Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley, Microsoft Regional Director and Office Apps and Services MVP. I'm also the founder and CEO of Collab Talk LLC based in Lehigh, Utah, and I'm here today talking about best practices for Microsoft 365 content governance. This content comes to you from as a webinar that I did about a month ago for Redmond Magazine and Ignite. Ignite, you might be familiar with, they are a governance and content management solution. They're a Microsoft partner. They're one of the native solutions that you can find in Microsoft Teams if you go to link other cloud storage, and you'll see Ignite with an E and become familiar with that. There's also an E-book that I did with Ignite, that's available out there. I'll share the link in a second. But the basis of this recording is that people always want to have like, what's that prescriptive list of things that I should go and do with my content governance? Obviously, the answer to that, the question is always, it depends. It depends on what are the rules and regulations that you're being held by, what are the standards that you follow, what are your information management practices within your organization. But through my experience working back since the early 90s with information management and project management program, product related technologies, got into knowledge management, found my way into SharePoint, almost 30 years of history in the knowledge management, information management space. These are some of the best practices which I've gone and implemented in organizations, change management techniques, and best practices that I just wanted to share with you in this lightweight video, if not for my long drag on beginning care. All right. Well, let's just get started here. All right. So title slide. All right. Let's jump through. So here is the link to the e-book that I wrote for Ignite Managing Content Sprawl Microsoft 365, where I go into much more detail around a lot of what I'm going to be talking about in this short video. So definitely go and download that. It's a free download, easy to find this just a link to the Ignite website. All right. Let's jump into it. What are we talking about here? So in Microsoft 365, and all tied to that Office 365 group, you of course have every time you create a new Microsoft team team, or a SharePoint team site, or a Yammer community, or whatever that asset is, it creates an Office 365 group. This is an Azure AD security group, and then it goes in provisions, different assets, and depending on where you're creating that. If you're creating in SharePoint team site, or Microsoft Teams, or elsewhere, it'll create the group. It'll create a number of assets of these shared assets, but it'll create different collections of each of these assets. Microsoft, however, is moving towards this idea that no matter where you go and create a Microsoft 365 group, it'll create all of these different assets. I don't know the roadmap, the timeline for getting there, but that's the direction that they're moving.  So all of those things which are generated, or could be generated when you create an Office 365 group. So with all of that going on, you're creating all these assets. People are uploading content, they're collaborating, there's conversations which are stored in the exchange portion of Teams, for example, and then you have the documents which are SharePoint centric or OneDrive centric, which is really just SharePoint under the hood. And so with all of that content being generated by your organization, you then have to manage those things. Now successful organizations that knowledge management, information management, they have long held strategies around how they're managing that, metadata content types, how they're the life cycle of the content that they're creating. But I, back in business school had a classmate who shared this nugget of wisdom out there about talking about governance, of governance of systems, of enterprise systems.  What that means is, do what makes sense for your organization. You know the compliance and security standards which you must adhere to. And on the other side of that, you have end users who are trying to get work done. So you have to be aware of, here are our standards that are keeping our people from collaborating the way that they want to. And then end users need to be aware of, hey, I need to go get stuff done, but I need to be compliant. I need to be secure. It needs to be done within a managed way, within our organization. And governance is what happens in between those two extremes. So a healthy governance strategy is one that promotes productivity so that end user focus and collaboration, making sure people are working together while maintaining the security compliance and the regulatory requirements of your organization. We can't break the law. We need to have standards in place so that we are able to securely manage our intellectual property. So what a good governance strategy provides. So first is that vision. What are we trying to do here? That shared understanding. Here's our constraints. Here's what we have to do. Here's what's needed so that people can be productive. And we want to work together. We want all these pieces working together. And so you have that shared understanding that people aren't gonna push back against the rules, understanding that this is why and the IT organization, whoever runs the collaboration systems understands that this is what people are actually trying to accomplish to get their work done. The second part is visibility. So there needs to be visibility into the planning. Here are the rules. Here's the tools that we have out there, the features that we're working on, new additions, integrations, customizations, automation, all of those things but provide visibility into that action plan. The number one driver of shadow IT effort. So people going outside of the rules of IT and going and using their own credit card to go buy some third party unsupported, potentially unsecure cloud solution. They're doing that because they're trying to get their work done and they have no idea of what the progress is of the request that they put in two months ago to have these features added. So you have to have that visibility into what's happening. Measurement is another critical piece here especially for adoption and engagement to understand what are people actually doing and are we being successful at this? For a lot of organizations, looking at things at a high level like our productivity score is nice but they really want to dig into the granular level of what are the successful organizations, teams, product teams, project teams, communities doing within our organization and how can we replicate that? You can't manage what you do not measure. So you need to understand what are we trying to accomplish? How are we measuring success? What does that success look like? And then of course is that fourth pillar there of the accountability. So who is the sponsorship change? Who makes the decisions at the end of the day that chain of command so that we know that, hey, can we realize that this is our compliance rule that's in place? Here's what we're actually trying to accomplish as a business. Do we need to change that rule? Do we need to force a change in the