secure and trust-worthy analysis of datasets, which will be unique within Europe. The inclusion of Data-Driven Innovation with the City Region Deal reflects the growing importance of data in economic growth, social change, and public services.


BY KEVIN O’SULLIVAN

A joint UK-Scottish programme of investment designed to reju-venate the economies of the ‘Tay Cities’ region of Scotland is insuf-ficient and needs a clearer focus according to one of the nation’s leading tech entrepreneurs.

Chris van der Kuyl, Chairman of 4J Studios, and the man who brought videogame Minecraft to the world’s consoles, described a £300m economic stimulus package to reinvigorate Dundee, Perth & Kinross, Angus and North East Fife as like a “knob of butter…spread across [a] plethora of worthy projects.” He said the ‘Heads of Terms’ agreement,

digital transformation here. It will make a nice little bit of seed fund-ing here and there but facing the challenge we are facing globally at the moment if the Tay Cities region is really serious about es-tablishing itself as a 21st century knowledge-based economy, we better not think the Tay Cities [Deal] is the answer to that. It’s a good little pre-cursor.”

When pressed what the strategy should be, he said afterwards: “£300m into the knowledge econ-omy still wouldn’t be enough; it’s spread across a plethora of worthy projects. We’ve tried to take a little knob of butter and to spread it as thinly as we can.”

Mr van der Kuyl questioned whether there was the right degree of leadership on the Deal, which has seen the UK and Scot-tish Governments commit to £150 million each in funding across 20 projects over the next 10-15 years in order to secure 6,000 jobs and attract £400m in investment;

some of the projects in develop-ment include £25m into life sci-ences; more than £60m into food production; £37m into tourism and culture; £20m into skills and £11.7m into cyber security.

He praised the Edinburgh & South East Scotland City Region Deal where Data Driven Innova-tion (DDI) - led by Edinburgh and Heriot Watt universities - has become such an important focus.

He added: “And what is the focus

signed by the governments in November last year, will make “zero difference” to the digital transformation of the region and that to truly stimulate growth in the knowledge economy of the area, the governments need to “pile in” billions into the higher education sector.

Mr van der Kuyl was speaking at a FutureScot Digital Cities & Regions conference at the V&A Dundee on Friday, March 1. To an audience of policy-makers, council leaders and some of the most influential figures on the Joint Committee steering the Deal, he said that “the Tay Cities Deal in and of itself is going to make absolutely zero difference to

Minecraft pioneer Chris van der Kuyl says £300m stimulus package is ‘spread too thinly’ across projects

Tech entrepreneur calls for more funding and clearer focus for Tay Cities Deal

DIGITAL CITIES

Chris van der Kuyl spoke at the V&A Dundee on March 1


Strategy’s social and economic aims

A partnership that will invest in digital infrastructure and 5G technology, a collaboration to improve digital inclusion and participation, and a ‘Smart City Challenge’ to stimulate innova-tion in businesses are among proposals in Glasgow City Council’s digital strategy.

The strategy has the aim of “maximising the contribution that digital technology can make in achieving inclusive economic growth” and “ensuring digital technology plays a transformative and innovative role in how future public services are delivered”.

“We are living in a time of huge and accelerating techno-logical change, and we need to ensure that Glasgow is ready to embrace the opportunities and meet the challenges that the digital revolution will bring for our economy and the future of our public services,” said Angus Millar, the council’s depute convener for economic growth.

“While Glasgow is already recognised as an innovative smart city with a strong and diverse digital tech sector, the strategy and the partnership working across the city that it underpins, will help us take the next steps in becoming a digital global leader.

“It will guide the city in tak-ing advantage of the opportuni-

[here]? And the answer is there’s none, as far as I can see. Every-body’s putting their hand up and asking and nobody’s been brave enough and there’s not enough leadership to say, ‘No, we’re not do-ing that.’ I actually wouldn’t care if that money was dedicated to, ‘Let’s make the infrastructure amazing’. Because there’s not enough money to do everything; this is the start, now how do we raise the money we need to take it to that level?”

Mr van der Kuyl said also that Abertay University, which is to be the focus of a new £11.7m ‘Cyber Quarter’, which will co-locate business and academia to as part of a nationwide cyber security strat-egy, is an emerging hub for that in-dustry, but that it was “way down” the rankings when compared to computer gaming, for which it has been a global forerunner.

He said also that places like Belfast – whose Queen’s Univer-sity hosts the Centre for Secure Information Technologies – had already stolen a march in estab-

ties digital technology offers to improve our public services and create inclusive economic growth that people across Glasgow can benefit from.”

Among the 74 actions to be delivered is:l The roll-out of more than 50,000 iPads to the city’s schoolchildren and upgrade to school WiFil The introduction of more ‘Smart City’ infrastructure such as intelligent street lightingl A commitment to open datal New work to identify digital technology skills gaps and the future digital skills needs of Glasgow’s economyl The development of a 3D strategy to develop 3D building models to support planning and regeneration in Glasgow

“Glasgow’s digital tech sector is the largest in Scotland, and the city has achieved global recogni-tion as a leading smart city with notable innovations in data ana-lytics and big data,” the council.

In 2013, Glasgow won a £24m award, beating 30 other UK cit-ies, to develop Future City Dem-onstrator programmes in areas such as smart infrastructure and smart energy. They have acted as a catalyst for the digital transfor-mation of public services, said the council, in turn attracting further investment in smart city innovation. l

FutureScot’s Glasgow Digital City Conference https://bit.ly/2uJ5JA4

Supporting public services and inclusive growth

lishing itself as a “phenomenal re-gional hub” for cybersecurity with operational capabilities in audit as well as software development.

Mandy Haeburn-Little, Chief Executive of the Scottish Business Resilience Centre (SBRC), who has been instrumental in the develop-ment of a cyber security strategy for Scotland, said Abertay had a deserved reputation for its prowess in ethical hacking and that the fact that its students had been in demand from cyber security com-panies across the UK was testa-ment to that fact. She also said that she was not averse to going back to the governments to ask for more funding where it was needed.

She said: “We’re not there yet but I don’t think that should stop us. I’m not here for small vision; I am interested in the Tay Cities Deal being part of a much bigger na-tional and international landscape.

She added: “I think we need to keep it an open and very challenging conversation around funding.” l Ensuring digital plays a transformative role. Picture: Artur Kraft

REGIONS

The Tay Cities Deal will unlock £300m in

funding for the region. But is it enough?

18 | futurescot | spring 2019

Celebrating 10 years of Blipfoto which, by 2014, had become a worldwide community of daily photojournalists who had collectively documented six million days of human life

By Joe Tree

If, in Internet years, we’re reaching Postmodernity then 2004 was very much the Middle Ages; Facebook was still the pas-time of a nerdy Harvard student, Twitter and Instagram had yet to twinkle in their founders’ eyes, and online dating was something only the weirdest of weirdos did.

So when I registered blipfoto.com, built a simple website and started posting a new photo every day, it was a pretty unusual thing to do. Perhaps even a little weird. I had no real aspirations for it. On the contrary, it was just the latest in a long line of nerdy online projects I’d undertaken to provide a distraction from the stresses of running a busy digital agency (the previous being a foul-mouthed swearing ver-sion of the classic eighties game Simon).