business? So somebody has to, a managing body, a governance board for example, has to make the decisions when decisions have to be made. Somebody needs to be going in there and saying, here's how we make these decisions and then be transparent, make that visible to people within the system. So best practices just very quick and I cover more of this within the e-book at that high level. There really comes down to three areas. So prevention is number one. So how do you properly structure the environment so that you are keeping people within those guide rails that guide the guidance, they're keeping them in a, you're working in a functional way, getting the work that they need done, but in a supported way. And you do that through things like provisioning, creating templates that are approved, naming conventions, the information architectures so that you make sure that your content is searchable, findable across these different parts of the system and then that people are properly trained. So there's so much that you can do up front so that when I go in to create a new team site or Microsoft Teams that I want to be a team owner for my new project that maybe there's templates in place like is it a product related project? Is it a customer related or an initiative related effort? So you might have three different templates that have different apps that are available that have direct links to have tabs within Teams already created or navigation already created within SharePoint. So that's, you just take some of the guesswork and build that consistency, build that structure right into that creation process when people are creating new assets. The second area is the proactive administration. It's the management, the community management of what's going on. And you have a lot of people that have this title of like customer success or community manager titles. It's really a focus on what people are doing the adoption and engagement, looking at the data, the analytics from this maybe building a center of excellence. I love that concept of the COE so that what are the best practices for collaborating together. And instead of when you see people start going down the path of the shadow IT where they're going outside of what you've gone and built is it something where you need to educate them on, hey, what you need to accomplish the features are actually there. Let me redirect you over to this or let's work on training there or it may be a conversation where you're doing something now that's not supported why are you doing that? Oh, okay. What you need is not currently supported by the system. So let's allow you to do this but do it in a managed way that's that governance activity. So it's a conversation between the business and the IT side of the house that allowing people to accomplish the work that they need to get done but you do that rather than through the slapping of hands of when people go slightly astray and instead it's more of a redirect or that shared you're developing that shared understanding what are you trying to accomplish? How can I help you get your job done? The third area is the continuous management. So here's more of the structure that you put in that's about ongoing operations optimizing the system and it's that change management mechanism that you put in place in the background. So the retention policies, what is our archival policies, the data cleanup and minimization, feature updates when they come out, site explorations, reviewing new applications as people the request that might come in and approve those and then the overall change management process. So it's the machine part of everything else that we're talking about here. Having a process in place, again, maybe it's that governance formal governance body that goes and makes changes to the templates into the provisioning process or into the guidance for the community managers that are part of the day-to-day proactive administration but you have, these are the three major pillars. Now, where people start it's always the number one question people say, yeah, but how do I actually go in and get started? And when do I start? Well, the number one recommendations or best practices start now. I mean, there's rarely a time where you are in a green field environment where everything's brand new, everybody's new to that system, you're rolling it out, you have absolutely no idea and so you're gonna do everything to the best of your abilities correctly right up front. It never happens. What happens is that there's a hot mess, there's been an IP breach somewhere and somebody up the food chain says, you know what, we need to go in and enact some stricter governance policies around there. So that's just the reality is it's generally there's already this sprawl of content in dozens of different, you might have dozens or even hundreds of different teams and team sites and communities that you're jumping in between and it's getting confusing for people and you need to go and clean up and I'll tell you that no matter what technology platform you're working on, it's always the story. And so that's why prevention, the proactive and the ongoing active maintenance are so important to kind of keep things under reins. So start now, build the plan as you go. So again, there are best practices that are out there, what's the best practice for me and for my organization may not be a best practice for your organization. So you have to take that with a grain of salt there. And so build a plan, go out with the information that you have. Here's what we're trying to accomplish, make it transparent, again, feedback from people within the organization, but build that plan as you go and iterate as you learn. Third one, create an internal user group around your collaboration platform, whether you're building a portal and intranet, whether you're rolling out Microsoft Teams or SharePoint or Yammer or whatever it is, whatever the scope of that activity is, create a user group, create feedback mechanisms for average end users to get more involved. I love the idea of creating a champions program and having a user group is a great way to identify those people or help them to self-identify who's passionate about the platform and helping others and will get more involved. And you need to have these utilities, have things like a user group for those people to be able to identify themselves and to really kind of prove that they are out there going above and beyond their own day-to-day jobs in helping other people. Those are the people that you want to really support. So user groups I'm a huge fan of and I love those things, especially the different kind of training methods or sharing methods. One of my favorites was just allowing people just to kind of open table, share what they've been doing. And they often learn like, hey, we tried to do the same thing. Here's where you're going down the wrong path. Here's what we did differently or you may just inspire others say, hey, that's a fantastic idea. I need to go and expand on my ticketing system in my organization and build something similar. So having that conversation internally is only going to provide value to your company. Clearly define the roles and responsibilities. And so having, and if all you have is IT is building and supporting this and end users down below, you might have different tiers in between. You might have, in Microsoft Teams speak, you might have the team owners and then you might have experts that are within a business unit who are above those teams owners may be actually be part of that provisioning approval process. So they may be people that are champions that have been identified, they're more passionate about the technology and they're trusted, they've gone through a certain amount of training. And so for their division, you might have people who have a role to approve the new requests are coming in. So that IT is not burdened with making all those decisions. So understand kind of the hierarchy, the decision makers at each level and clearly define those roles and the responsibilities of people that are part of that governing body, whether it's a formal governing body or it's an informal disperse across the organization. Document your regulatory compliance and security requirements. And you may already have done this if you say that, hey, we really don't have any regulatory compliance rules. Every industry has them, every organization should have them, especially around the life cycle of your intellectual property. I learned this lesson very early in my career when I was 19 years old, was a runner for a law firm, 19, 20 years old. And so I managed a lot of their physical documents and I was lectured a number of times of the importance of disposing of documents when their lifespan was over and then it needed to be done within seven days of that expiration and the process that I went to through those paper documents. But I learned that lesson and I'm just shocked that how many organizations just keep your content in perpetuity. They just lives forever and can cause confusion, can bog down the search experience and then there could be other issues with legal issues around keeping content, especially around customer information. And if there's personal information, that's part of that. So I mean, there's a lot of reasons why you need to go in and understand and have documented what are the rules, what do we need to adhere to because they also change on a regular basis. So just being aware of like what happened with GDPR in Europe. So be aware of the changes that are happening and how they impact your organization. And that'll help dictate then how the governance body needs to look at and manage all of their activities. The sixth one here, outlining your information architecture, understand the nuances between the workloads. So this is beyond just the naming convention. So content that is more short-term, collaborative, get a project completed. So like a lot of the activities and the conversation, the sharing that happens within Microsoft Teams is very different from what you then go in and move into SharePoint into the long-term storage that content. You might shut down a team as an active place where people are working together, but you have the content that's created, the formal documentation for a project or a project that might be archived inside of SharePoint and be accessible through, except through requests to a limited number of people in the organization. So figure out what that is. And then for all the content that's going into the system as well, what's the tagging process? What are the content types that are associated with that? What are the, because that's gonna allow you to go in there and start to set up the automation. If you are taking a lot of invoices, for example, invoices need to be tagged to the department, to the individual, to the customer, to a bunch of different things so that it can be surfaced as needed, when needed, and added into those automated activities. So understand the differences between your information architecture of content that is in your Teams and versus your SharePoint over in the portal that may not be associated with Team or might be sitting across multiple Teams and because the rules might be slightly different there. Be aware of how your information architecture, metadata, and tags will be managed. Who is managing these things? Who's going and ensuring that people are tagging content properly so they can be identified, so that you can be compliant with these various assets? So have the process for managing that. Also, this goes back to roles and responsibilities. Who owns that? What are their roles? How often are they going in and auditing and checking on this? Or do you wait until you know that there's been a day to breach and then just go backwards as far as possible? It's better to be proactive about these things and have owners that are dispersed across the organization, but they need to know what their roles are. They need to know what rules and guidelines they need to follow. I am a big fan of number eight of creating a governance site in that cross-functional team. I've run those in very large organizations. I've run them in small and startup situations where again, we were just being very proactive but creating just tons of documentation, tons of content. And now with so much of our content being in conversation and in video assets, it's even more important that we are clear of what our guidelines are for managing each of those different content types and having then those best practices all documented in place where we can go and have a conversation about it. We don't want is the governance activities bogging down collaboration. You have, there's been a move over the last decade to flatten all of our systems as far as permissions and ease of use or in order to make it easier to go and collaborate with anyone, anywhere, anytime. But we can't do that, flatten that structure while not obeying the compliance security and governance rules and policies procedures. So having a place where you can go in there and talk about, hey, here's what the policy is. We meet on a weekly basis, a monthly basis, whatever it is to go through and say, here, how are we adhering? Here's our last audit. Here's what's going on here. Here's the rules that are changing. So how does this impact our sites and our teams and our projects? And so having those discussions and allowing people to, going back to the visibility issue having, giving people a voice within that process and then also making it transparent. Here's what the governance body has decided around this. Here's what we need to change. Here's how it's impacting our provisioning process. And we need to have two approvals now for the creation of a new SharePoint team site, for example. So having that place where people can go to ask questions and have that discussion. Number nine is enlisting your employees. You cannot ask people to adhere to follow a program, a set of policies, guidelines if they don't have that voice and who better understands the content and the work that's being done than the people that are creating the content and doing the work. So involve them in that process. Maybe make that a rotating responsibility or develop a champion's program so that people can self-select that they get involved more with the governance aspect of these systems. And then finally, always err on the side of over communication. And so that's, it's hard for a lot of organizations but people start saying, hey, I had no idea where are these things, why weren't we notified