There’s some irony then that 10 years and 3,652 photos later Blip-foto had become a full-time job for fourteen people and reshaped

what I wish I’d done differently. I’ve never been big on regrets so that’s a tough question to an-swer—but there are certainly four lessons I’ll always carry with me:l First, Blipfoto happened almost by accident—I didn’t set out to build a product or a new busi-ness. It’s never bad advice to cre-ate something for yourself if you want others to want it too (Slack being a perfect recent example) but, because we’d established a large user base before taking it seriously as a business, we inadvertently stored up some big problems. To take proper control of growth it’s vital to articulate a clear value proposition to a particular type of person. But if two-thirds of an already sizeable user base doesn’t identify with the way you position the product

The Next Big Thing (part two?)

my whole identity. My fledgling idea had unexpectedly blossomed into a worldwide community of daily photojournalists, who’d col-lectively documented six million days of human life. We were re-ceiving a million visits a month, we’d won a Bafta Award, I’d met the Queen and picked up Steve Wozniak as a penpal. The British Library deemed our users’ con-tent of such historical importance it began archiving everything for the benefit of future generations. We’d raised more than a mil-lion pounds in investment, and I was jet-setting around America speaking at conferences in Bev-erly Hills alongside Tony Blair and Will.i.am while negotiating a partnership deal with one of the world’s biggest photography brands.

Four short months later, when a crucial round of investment failed to materialise, we ran out of cash and the board took the decision to appoint a liquidator. I suddenly found myself jobless, heading home to Leith on the

number 14 bus wondering what the hell just happened.

Over the following days and weeks, I discovered the striking parallels between a startup failing and a close relative dying. You find yourself dealing with sombre suited men who’ve made unusual career choices, friends offering condolences and concern for your mental wellbeing. Official docu-ments have to be produced and the contents of neglected cup-boards sorted out. It was a hard pill to swallow but came with a very welcome side order of relief.

What unfolded with Blipfoto over the next nine months is a tale for another time, but its users eventually crowdfunded just enough cash to set up a Commu-nity Interest Company and take ownership of the product. They now run the service purely for the benefit of its community—some-thing I think is still unique in social media and, at least for me, a fitting final chapter.

I’ve been asked many times

From raising a million and speaking in Beverley Hills alongside Will.i.am to liquidation and the Number 14 bus to Leith; a cautionary tale from Scotland’s start-up scene

cover story


ficult to grow. The harder we tried the worse the results.

l Second, although we raised a fairly sizeable chunk of funding, it came through five separate rounds of investment over a peri-od of just four years. Any founder who’s raised equity investment knows how much time and effort is involved in courting investors, agreeing a deal and getting it over the line (for those that haven’t, it’s at least three times as much as your worst estimate). Doing that as often as I did was insane. I spent more than half of my time fundraising—time that could and should have been spent on the product and growth. It would have been more sensible to raise enough to buy the time to get a handle on growth, or steer clear of investment altogether. A small

initial raise set us on a trajectory I simply didn’t anticipate.

l Third, while the support and incentives on offer to Scottish startups is envied around the world, it can have a downside. When you take into account EIS relief, the board and consultancy fees often imposed by inves-tors, and the commissions angel groups partnering with the SIB Co-investment Fund routinely deduct from your investment, it’s entirely possible for an investor to find him or herself in profit regardless of the success of the venture. Having investors without any real skin in the game exert-ing influence is a particularly unhealthy place for a founder—especially when you’re expected to risk everything against future success. We had some brilliant

investors whose support was unconditional (literally), but I’ve had first-hand experience of this scenario playing out too.

l Fourth and finally, we have a wonderful, thriving tech startup scene in Scotland, but it’s easy to get a bit of investment and recognition within that commu-nity and feel like a winner—the success of your business will naturally follow, right? Wrong. It’s no coincidence that few of us heard of this weird startup called Skyscanner until they were doing a million in monthly revenue; in-stead of being seen in all the right places they’d been focussing their energy exactly where it needed to be—on the product, users and growth.

When the Blipfoto fallout began to settle I discovered what it

means to be middle class, middle aged and unemployed—it’s called ‘consulting’. I’m really enjoy-ing the opportunity to bring some of my experience to bear on other companies and was particularly fortunate to join a small core team transforming the Scottish Government’s CivTech programme from a hair-brained idea into one of the most ground-breaking tech accelerators in Europe.

Meanwhile—and with my four points above very firmly in mind—I’ve been quietly beaver-ing away on the Next Big Thing, which should start to see the light of day later this year. In the startup world we’re told failure is more of an elixir than a poison, I guess I’ll find out soon enough if that’s true. l

“Over the following days and weeks, I discovered the striking parallels between a startup failing and a close relative dying”


Heralding an era in which diagnosis is pre-emptive, driven by risk profiling, and where treatments are personalised, maximising efficacy and minimising side effects

BY DAVID WELLER

Cancer remains one of the great challenges of our time. It is the second leading cause of death globally and kills about nine million people every year. The number of new cases is expected to rise by about 70% over the next two decades. A highlight from the NCRI conference held in Glasgow last autumn was a session which asked the question: are data-driv-en approaches the way forward in tackling these challenges?

The task for the session’s three presenters (Andrew Morris, Richard Martin and Eva Morris) wasn’t insignificant: every single cancer patient can generate nearly one terabyte of biomedical data. Data come from a vast array of sources – including patient his-tory, hospital and primary care and diagnostic imaging. Recently, the gathering of detailed genetic information on both patients and their tumours has become far more commonplace – as has the use of techniques such as ma-chine learning with the capacity to mine the growing mountains of data at our disposal. The hope is that somewhere within these huge datasets lie clues to better diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

The session explored the cancer data landscape from three

evant to single cancer (in this case bowel cancer) are brought together and interrogated. ‘Big data’ come in many shapes and forms; patients generate data when they visit GPs with symp-toms, undertake screening tests, have investigations and undergo treatment. Vital in big data is linkage – for example, linking bowel screening data with cancer registries and other databases can provide the intelligence needed to optimise many aspects of this national screening programme. Other examples include analy-ses of colonoscopy effectiveness and outcomes, and monitor-ing of treatment practices such as radiotherapy and adjuvant chemotherapy. Recognition of the importance of this kind of cancer intelligence is growing; we are awash with routinely-collected cancer data, and Eva illustrated how the potential of these data can be unleashed to improve patient outcomes.

So, how should the UK respond to the challenge of data-driven innovation? There’s recognition that much of the data we collect is under-utilised – it’s potential to improve patient outcomes can only be realised through wide-scale collective effort. But health data are collected by multiple

Data; the new hope for cancer control?

agencies which don’t necessar-ily link up. It varies in quality, it isn’t standardised, and there are complex issues of data owner-ship and patient confidentiality. To help us through this conun-drum, Andrew Morris described the establishment of Health Data Research UK (HDRUK), which he leads. Andrew reminded us of the prize in cancer control; a new era in which diagnosis is pre-emptive, driven by risk profiling, where treatments are personalised, maximising efficacy and minimising side effects. He described the ‘new social con-tract’ needed to underpin these changes; where data are shared efficiently and safely, respecting patient autonomy.

For data to be useful clini-

fascinating perspectives. Richard Martin, from Bristol University, tackled the issue of genomic information – almost every day, it seems, scientists discover an as-sociation between ‘snips’ of genes (SNPs) and various cancer traits. Genome-wide-association studies (GWAS’s) are slowly uncovering these associations, but we face a problem – how do we make sense of all these data, and how can we tease out the individual contribu-tions of genes, the environment and lifestyle?

Richard reported on the ‘MR-Base’ database – it contains 45.6 billion SNP-trait associations from >5200 GWAS studies, on >4 million individuals. It supports ‘Mendelian randomisation’ stud-ies which can examine important associations between genes and cancer traits, and explore genetic influences on treatment effi-cacy and side effects – all within weeks rather than the years it takes for traditional epidemio-logical studies. It’s an important step forward in genetic data utilisation, with the potential to develop personalised cancer risk and treatment models with far greater efficiency.

Eva Morris, of Leeds University, demonstrated what can be achieved when datasets rel-

HEALTH


Judge us on the benefits to people

BY GEOFF HUGGINS

A year has passed since the Scottish Government published its Digital Health and Care Strat-egy. The Strategy highlighted the challenges with existing technology that make it difficult for clinicians and care staff to have all the information they need to offer the highest quality of care; information is both siloed by care setting and by organisation.

The Strategy was clear in its commitment to do things dif-ferently so that we can make real-time data and information available to clinicians, social care staff and citizens, when they need it, wherever they are, and in an appropriate and secure way. That means that the tech-nology has to operate as it if is a single system. When the system works like that, we will improve quality, access and the experi-ence of both staff and citizens. It will support the work on key commitments such as elective centres, where citizens will get the highest quality of care, as well as simply make things like renewing a prescription or booking an appointment easier.

Following the publication of the Strategy, a team – NES Digi-tal Service (NDS) – was created in NHS Education Scotland in June of last year to take forward the work to create a National Digital Platform. Since then, we have been working to recruit the team, develop our approach and begin to build both the core ar-chitecture and the first products.

cally we need scale – that is, data from multiple sources from huge numbers of patients need to be combined, particularly for un-common conditions (such as rare cancers). Accordingly, HDRUK will create a “thriving, UK-wide network of inter-disciplinary re-search expertise that will disrupt traditional science and transcend disciplines, by enabling new scientific discovery from large multi-dimensional datasets”. It sounds ambitious, but HDRUK is up and running – critically, cancer needs to feature highly in UK-wide efforts such as these in the years ahead, or we risk falling behind data-led improvements in other common chronic illnesses

All in all, a fascinating session. It seems the challenge is less in

We are taking an iterative approach to the work and have moved quickly to develop and test our early products at a small scale before we widen out both their availability and scope. That ap-proach allows us to work directly with those people who will use and rely on the product to ensure that what we build works, and where it does not meet expecta-tions, quickly adapt it before making it generally available.

Our first product will be a digital version of the ‘ReSPECT’ process, which helps people communicate how they wish to be treated if they are unable to communicate in an emer-gency. This product will go into testing in parts of Scotland this Summer. It is built on the core architecture of the platform, which has also been under development, and that core architecture will be used for all of our work.

At this stage we are working to test our presumptions, estab-lish the team to take forward the work and build relationships with the people who work in the system and the people who use it. We think that the work that we do and the degree to which it benefits people will be the best way to judge the NDS. l

Geoff Huggins is Director of NES Digital Service. He is due to speak at FutureScot’s Digital Health & Care on April 25 in Glasgow.

‘Starting with a skateboard’, See page 34

Progressing the National Digital Platform – one year on

accumulating patient data but, rather, the ability to properly manage and analyse it all effec-tively. We also face challenges over issues of data standardization and how data are collected, stored, and studied; and data quality is, of course, influenced by human factors – ‘big data’ approaches de-pend on quality and completeness of data. Nevertheless, data-driven technologies have the potential to deliver tailor-made prevention strategies and treatments to pa-tients – the challenge is determin-ing how we can work together to reap these rewards. l

David Weller is Professor of General Practice at the Centre for Population Health Sciences, Edinburgh University.

Health Data Research UK is creating a network of

inter-disciplinary research expertise that will disrupt

traditional science


Anderson Strathern polled more than 250 senior people across industriesBY BRUCE FARQUHAR

Brexit and beyond will continue to present many challenges and opportunities for Scottish busi-ness leaders and whatever the deal, many aspects of Scottish industry are touched by Brexit.

That’s why we decided to take the pulse of business Scotland. We’ve polled over 250 senior people from across our industries to understand how ready we are for Brexit.

We also looked at the differenc-es between the two largest Scot-tish economic centres Edinburgh and Glasgow. Here is a snapshot of how Scotland plc feels pre-Brexit, taken from our recent Scottish business research white paper.

How much do we rely on the EU?The EU is the third most impor-tant market for Scottish compa-nies and the EU workforce is key for the smooth running of our businesses. What’s more, our companies think that leaving the EU will have a negative impact on the economy.

There is a nervousness around what may happen to our EU workforce, employment is the largest exposure point. And clients have given us feedback on the need for a transition period to allow the smooth running of

business. More than a third of Scottish companies rely heavily on highly-skilled EU staff and almost a quarter rely heavily on low-skilled EU staff. Regardless of how Brexit develops, there will be a continued demand for an EU workforce in Scotland. More than a quarter of Scottish business’ are expecting to recruit EU workers, post Brexit, than they plan to recruit from non-EU countries.

Scottish business confidenceOpinion is divided about corpo-rate Scotland’s confidence under the various Brexit scenarios – a no-deal exit, a negotiated exit and another referendum. We discov-ered a 60/40 split in confidence levels, under a no-deal, and our temperature chart illustrates this.

How prepared are we?It is clear from the survey results, and it has also been widely re-ported by our Chambers of Com-merce, that SMEs across Scotland need the most help in identifying risks and preparing for Brexit. Only 26% of SMEs in Scotland are completely aware of the tariffs and quotas they may face.

This is especially true when it comes to deciphering what World Trade Organisation rules might mean. We are finding that larger

companies are more aware of barriers to exporting and importing.

There is clearly a lot of work to be done to get our businesses up to speed. With many Scottish companies relying on goods from the EU, supply chain disrup-tion is a key concern, and this is reflected in our poll results on Brexit exposure points.

Glasgow and EdinburghGlasgow businesses are notice-ably more reliant on the EU, with nearly two thirds identifying it as a key market, compared to under a half of Edinburgh businesses. Glasgow is also much more reli-ant on an EU workforce, perhaps reflecting the nature of busi-ness in the west. Edinburgh are ahead of the game when it comes to assessing Brexit risks, while Glasgow is more practical, being ahead on scenario planning.

Stockpiling, something which also affects the commercial property market, is being carried out by a third of businesses with a further third ‘planning to’. Glasgow and Edinburgh follow this trend. With regards to busi-

ness confidence, Glasgow is much more uncertain than Edinburgh. We are finding many organisa-tions are ‘battening down the hatches’ and ‘waiting to see’ before making a move.