these changes were going to be made? This impacts how we're running our projects. If you hear those kinds of comments then you're not communicating enough. So you need to err on the side of over communication meaning creating a new site so people can see if you have that centralized governance site and have that news piece out there. So people are able to consume information about the change management process about the status of auditing of systems. If they're able to see stats and leaderboards to understand how other people are collaborating across all the technology. I love this idea of having visibility into where people are collaborating, how they're collaborating and then sharing best practices with each other as a community. And then sharing that information out there it's just going to improve everybody's collaboration the quality of the collaboration that's happening across the organization. I know that's a lot to run through in a short video here. Again, if you'd like to get more information about this topic, definitely go download the free ebook that's from Ignite. It's worthwhile, it's short read but some great insights there that should help you get started especially around the three pillars of prevention, proactive management and the continuous management activities. So definitely go take a look. And once again, my name is Christian Buckley Microsoft RD and MVP. And if you'd like to follow me on Twitter you can find me at Buckley Planet it's also buckleyplanet.com is my blog but definitely go take a look at that. And of course, follow me out on YouTube as collab talk. It's my company and thanks a lot for watching the video.


For a while, it appeared that countries like India and China and so on were insulated against the impact of the world capitalist crisis. That's no longer the case. We know for quite some time now that this crisis was beginning to hit them. You look at all the individual components. I mean, if consumption is more or less endogenous, then you look at investment, you look at net exports, you look at government expenditure. All of them were showing symptoms of slowing down. Government expenditure as a matter of fact increased because of the pay commission recommendations. But despite the pay commission recommendation which added to government expenditure and through the multiplier to the consumption of the ordinary people, nonetheless slowing down was evident. So, I have been arguing that you take away that stimulus that may have slightly kept you above the economies face above the water. But the moment you take that away because you are not going to have this stimulus now all the time, slowly its impact is going to win. Then you would find that the recession would become much more pronounced and that's exactly what is happening. De-monetization has added to that.


Well, Ambassador Tom Pickering, very welcome to ANU and welcome to this big conference that we're hosting this week on the theme of global realities and domestic choices. What we're trying to do with this is bring together 150 of Australia's best and brightest across the corporate sector, the public sector and the research community to debate the great geopolitical and economic social policy issues of the day and to try and basically work out how we can translate good policy into good politics that's actually deliverable in this toxic environment that afflicts us, afflicts the U.S. and so many other countries. But one of the very specific issues that will obviously be coming up is the situation in the Middle East and the way in which the world should be reacting to this current meltdown. You've been ambassador of the U.S. to Israel, to Jordan, to the UN and half the rest of the world speak half a dozen languages fluently, the grand old man in many ways of the American diplomatic system. What are you going to tell us about the Middle East? Gareth, the Middle East is in tough shape and there are ways and pass through this particular set of problems. They're going to be in diplomacy, they're going to be in tough diplomacy, in deep engagement. There's going to be ups and downs in the Middle East and anybody here in Australia, in the United States who's engaged in business, who's looking at the future of government, in my view has got to feel that they know something about what's happening in that particular region of the world, what the possibilities are, what they ought to in their own interests should be, what they ought to be saying to their governments in their own interest and in the future interest obviously of the business climate in that part of the world. It's a huge and important segment of the world economy and it's impossible to ignore it. If I were to tell you that I thought it was all easy as pie, I wouldn't be here, you wouldn't have me here and it wouldn't mean anything. What's the, to you as the biggest single problem in the Middle East? Is it the continuing inability of the Arab-Israeli Palestinian issue to be resolved? Is it the meltdown in Syria and Iraq? Is it the catastrophe we're witnessing unfold in Egypt? You know the biggest single problem is the interlinkage of malign issues and how they influence each other and the biggest single advantage is if we can begin to get some breakthroughs we may be able to build some synergy into the solution process interestingly. You've been very closely involved in the back rooms of the Iran nuclear negotiations. Are you an optimist that that one can be resolved this year? Yeah I'm an optimist but probably this year is tough. I got news this morning that the two most significant negotiators for the US Bill Burns and Jake Sullivan are going to go and spend two weeks in Vienna with the Iranians and they have an agreement with the Iranians to try to move that process. It's going to be a marathon negotiating session but it's a bright spot because suddenly have wakened up to the notion that now it is no longer possible to have itinerant negotiators meeting for two days at a time hoping to achieve breakthroughs. This is real tough diplomacy nose to the grindstone that perhaps look only you would know this as well as anybody in this world but we all know from business from from diplomacy how hard it is to get to that final deal and how much you have to be in the room together day in day out working that set of problems. Tom last question if we do get a deal in Iran how on earth is it going to be delivered to those crazies of yours in the US Congress? It's going to be delivered because in effect in the end even those crazies will see it's in the national interest and enough of the smart guys will know in fact that this is the kind of breakthrough that we need but it requires a triumph in my view over rationality and logic over what I would call political polarization and the president has to be at the center of that but he's already shown on this issue that he wants to be at the center. Well I guess this is a taster of the sort of thing we're going to be talking about a number of different ways over the next few days and ANU hopefully and the Crawford School of Public Policy will be the outfit that can bring this together and get a really really serious policy debate going in Australia and a whole variety of these issues which frankly we're not seeing much of from the political class.