Do we have a crystal ball?We also asked our businesses to forecast their turnover across the various Brexit scenarios over one, three and five years. And 43% of all firms we surveyed said for one year after Brexit they expect a decrease in turnover. We uncov-ered that remaining in the EU is, at present, the best outcome for company turnover. Over the long term - five years - well over half of our respondents are forecast-ing an increase under ‘remain’.

Whilst we don’t have a crystal ball on the outcome of Brexit, we can tell overall that unpre-dictability is affecting business confidence. You can read our full Brexit report – Taking the temperature of Scottish business on our online Brexit Hub at www.andersonstrathern.co.uk l

Bruce Farquhar is Chair of Anderson Strathern.

Taking the temperature of Scottish business

Unanswered questions - Prime Minister Theresa May at an EU Council meeting

BREXIT

Very confident 31%

Somewhat confident 29%

Not very confident 25%

Not confident at all 15%

Business as usual in a no-deal scenario? Gives a 60/40 split


Exploring the power of new technologies to transform the way Scotland’s local authorities deliver services

BY WILLIAM PEAKIN

A ground-breaking event has challenged the way local gov-ernment thinks about digital technologies in providing services to citizens.

The event was delivered by Scotland Excel, the centre of pro-curement expertise for Scottish local government, in partnership with the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government. It featured keynote speakers from local government and industry experts. Delegates also took part in inter-active sessions which explored the power of new technologies and discussed their application in a local government environment.

The sessions focused on three key areas which have the poten-tial for a range of applications across local authority services:

Business Insights: How real-time information from multiple sources across the council can be brought together to support short-term tactical responses and long-term strategic decision making.

Digital Accounts: How a citizen’s identity can be veri-fied remotely, in a secure online environment, enabling councils to improve the efficiency of their processes and provide convenient access to services for citizens.

Case Workers: How mobile staff working with citizens in the community, can be provided with remote access to case work files and the ability to record and upload new data during visits.

The event was hosted by lead-ing technology company, DXC, which provided access to its Digital Transformation Centre, allowing delegates to visualise and accelerate their organisation’s digital transformation journey.

Hugh Carr, Head of Strategic Procurement at Scotland Excel commented: “Collaboration is central to digital transformation in local government. This event was designed to help delegates think about how new tech-nologies can be applied to service delivery and help them take a significant step forward in speci-fying their system requirements. As the Centre of Procurement Expertise, we are working with the Digital Office to implement a range of innovative procurement approaches which will provide access to partners that can deliver the right digital solutions for the local government sector.”

Carr added: “Local authorities have been facing unprecedented challenges in recent years. They are balancing a real terms fund-ing cut of 9.6% over the last eight years with increasing demand,

particularly from an aging popu-lation. For some time, councils have been asked to do more in terms of service delivery with less resources. Now more than ever, there is need to increase focus on business transformation, consider new ways of delivering services, and work with communities to provide digital access to services for citizens.

That is why finding ways to harness the power of digital tech-nology is so important.

“We need to work together to embrace the opportunities that the digital agenda brings. Col-laboration within local govern-ment IT is being driven by the Digital Office and supported by Scotland Excel and is definitely encouraging a shift from legacy systems to new ways of working. Councils are increasingly learning and benefiting from each other as digital transformation becomes more and more integral to their service areas.”

Martyn Wallace, Scottish local government’s Chief Digital Of-ficer, said: “Digital for us means user by design, technology by

Delivering on digital

default, not the other way around. The challenge we see in a lot of businesses - private and public - is that a new technology becomes available and they try to create a business out of the technology, rather than look-ing at the problem they want to solve first. The Digital Office is a proponent of the Scottish ap-proach to service design, which is focused on making the most of user stories and research in designing technology that can improve certain pain points.

“Digital is the last lever local government can pull to get the savings and efficiencies they need. The fact is no-one will ever truly deliver ‘digital’; however, the transformation we are see-ing is as much an evolution as well as revolution. It is about putting digital solutions all the way through the business. This means frontline staff having the right tools, equipment and data to help them make better deci-sions in the field, as well as col-lecting that data to help senior managers make improvements elsewhere.” l

Suhki Gill and Andrea Bolden, DXC Technology, Cllr John

Shaw and Hugh Carr, Scotland Excel, Martyn Wallace, Digital

Office for Scottish Local Government.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT


Scotland must address eight key issues to boost internationalisationBY WILLIAM PEAKIN

Scotland needs to address core issues in order to seize export op-portunities and build an economy fit for the future, according to a study by the University of Strathclyde’s Fraser of Allander Institute. The Scotland in 2050: Realising Our Global Potential report canvassed the views of more than 100 business leaders, industry bodies and representa-tives of public and third sector organisations.

The Institute identified key trends, opportunities and risks that Scotland needs to respond to in order to compete in a rapidly evolving global economy. Cru-cially, the global nature, of these issues will be important, irrespective of Brexit or other forms of constitutional change.

The report, commissioned by the law firm Shepherd and Wedderburn to coincide with its 250th anniversary, makes eight key recommendations that ad-dress low productivity, the skills gap, lack of strategic export focus, outdated infrastructure, political short-termism and the potential for growing pressure on public services as a result of the revised budget arrangement agreed by the Scottish and UK Governments.

The report concludes that Scot-land needs:l infrastructure, both physi-cal and digital, that is fit for the futurel an economy that harnesses and trades on knowledgel an ecosystem that nurtures and retains businesses of scalel an appropriately skilled work-force led by effective manage-ment/leadership teamsl greater collaboration between

academia and industry to com-mercialise innovationl a national strategy focusing resource and investment on ac-tivities with growth potentiall a more joined-up, collabora-tive approach to entering new marketsl policy (at local, national and UK level) that is longer term in its objectives

Ivan McKee, the Scottish Government’s Trade Minister, commented: “We welcome this report which sets out some of the challenges and opportunities for Scotland in internationalisa-tion and is in line with much of our thinking and future plans. Improving Scotland’s export performance is key to Scotland’s economic performance.”

He added: “I want to do ev-erything in my power to support businesses in Scotland sell more products and services interna-tionally. That is why the Scottish Government is launching our export growth plan, A Trading Nation, in May. It will refocus support for exporters to where it will have most impact and is backed by £20m of Scottish Government funding over three

years. The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring businesses in Scotland are supported to em-bark on their export journey.”

Professor Graeme Roy, Director of the Fraser of Allander Institute, said: “Our economic analysis and engagement with business has shown Scotland has key strengths that should give the country opti-mism for the future. But in many areas there is scope for improve-ment; our export base is too nar-row and we lag behind many of our competitors. If Scotland is to take advantage of the changing nature of the global economy in the com-ing decades, it will need to boost its level of internationalisation.”

Dr Siobhán Jordan, Director of Interface, the body linking busi-nesses with academic institutions, was one of the 100-plus industry figures who contributed to the report. She said: “It is a long-term view, which is interesting but also very necessary. We may be on the right trajectory but there is a need to organise around key sectors and really harness and trade on the knowledge economy with infrastructure – both physical and digital – underpinning that. Growing businesses of scale will

be key. Essential to that is a skilled and forward-thinking workforce.