Statistika-mallista must be identified before we can meaningfully estimate it. However, establishing the identification status of a model can be challenging to do. The bulletproof way of establishing that your model is identified is to simply prove that you can solve the model parameters from known population covariances. Tässä on todella tykköinen tehdä ja on kuten on kokoisena, jos en ole tehnyt. For a Convertor Factor Analysis model, with let's say three factors, and seven indicators each, doing the proof might take a better part of a day, even if you know what you're doing. So that's not very feasible, particularly for more complicated models. In practice we use two different strategies for identification analysis. One is there are different heuristics and rules that you can apply. The simplest one is that you check if decrease of freedom is a non-negative number. It must be zero or positive. If it's negative then you know that the model is not identified for sure. A positive decrease of freedom on the other hand does not guarantee identification. So there are these rules and once you know the rules then you can develop this kind of like intuition on whether a model is not identified or not. So you start to recognize certain patterns in models that are associated with identification and certain other patterns that are associated with lack of identification. But then there is another set of techniques called these empirical checks. And there are two empirical checks that your software does or that you can check right from the software output. Warnings from software but that's not bulletproof and missing of extremely large standard errors. That indicates a non identification. Then there are also techniques that require a bit of programming or a bit of reanalyzing the data. And I'm going to address two of these empirical checks estimating the same model from two different starting values. The idea is that if a model is identified and if you get convergence then you should get the same result regardless of your starting values. If it's not identified then you might get different results. So try different starting values. If you get the same result then you have identification. If you don't then it's not identified for sure. Another technique is to take the model implied covariance matrix from a set of estimates and use that model implied covariance matrix as your new sample and then fit the model to that model implied matrix. If you get the same result then the model might be identified. If you get a different result then it's not identified for sure. And then the third strategy is simulating data from a representative model without any of the empirical data. But that's not challenging but it's kind of a different strategy. So I'll just show these two strategies because they are quick to implement using an empirical data set. So our example model will be this. So we have two factors F1 and F2 and there is a bidirectional regression path. So we have F1, F2, F2, F1. This is not identified because there's only one latent correlation and we can't estimate two directional paths from just one correlation. And our data comes from UCLA. So this is a data set, an example of how you can do exploratory factor analysis using converter factor analysis tools but we'll just be using it to estimate this converter factor analysis model. Let's start first with an identified model. So this is a latent regression model, structure regression model. We have F2 predicted by F1. Both are measured with three indicators and we'll try different starting values and re-estimating from the model implied covariance matrix. You can do different starting values by hand but you can also do it programmatically. I'll do it programmatically because it's kind of like more of my style and also then I don't have to think about what would be feasible starting values. So I'll just use random normal variables and this is the original data and then this is the identification check and this is the check for the estimated from the same populace. Okay, so these are our results and they look fine and they look the exact same regards of which starting values we use. So I'll just skip the output of that to make the presentation a bit shorter but let's take a look at how we estimate the same model using the model implied covariance matrix as indicators as the population or as a sample. So we do estimate framework in this data and that gives us the model matrices or it gives us this SCM output in matrix format and then from the return we get R and the return values we get sigma which is the model implied covariance matrix and then we take the first six rows and first six columns because this is first absolute values, absolute indicators then the related variables. We are only concerned about the absolute indicators here and then we use SSD to set up summary data and we use this covariance matrix as our summary data. We set sample size number of observations to 500. Using a large value here would be preferable but I'll just set it to 500 because that was my original sample size and I put it there just without thinking. So put a large sample instead of 500 and then we run the same SCM and then we compare the results. What we will see is this is the sigma there are the variance covariance matrix of the estimates we will rerun the same thing using the implied covariance matrix and we'll see that the results are identical. The only small difference is that these variance estimates differ a little tiny bit. The reason here relates to the differences between the sample covariance and the population covariance and how maximum likelihood estimates for variances