“It’s hugely important that our education system, in consider-ing the workforce of the future, builds on the work being done in both intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship. The graduates of tomorrow need to fully grasp, both as employees and as entre-preneurs, how innovation drives forward businesses of scale. This spirit of innovation is critical for our public services as well.”

Shepherd and Wedderburn is hosting a series of events in Ed-inburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen in May to discuss the report’s findings. “Despite the chal-lenges it identifies, this research shows that there is much to be optimistic about,” said Paul Hally, Chairman of Shepherd and Wedderburn. “Scotland has a proud tradition of innovation and entrepreneurialism which, if properly harnessed, will see us seize the considerable opportuni-ties ahead.” l

Download the Scotland in 2050: Realising Our Global Potential Final Report at shepwedd.com/2050

Economic blueprint welcomedHarnessing the

knowledge economy - design student

sketching a 3D character. Picture

Abertay University

ECONOMY


Pioneering 400 years ago, Registers of Scotland continues to be so todayBY KENNY CRAWFORD

As home of the world’s oldest national land register – the Gen-eral Register of Sasine – Scotland can be proud of the pioneering work that was done here to pro-tect the citizen and secure their rights over their land more than 400 years ago.

Back in the day, land transac-tions took a literal form; it would be marked symbolically by hand-ing over a clump of ground or a stone – backed up, or course, by legal protections. Our methods of transacting have altered radically, but the protections for the citizens lie at the core of our work. While we are proud of that rich history at Registers of Scotland (RoS), we are ensuring that we honour it in the best way possible – by continuing to evolve and innovate, striving for the best possible land and property registration services for the people of Scotland and the wider Scottish economy.

RoS is in the midst of an ongo-ing digital transformation, with the intention of progressing from being a historically paper (or soil!) based organisation, to one that does everything digitally as its preferred option.

Key outcomes will be the automation of services to boost efficiency and quality, while at the same time reducing risk. Cru-cially, we are developing all of this

with the customer at the heart of service and product design.

Digital innovation is embedded in the work that we are doing at Registers of Scotland, and we are proud to be playing our part in the delivery of the Scottish Gov-ernment’s digital strategy, which sets out steps for ensuring that Scotland is a vibrant, inclusive, open and outward looking digital nation.

At the heart of that is the principle that the digital approach must be fit for purpose and deliver excellent public services that are what customers want and need.

Our land and property infor-mation service – ScotLIS – and our Digital Discharge Service, which is primarily used for removing repaid mortgages from title sheets, were both developed with stakeholders involved at every stage. The result is two first-rate digital services that have been positively received.

ScotLIS, our online land and information system allows citizens, communities, profes-sionals and business users to find out comprehensive informa-tion about any piece of land or

property in Scotland with a single online enquiry. Additional layers and functions are being added to ScotLIS every week, based on consultation and testing with the customers to ensure that they are fit for purpose.

Then there’s our digital discharge service, DDS, that enables the discharge of mortgage securities. Thanks to DDS, we’ve transi-tioned from a paper process that could take weeks to travel be-tween the lender the solicitor and ourselves before the application was processed, to a fully digital replacement in which the cus-tomer journey for both solicitors and lenders can be completed in minutes.

The digital services that we’re developing ensure that no area of Scotland finds it harder to access services than any other area. Using digital means that whether businesses are in rural areas or in urban areas, they can access the same services, at the same speed, with the same results.

Our approach was wel-comed by the Minister of Digital Economy and Public Finance, Kate Forbes, when she visited

From the ground up

our HQ towards the end of last year. She noted the progress that we are making on delivering our digital agenda, and stressed the importance of ensuring that the end-user is at the heart of the development of digital services and that “we don’t use technol-ogy for its own sake but we use technology to improve the lives, ultimately, of those who are using our services.”

We couldn’t agree more. That’s why services like ScotLIS and DDS were developed with cus-tomers and stakeholders involved at every stage, and we are mindful of the fact that different commu-nities may have different require-ments, and we strive to support their needs.

If you are interested in Scottish land and property data you can find a range of our free data and statistics such as our House Price statistics and House Price Index on www.ros.gov.uk. l

Kenny Crawford is Business Development Director at Registers of Scotland

You can view ScotLIS at www.scotlis.ros.gov.uk.

Digital innovation is embedded at RoS.

Picture Maria Agudo López

BUILT ENVIRONMENT


Never has technology offered so much potential to improve how we plan, invest, deliver and manage our infrastructureBY PAUL DODD

Our infrastructure supports our communities, public services, wellbeing and economic growth. It encompasses all assets that enable the delivery of public ser-vices including schools, hospitals, transport, digital connectivity and housing.

Tomorrow’s infrastructure will be shaped by the creative use of data. The connecting of new and emerging technologies founded on robust information will change what we do, how we do it, and the outcomes achieved.

So, it is an exciting and im-portant time to be involved in the infrastructure sector. Never has technology offered so much potential to improve how we plan, invest, deliver and manage our infrastructure. And the Scot-tish Government’s step change in investment for infrastructure provides us with an opportunity to accelerate the adoption of the technologies we need. “On current estimates that would mean around £7 billion of extra infrastructure investment by the end of the next Parliament. That is investment that will deliver jobs and allow our communi-ties to flourish and businesses to grow and export more.”- Scottish Government Programme for Gov-ernment, [September] 2018.

New infrastructure technologies

are emerging with pace. These will improve how we develop and deliver infrastructure and help to make the buildings we use more efficient and effective. 3D design, virtual reality, building sensors, laser scanning and cloud-based data sharing, are only some examples of technologies being applied in innovative ways.

The market place is growing between infrastructure clients and technology companies. Between 2013 and 2018, globally, $18billion of investment has been attracted to the construction technology market place. McKinsey [Septem-ber] 18. The trend is one of con-tinuing technology development and a step change in investment. This pace of change brings oppor-tunities as well as challenges.

Given its demand potential and collective buying power, the public sector in Scotland is well placed to help shape things going forward. Our focus will be on improving the performance of the infrastructure created, improv-ing delivery, and improving the performance, productivity and sustainability of industry.

The platform for developing the change across the public sector in Scotland is Building Informa-tion Modelling (BIM). BIM is the process of accurately creating, managing and exchanging digital information within the built environment. It is creating a new capability – focussed on data and technology - for improving infrastructure performance. The adoption of BIM processes will help things move faster and in a more informed manner.

The public sector BIM pro-gramme in Scotland is led by the Scottish Futures Trust on behalf of Scottish Government and has delivered new tools, guidance and policy. This has been done in col-laboration with industry through the work of the Construction Scot-

improve services and environmen-tal performance.

But to make best use of these new technologies the pace of adoption and improving capabil-ity needs to increase. In parallel to the ongoing BIM programme, SFT will seek to do more to address these challenges with the devel-opment of a new Infrastructure Technology Navigator. This new platform will complement the ex-isting set of BIM tools. It will raise awareness and it will support the adoption of these important tech-nologies by the public sector.