are slightly biased because of the difference. That's a technicality. You can get the estimates to be identical to use a large sample size in the SSD command 10,000 or 100,000 It doesn't make a difference for computational speed because you're working with covariances but it just makes these estimates to be identical. So we can use the model implied covariance matrix from data estimates, re-estimate the model using the model implied covariance data and those results should be identical if the model is identified. Now let's take a look at this non-identified model so it's not identified because we can't estimate a bidirectional path from one covariance. Now we're going to work through the full set of diagnostics. This is the first model just with our original data. Interestingly, one of the checks for identification is warnings, we get none. These checks are not bulletproof. We do get large covariance large than at errors which indicates a potential identification issue with the model but it doesn't really tell us the nature of the identification issue. Let's go and proceed with the diagnostics. So we'll first do this loop here so I will estimate six more models so the first model is one and then models seven, two through seven, six more are using random starting values. I set seed in the beginning of the file to make this reproducible to ensure that I will always get the same results if I rerun this too far. And then I tabulate these models and the likelihoods. What we will see is that we get different sets of estimates for both recursion paths depending on the starting values. The likelihood of these models are the same it appears to be missing from my slides but you would see that it's actually identical. And these estimates are also highly correlated so when one goes up, another one goes down and that indicates there's a trade-off so they are correlated over repeated samples that means that there's an identification issue involving these two parameters. In other words, we know that these parameters together are responsible for the correlation with F1 and F2 but we don't know which one it is. That's the identification problem. All these measurement parameters, the factor loadings and indicator error variances are identical so there are no identification issues there. Another way that we can show the lack of identification of this model is to estimate the model from the model-implied covariances from the estimates. So we do this thing, we take the framework we take the sigma, the model-implied correlation matrix or covariances matrix of indicators we use status data using SSD we have a large sample size, larger than 500 would be better I just happened to use 500 in the example and then we re-estimate the model. Then we compare the two models side by side we can see that the models are similar but they are not the same so you should get the same result so these differ in the third decimal you should get exactly the same set of estimates because we don't that is an indication of model, non-identification. So these are two simple techniques that you can use so when you program it once in state or once in R then you can just reuse your state or R code from one project to the next and you can also do this with other SCM software but I use these two the most so this is the empirical checks different starting values re-estimating model for model-implied covariance matrix how does this relate to the bigger picture so these are a number of different ways that a model cannot convert number of issue reasons for that and these identification checks are useful for diagnosing model identification or empirical under identification but not really useful for diagnosing purely computational problems so for that for example inspecting starting values will be more useful


U.S. made a military speedboat destroyed off Ukrainian coast, Russia. Russian forces have destroyed a U.S.-made speedboat carrying a Ukrainian amphibious team in the northern part of the Black Sea, the Defense Ministry in Moscow reported. The boat was struck east of Snake Island, the statement said, referring to a small area of land off the Ukrainian coast and close to Romanian territorial waters. The Russian military had identified the target as a willed sea-force watercraft and destroyed it in an airstrike the ministry added. California-based Willard Marine sold five boats to the Ukrainian military in 2013 with the U.S. funding the acquisition according to media reports. The vessels were delivered to Odessa in 2015. Eight boats were purchased from the same source several years prior when Kiev footed the bill. The sea-force line includes a range of rigid inflatable patrol boats. Marine purchased versions suitable for a team of up to 6, 10 or 26 troops depending on the size of the model. Snake Island was captured by Russian forces shortly after hostilities with Ukraine broke out in February 2022. The Russian Defense Ministry withdrew troops from the island in June in what Kiev claimed to be a major military victory.


Lignin is a complex polymer found in plant cell walls that has traditionally been difficult to analyze. However, recent advancements in nuclear magnetic resonance, NMR, technology have enabled researchers to gain a better understanding of the structure of lignin. These advancements include the use of two-dimensional solution state NMR techniques, which provide unambiguous evidence for specific structures as well as quantitative structural information. This has led to a greater understanding of how lignin affects the efficiency of biorefining processes. This article was authored by Run Sang Sun, Ja Long Wen, Bai Liang Xua, and others.