Through the investment, leader-ship and resources available within Scotland, the platform for deliver-ing a step change in technology is in place to increase the perfor-mance of our infrastructure and improve the services they deliver., it is what we do now that will shape tomorrows infrastructure. l

Paul Dodd is Head of Infrastructure Technology at the Scottish Futures Trust

3D computer modelling technology in the design stage reduces errors and improves stakeholder engagement

BUILT ENVIRONMENT

land Innovation Centre who with the support of Scottish Enterprise are delivering a programme of training to support industry move to a more digital way of working. Within the first year of launching the Scottish Government BIM pol-icy and SFT guidance portal, £1bn of public sector projects within Scotland were implementing BIM on new construction projects.

We are already seeing a lot of new applications such as mapping software at the planning stage to improve investment decisions, 3D computer modelling technology supporting the design stage to im-prove productivity and stakehold-er engagement, 360 degree photo capture technology to monitor construction progress and quality. Finally for the management stage, new sensor technology can pro-vide live feedback to improve how we operate and utilise our assets to

A step change in infrastructure and tech


Knowledge and expertise widened through e-learning optionThe use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) level 2 was introduced by the Scottish Government in April 2017 with a view to encouraging its adoption across public sector contracts. The overall objective is to increase efficiencies, reduce costs and promote collaboration within the Scottish construction industry. It is important to highlight that BIM is not only for public sec-tor contracts - but can offer the same benefits to all construc-tion projects when successfully implemented.

At Construction Scotland In-novation Centre (CSIC) we are keen for construction to trans-form and improve, making better use of digitisation and automa-tion to drive greater profitabil-ity, productivity, efficiency and sustainability. BIM is a key part of that transformation, supporting buildings that are greener, more efficient and more intelligently designed. With increasing aware-ness of BIM and a higher number of tenders specifying BIM, it is increasing in importance.

Our BIM e-learning platform has been developed with support from Scottish Enterprise and in conjunction with a range of industry partners. It will allow people who can’t get along to our BIM workshops and seminars, due either to time constraints or location issues, to log on and

a further 200 professionals have joined our online BIM discussion forum. We hope that the e-learn-ing option will allow even more participants to benefit from our knowledge and expertise. So, if you’ve always meant to start your BIM journey but just haven’t had the time, then log on and learn – now you don’t even need to leave your office to find out why forward-thinking construction businesses are adopting BIM. l

Find out more about CSIC’s BIM in Practice programme, and access the e-learning platform, visit http://www.cs-ic.org/bim. All our BIM events are carried out in partnership with other organisations. Interested in collaborating? Contact Lisa Deane on 0141 212 5250 or email [email protected] for more information.

BUILT ENVIRONMENT

learn at their own pace. If ques-tions arise while completing a module, they can either join our LinkedIn discussion forum and ask an expert or consult our on-line library of useful information and content.

To help encourage engagement with BIM at a senior level, CSIC has launched BIM 4 Business Leaders with Scottish Enterprise support. This 20-minute online learning module will walk you through the purpose, opportuni-ties and benefits available with BIM. This module breaks down the benefits of adopting BIM for an organisation and the reasons why you should consider this process.

Since we began running BIM events, over 400 businesses have benefited from the support avail-able through our workshops and

BIM’s key role in transformation

Our conference is the leading event of the year for built environment stakeholders. We address the challenges of creating better asset management strategies and explore the opportunities of digital innovation. The objective is simple: to maximise the utility of property, reduce costs and enhance the quality of data relating to assets and estates – which will ultimately lead to better decision-making and investment opportunities. Showcasing best practice from early adopters and how it is revolutionising the three fundamentals of the built environment: information, transactions, and management.

Asset & Estate ManagementSeptember 2019, Glasgow

Following the success of this year’s Conference which was supported by Construction Scotland Innovation Centre, SFT & The Scottish Government our 2020 BIM & Digital Infrastructure will chart progress of the UK’s ambition to create a data-driven approach to the built environment and a digital economy. Join our BIM specialists from across the public and private sector to see how the construction industry and operations management sector is approaching social and economic infrastructure through the use of digital technology.

BIM & Digital Infrastructure06 February 2020, Glasgow

For further information about the conferences or sponsorship opportunities please contact [email protected] or call 0131 357 4475.

Leaders in Digital Built

Environment Conferences

Towards a digital built Scotland


BY NATHAN SAVORY

In simple terms, reality capture devices are instruments which capture real world data through imagery and pointclouds. This data is then utilised within CAD/BIM software to create an exact digital twin of the real-world. With digitised information there is an opportunity to add significant value throughout every stage of the BIM process, from saving money and time on projects to minimising risk and error, while acting as a tool to accelerate and enhance already adopted workflows.

Reality capture comes in many forms such as mobile mapping, hand held devices and terrestrial laser scanners. The choice of hardware, software and workflow is all dependant on the requirements of those using the data. Reality capture principles fall in line with those echoed throughout the BIM mandate, as the data acts as translucent truthful information for all to coordinate and work from together in a collaborative environment.

As-Built Modelling As-Built modelling takes a great deal of time and often mistakes, encountered from poor survey information, result in return-ing to site. Using terrestrial laser scanners to produce highly accu-rate pointclouds, to be taken into environments such as Revit with ease, enables confidence that the information collected is correct and true to reality, avoiding the need to return to site.

With an arsenal of software solutions available with visual aids, feature extraction, the abil-ity to intelligently segment the data amongst the many tools, converting this data into a BIM model is an easy process. Soft-ware can come in the form of standalone modelling packages or plugins such as cloudworx for the likes of Revit, Autocad, BricsCAD & MicroStation. For buildings more complex in nature, which you may not be able to digitise easily through standalone survey information, using pointclouds enables you to create mesh objects to facilitate the modelling of intricate build-ing elements.

Deviation Reporting and Clash DetectionCapturing the as-constructed envi-ronment, used in both construction and manufacturing sectors, allows us to analyse and compare the data against the intended design model. Intelligent surface analysis software, such as 3DReshaper, enables us to analyse surfaces, such as floor flat-ness, verticality analysis and inspec-tion of profiles for a range of require-ments. This information is crucial in the analysis of structures or, by comparing as-constructed data to design models within software such as Revit, to rectify the design model for changes or remedial works which must remain on site.

To create an accurate digital twin, and for later efficient use for post life cycle asset management the design model should then be updated to be in line with as-constructed information.

A popular use for pointclouds is clash detection; comparing the design model in its constructed package, or with external software packages, enables clash detection information to be reported and actioned on site, thus reducing the cost of design errors.

Data Sharing Leica Geosystems stores data within data vaults which enables segmentation out to the desired parties through intelligent data management. Software such as Jetstream, directly links into BIM software. Having captured the real-world environment, we can use this digital portal of informa-tion for asset management pro-cesses as we “geo tag” true to life information to specific elements/areas within our data through text, links and documents.

Reality capture is not just for the skilled individual as this data is easily accessible and interacted with for new users. It can link manufacturers’ data for products to real-world elements or even link to libraries such as NBS where we can see product data and downloadable BIM models. l

Nathan Savory, Reality Capture Account Manager for Leica Geosystems, is an Architectural Technologist with vast experience across a broad range of construction environments.

https://leica-geosystems.com/

Using terrestrial laser scanners enables

confidence that the information collected

is correct

BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Translucent truthful information Understanding the value of reality capture and the outputs they bring to the BIM sector


Plans for ‘family of houses’ using new techAn innovative housing construction method which could help to bring down the cost for house-buyers is being investigated by research-ers at Robert Gordon University’s Scott Sutherland School of Archi-tecture and Built Environment.

In collaboration with the Construction Scotland Innova-tion Centre and timber engineer-ing firm Glulam Solutions, the project will focus on the robotic fabrication of a cross-laminated timber (CLT) joint.

Currently, most construction takes place as manual assembly onsite, which can lead to delays, inaccuracies, material defects, and material waste. Robotic off-site fabrication will bring the benefits of industrialised produc-tion systems to construction.

Off-site timber construction has been widely explored in other countries, such as Japan. How-ever, said the university, Scotland “has not risen to the challenge” of off-site timber construction de-spite having significant expertise in the area.

Theo Dounas, the School’s learning excellence leader, be-lieves the project has the potential to significantly improve construc-

tion methods. “The innovation lies with the integration of a house design prototype and its robotic fabrication out of complex CLT panels manufactured off-site.

“At the end of the project, we envision that the consumer, the house buyer, will be able to select various options from a web-site and then we will be able to produce all components based on consumer demand.

“It is hoped that through this ini-tial project, our solution could bring dramatic benefits not just to the

Robotic construction

Scottish housing market, but also to the Scottish construction market. We would then hope to develop a range of ideas and solutions, from logistics, to design, to the real test-ing of CLT joints, and formation of insulated composite panels.

“While this particular solu-tion is tightly integrated with one design product, it is likely to be relevant to other building projects. We plan to develop a family of houses and other buildings using the technology developed through the project.” l

Off-site fabrication will bring the benefits of industrialised production

GIS AND INFRASTRUCTUREDigital technologies like BIM are starting to transform the way we plan, design, build and operate our social and economic infrastructure. GIS is an increasingly critical technology for achieving high quality outcomes on infrastructure development projects.

Our products and solutions are supporting a wide range of development projects, making it easy to manage, integrate and share GIS data and mapping as part of the wider digital engineering revolution.

ABOUT USthinkWhere is one of the UK’s leading independent web mapping and GIS consultancies. Based in Stirling, Scotland, and with over 25 years’ experience in the geospatial industry, we offer a portfolio of GIS

products, services and solutions. thinkWhere specialises in the use of cloud and Open Source GIS technologies, developing innovative solutions at local, national and international levels.

thinkWhere’s core business activities focus on the complete lifecycle for location-based information. We help our customers improve productivity, increase efficiency, ease collaboration and provide better information for decision-making.

SERVICES :l Online GIS and web mapping solutionsl Managed GIS data and mapping servicesl GIS integrationl Technical Consultancyl Training l Technical support

PRODUCTSl theMapCloud - a cloud-based storage and data sharing platform allowing simple management and sharing of geographic datasets and services. https://thinkwhere.com/products/themapcloud/l Location Centre - a fully-managed and hosted enterprise web GIS, eliminating the need for costly desktop software and IT infrastructure. https://thinkwhere.com/products/location-centre/l groundMapper - an easy-to-use, project-based system that enables data sharing across multiple project stakeholders. https://thinkwhere.com/products/groundmapper/. See our Case Study on the Aber-deen Western Peripheral Route. https://thinkwhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/thinkWhere-Case-Study-AWPR.pdf

FUTUREWe are in the midst of a data revolution. Increasingly, decisions about public and private sector investment in infrastructure will require GIS and geospatial data to provide a complete integrated view of the real-world environment. With recognised low productivity and efficiency in the infrastructure sector, the use of a common GIS data platform will provide frictionless use of data across the complete infrastructure project lifecycle.

For more information visit www.thinkwhere.com.

thinkWhere – Experts in Geographic Data Sharing

COMPANY FOCUS


Boost for network operators as tribunal rules in favour of EE and Hutchison 3GBY LIAM ENTWISTLE

It is generally accepted in the telecoms market that activity has been “paused” until operators and site providers had some idea of how the Electronic Communi-cations Code would be applied. The “first case” has been eagerly awaited.

That first case is now here; it gives useful indications but has not been as definitive as we had hoped (or feared). The site in question was a rooftop site, which make up a small proportion of the telecom sites in the UK. Given the restric-tions on alternative use, restricted access and development opportu-nities the sums to be awarded were always likely to be modest.

The Tribunal fully understood the state of the market place, even making an assumption that the outline agreement, where a consideration of £21,000 a year had been agreed in principal, was not completed because the valu-ation provisions of the Code were thought to be more favourable to the Claimants.

This case is unlikely to be definitive in terms of creating a precedent, especially as the Re-spondents made the cardinal error of refusing the Tribunal’s direction in commenting on a draft agree-ment prepared by the Claimants. This failure was seen as deliberate by the Tribunal and was a source of annoyance to them. It resulted in the Tribunal setting the terms of the agreement as proposed by the Claimants, with no reply.

The interesting points consid-ered by the Tribunal which will be relevant to upcoming cases included:-

l The Tribunal rejected a sugges-tion that leases could not be cre-ated by the Court under the Code. l The “no scheme” rule was ana-lysed, and it was confirmed that any value attributable solely to use for telecoms purposes is to be left out of account. This rule has been re-named as the “no-network” assumption. The presence in the market of operators who might want to use the site to provide a network must be ignored and the price which such operators would offer for the site must also not be taken into account. Rental values achieved for other uses could be taken into account, however. l Otherwise the valuation crite-ria is that of market value, which is what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller for an agreement, on the terms to be imposed by the Court, and an arms-length transaction where both par-ties act prudently and with full knowledge. l The fact that no-one is actually willing to rent the site does not

mean that rental will be nominal. The value of the land to the will-ing buyer will depend in every case on its characteristics and potential uses, and not on the number of potential bidders. l Any reliance on transactions under the old code is likely to be rejected. l Any risks and obligations which the relationship creates for the Site Provider (the expenses of running the building, service charge etc) must be taken into ac-count. The Tribunal felt that this should be reflected in consider-ation rather than compensation.

The Tribunal considered that an appropriate market value con-sideration would be £1,000 per annum, but fixed compensation at £2,551.77 per annum, which the Claimants had offered in their pleadings and were willing to stick to.

When it came to compensa-tion, the Tribunal rejected a suggestion that Claimants can only apply for compensation

at the time it made the rights order. The Tribunal also rejected a suggestion that the power to grant compensation was wholly discretionary, and followed three general conditions from the law of compulsory purchase, namely that there must be a causal con-nection between the acquisition and the loss, the loss must not be too remote and those who claim compensation must sustain only a reasonable loss.

Several heads of loss were rejected as too speculative or too early. It is clear that applications for compensation can be made by site providers as the need arises.

We do not have the first com-plete indication of exactly how a Tribunal is going to deal with consideration or compensation claims, but we do have some early indicators as to how they will approach certain questions. Most importantly, the relatively low amount of rent applied as consideration in this case does not mean that similar amounts will be applied to other sites. Ac-cordingly, the wait for complete insight into how Tribunals will fix consideration continues. l

Putting a price on a rooftopOperators and site providers have wondered how the Electronic Communications Code would be applied. Picture: EE

LEGAL

Liam Entwistle is a Partner at Wright, Johnston & Mackenzie LLP.