I welcome members of the committee and all those present to the 13th meeting of the Devolution for the Powers Committee. We have an apology from Duncan McNeill. I go straight to agenda item 2, evidence session, at stage 1 of the Scottish elections reductions on voting age bill. I welcome our final panel witnesses on the stage 1 consideration of the Scottish elections reductions on voting age bill to the evidence session. The witnesses are John Swinney, the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Economy. Helen Clifford is team leader in the franchise team Gillian Cross, policy adviser in the franchise team Stuart Forbister from the divisional solicitor of the legal directorate and Willie Ferney from the Parliamentary Council of the Scottish Government. We have a bit of an hour to take evidence, folks. I appreciate that members made their questions as synced as possible and the same would go to witnesses. I think that the Deputy First Minister would like to make an opening statement and please proceed. Thank you, convener. I welcome the opportunity to give evidence to the committee on the Scottish elections reductions reduction of voting age bill. Can I start by extending my thanks to all those who have given their time and expertise during what has been a compressed timetable for the development of the bill? The committee has heard evidence from many of those involved last week, and I was pleased to note that they welcomed what we have made of the advice that they have provided to us in this process. Parliament's decision to extend the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds for the referendum and their subsequent participation is widely seen as having been a major step forward in democratic participation in the democratic process. The committee's report into the operation of the referendum concluded the decision on lowering the voting age had been a success. That assessment has been repeated on a number of occasions in Parliament since last September, not least during the consideration of the section 3063 order, which transferred the necessary powers to allow us to lower the voting age to 16 in time for the 2016 Scottish parliamentary elections. The order was approved unanimously by this Parliament and came into force on 20 March. Less than two weeks later, I introduced the bill. The powers that were transferred to the Scottish Parliament by the section 30 order are tightly drawn and will be followed in due course by full powers over Scottish Parliament and local authority elections, as recommended by the Smith commission. In the meantime, the powers that we have allow the reduction in the minimum age to 16 for Scottish Parliament and local authority elections, and I will allow the Scottish Parliament to make adjustments to registration arrangements to give effect to the reduction in the voting age. Through the bill and the associated practical arrangements, we are seeking to balance transparency of the electoral process with the need to treat young people's data with sensitivity and ensure that the youngest voters can participate fully in the democratic process. The arrangements are intended to put young voters on an equal footing with all other voters, not least because this is now intended to be a permanent reduction in the voting age for Scottish Parliament and local government elections, while at the same time ensuring that their data is treated sensitively and responsibly. The bill's general approach is therefore to replicate current registration practice for the youngest voters as far as possible. It does this by applying existing electoral legislation, amending that where necessary to take account of the reduction in the voting age to 16. The proposed arrangements also affect the introduction of individual electoral registration and draw on the success and the experience of the referendum. The bill provides for restrictions on access to and disclosure of information on 14 and 15-year-olds and provides for enhanced arrangements for particular groups of vulnerable young people such as those who require to register anonymously and those who need to register by way of a declaration of local connection rather than use their current address. The arrangements that we have put in place for the referendum are well received and supported by members of Parliament, child protection groups and electoral administrators before and after the referendum. As the committee would expect, the provisions in the bill are designed to create broadly the same effect as the arrangements that proved such a success last September. We are proposing to do something that is different than the bill, where it makes sense for the voter and provides for the more effective and efficient process for electoral administrators. I look forward to discussing the bill's issue proposals with the committee today. I will begin by asking a general question about how your consultation with organisations and those representing young people have influenced the outcome of the bill. I think that it would be useful to hear from the Government's perspective—obviously, we have taken a fair bit of evidence from individuals around that—so just knowing what consultation processes went on and how they managed to influence the bill and shape it would be useful. We essentially undertook consultation in two spheres, convener. One was with the electoral professionals who run the electoral registration process and all the stakeholder community associated with that. The electoral commission, the information commissioner and all of those organisations, the software providers and all of them, to make sure that the practical contents of the bill could be delivered if they were enacted. Secondly, we undertook discussions with a variety of other stakeholder interests around the interests of youth involvement in youth participation, child protection and some of the wider organisations looking at the welfare of children in particular circumstances, particularly organisations involved in supporting looked-after children, where there are particular and sensitive issues that have to be addressed. Essentially, the outcome of that work has been absorbed into the formulation of the bill as far as we possibly could do. I certainly think that from the discussions that I have seen the committee undertaking with a variety of those interests, that gives me the impression that, broadly speaking, the approach that the Government has taken in understanding and listening to the issues that have been raised by those organisations has been well received in the way that we have taken forward the bill. You mentioned specifically looked-after children issues in part of your response to every First Minister. I know that Lewis MacDonald and a couple of others had a particular interest in that, so I will come to Lewis first. Thank you very much. Clearly, the provision in the bill that makes particular provision for looked-after children is welcome, and the encouragement or the requirement for local