Wright, Johnston & Mackenzie LLP is a full-service, independent Scottish law firm, with a history stretching back 165 years, operating from offices in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Dunblane and Dunfermline. Further information on WJM can be found at wjm.co.uk


Initiative is ensuring that Scottish solicitors can be ahead of the technological curveBY PAUL MOSSON

Since launching LawscotTech last October, we now have more than 100 active participants from across Scotland’s legal commu-nity working with us.

LawscotTech, which has brought in a group of Scottish legal technologists, has helped companies access the deep knowledge we hold in the legal sector and to run ideas or even test products, as a result. This has

included specialist solutions for litigators, smart-contracts, GDPR compliance tools, wills creation tech for firms, and price transpar-ency tools which aims to benefit both legal professionals and their clients.

Our approach aims to ensure that the legal profession can be at the heart of the discussion about new technology. We will support new products as they come to market, with some currently un-der development by start-ups as well as well-known companies.

Our strong relationships with Scotland’s universities has also meant we have been able to join them on their own legaltech jour-ney and we are making connec-tions and sharing knowledge with our peers in other parts of the world, including Singapore which is a similar sized jurisdiction to Scotland and shares our ambition and energy.

Our role is also to stimulate innovative thinking in law firms and as part of that we hosted an event in Glasgow last month which examined the cultural and behavioural barriers to innovation in law firms.

Next month, we are hosting a law and technology seminar that will explore, among other things, the application of artificial intel-ligence and blockchain in legal tech, how can lawyers react to technological change, what will the law firm of the future look like, how should new technolo-gies be implemented, and what should be used.

It will also look at cloud computing - the benefits and risks – the ‘social engineering’ phenomenon and how to avoid data breaches, and why law firms are vulnerable to cyber threats. The seminar includes sessions on digital evidence in legal work and

Innovation and collaboration driving legal tech success

how can lawyers better interpret digital evidence.

We are not asking lawyers to be-come technology experts, although we know there are a number who are, but rather we are asking lawyers to be lawyers and technol-ogy experts to be, well, technology experts - it is definitely not about hard coding! It’s this collaborative approach that is already delivering change and will ensure that Scot-tish solicitors can be ahead of the technological curve. l

Paul Mosson is Executive Director of Membership Engagement and Support at the Law Society of Scotland

Law and technology seminar, 8 May, Glasgow: https://bit.ly/2Iajks2. To find out more about our upcoming events or get involved email us at [email protected].

LawscotTech now has more than 100 active participants

LEGAL


The road to the National Digital PlatformBuilding a health and care system block by block and avoiding the costly IT procurements of the pastBY DR ALISTAIR HANN Chief Technology Officer, NES Digital Service

Building a National Digital Platform for health and social care data is a huge undertaking, and in a recent blogpost, NES Chairman David Garbutt asked,“Where do we start – which route should we take through the landscape of systems?” We have now started building the platform to make health information available across and health and social care - this is our chosen route.

The national digital platform is a huge thing to tackle – making sure that citizens and the workforce have access to all the information they need at the point of care, whether it was originally recorded in a hospital, GP practice, or at home. That means getting information in and out of thousands of systems. We could start by moving all the data in those thousands of existing systems into the new platform. The problem with that is it would take a lot of time, cost a lot of money, and at the end we might not have what we needed.

That type of delivery approach has been taken by many public sector IT projects in the past – years of procurement producing a set of requirements the size of a telephone book, and when the solution is delivered for tens or hundreds of millions of pounds, the world has moved on. Unfortunately, that is typically compounded by a decade of lock-in until a new system can be introduced (assuming that is possible, given systems often lock-in knowledge and data). In the time between procurements, punitively expensive change requests can be made - although there are many instances of vendors refusing to make changes or even fix bugs.

There are alternative approaches. Henrik Kniberg has blogged about a diagram he uses. It shows two approaches to delivering a car – the first is built in stages (a wheel, then wheels on a chassis, then a body, and finally a steering wheel) and the customer doesn’t have any-thing useful until the very end. In the second approach, each stage of development ships something useful: a skateboard, then a scooter, bicycle, motorbike, and finally a convertible. Every one of these is a better way of getting

from A to B, and at each stage something is learned – e.g. without handles a Skateboard is quite unstable, so the scooter has handles. Every step delivers something that solves the problem and we learn from every step.

We are taking the same approach - rather than the lengthy, expensive public sector IT procurements of the past - building a series of small applications, that build out the func-tionality of the platform. That way we make something that improves the quality of care from the very first delivery, and we can learn from that before we build anything else.

The first of the applications we are building is to help people communicate how they wish to be treated if they are unable to communi-cate in an emergency. There is a new process being adopted across the UK called ‘ReSPECT’. Borrowing from their website:

"ReSPECT is a process that creates person-alised recommendations for a person’s clinical care in a future emergency in which they are unable to make or express choices. It provides health and care professionals responding to that emergency with a summary of recommen-dations to help them to make immediate deci-sions about that person’s care and treatment. ReSPECT can be complementary to a wider process of advance/anticipatory care planning.

The plan is created through conversations between a person and their health profes-sionals. The plan is recorded on a form and includes their personal priorities for care and agreed clinical recommendations about care and treatment that could help to achieve the outcome that they would want, that would not help, or that they would not want.” The way that a ReSPECT plan might currently be implemented can be challenging – the respect plan would start as a paper form that was filled in by hand. It would then be scanned in to be part of the ‘digital’ clinical record, then a copy would need to be printed out and put in the house. If a small change was needed, a whole new form would need to be filled out, scanned and printed. In the event of an emer-gency, how would paramedics know whether there was any form, where to find it, and whether it was the most up to date copy?

To implement an effective version: this plan

needs to be available in an emergency, regard-less of where someone is (e.g. home or hospital) and regardless of the role (e.g. paramedic, emer-gency medicine consultant). The plan is created and contributed to by health professionals across care, not just GPs, so it needs to be pos-sible for people with different roles to write to the document from different places in care such as a hospice or care home. People are likely to want to let their relatives know that such a form exists and what their wishes are, so they may want to be able to access the form themselves online and show it to people close to them.

All these things are achievable with the new platform, which at its core is a patient-centred record that can be accessed and contributed to across care, and by citizens themselves. The amount of information being captured in the ReSPECT plan is quite modest – the paper form is only two pages of A4 long - but by delivering it, we are creating something much bigger: that first version of the national platform, with a person-centred record shared across care in Scotland.

We will then work to expand the function-ality, for example, by making the application cover other types of ‘Anticipatory Care Plan’ and care plans for chronic conditions. Each time, we can do this by delivering a little bit more functionality, and learning from the feedback we get, before going further. In parallel, we can start using the platform to support other health and social care applica-tions in the process of development, that also need to be able to read and write to a national patient-centred record.

As a bonus, because we are using a standard called openEHR, we can re-use data across these plans – avoiding re-entry of data. It also means the data is portable between different systems, and the clinical knowledge to build them is in the public domain – moving us away from some of the other challenges of current systems that were mentioned above.

This modest application is the start of our route towards a full platform, that takes us away from the challenges of existing systems, and we will learn from every step we take. l

https://scottishdigitalhealthblog.nes.digital

COMMENT

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