authorities to support looked-after children in registering and so on. I wonder if the Deputy First Minister would like to expand a little on how that will work in practice and how local authorities will be assisted to deliver on their obligations in that regard. Essentially, there will be a number of approaches taken here. The first general remark that I would make is that the approach that has been taken is broadly consistent with what was undertaken in the referendum last September. For example, in relation to anonymous registration, which was particularly relevant in that area, existing electoral law requires proof in the form of a listed court order or interdict or attestation by the chief social worker or police officer of superintendent ranker above that the safety of an individual or someone living with them would be at risk if the register disclosed their name and address, and that is fully reflected in the proposals that we bring forward. There is also provision for the declaration of local connection where there can be a necessity to ensure that there is awareness amongst local authorities of the necessity to consider that factor in undertaking any registration that will be taken forward. In terms of the encouragement to local authorities to extend awareness of the provisions that can be taken forward to enable the registration, particularly if they are looked after children, we will work with local government to support them in ensuring that there is the widest possible awareness that those provisions exist and can be deployed so that the option is available to individuals. The bill requires each local authority to promote awareness of the registration arrangements amongst looked after children and local authorities will have to determine what action is necessary in that respect, but we will work with relevant organisations to provide the necessary guidance and support to local authorities that fits into the wider corporate parenting responsibilities for which local authorities carry that obligation. I think that that is a welcome approach. As well as the disadvantage that looked after children clearly have in many respects, there is a particular challenge for young people who are moving out of a looked-after environment into the wider community. Some of the evidence that we heard last week suggested that more could be done or should be done to ensure that those young people are aware of their rights and responsibilities, including in relation to voting if they are leaving care at 16 or 17. I think that that is a pretty significant and fair issue. I think that there is a general point, which I think that Mr MacDonald's question covers, which is about just the difficulty of young people moving out of a situation of being looked after just in general in society, but the whole multiplicity of different issues that they face. Therefore, I think that it essentially will be no different in relation to electoral registration, so it is important that we have a particular tailored approach to meet the needs of what is a relatively small cohort in our society, but an important cohort that needs to be supported in as much as the state would provide support for young people moving through this journey in relation to or should provide support to young people moving through this journey in relation to housing or employment or healthcare or wellbeing services. It is important that that is specifically taken forward in relation to electoral registration, so we will reflect on that suggestion and make sure that there is particular provision put in place to reflect the concerns that have been raised. There is nothing in the bill that prevents us from doing that than everything in the bill that provides the opportunity to do so, but I think that it is a fair and substantial point that we will take forward. Thanks very much. Stuart McMillan, I think that you had wanted to... So much of it has been dealt with with the First Minister's answers, but just one question, in terms of the points that have been raised thus far, has the Scottish Government actually had any discussions up to now with local government regarding these particular issues? That discussion has not started today other than the fact that we have obviously talked closely to the electoral registration officers and they will be at the very heart of the registration process. The discussion will predominantly be taken forward through the ERO channel, but obviously we have to make sure that there are appropriate connections to other social work and social welfare services that can provide the necessary input to ensure that the young people that are referred to Mr McDonald's question can be appropriately contacted and supported to ensure that they can fulfil their democratic rights if they wish to exercise them. A couple of other individuals indicated other supplementary marks, I think that you were for. Yes, it is probably the proper point to raise us at the last evidence session that I raised at the point that there is a lot of evidence around 16 or 17-year-olds in schools and colleges. There will be a small number—we hope that it is a small number—who will fall into the not-in-education employment or training category. Does the Scottish Government have any considerations as to how to promote registration to this cohort or would that be expected to be captured within a wider information programme? Essentially, that would be part of the challenge of electoral registration. There will be the normal canvas activity to identify who are the eligible individuals who should be added to the register. That, by its nature, is a comprehensive process involving the canvas activity that is undertaken to ensure that we get to as complete a register as we possibly can do. It will obviously also be complemented by the messages around the importance of registration, which will be more widely and publicly communicated. We have seen in the run-up to the current general election campaign really quite a sustained effort. We saw it also in relation to the referendum—a sustained public messaging campaign—to ensure that people take up the opportunity to register democratically. I think that there will be a comprehensive effort put in place there. I would be confident, based on our recent experience, that we can maximise that registration as a consequence of raising that awareness. The areas of the Children and Young People Act that deal in particular with aftercare and the expansion of continuing care to an older age group, and particularly those who are not necessarily looked after at this point, but who were looked after in the past and are now in receipt of new and additional services that were not entitled to before the Children and Young People Act came into effect, are currently going through the Parliament, through the Education Committee, in the form of subledge. The bill could be amended to give consideration to effectively ensuring that local authorities promote awareness and registration and support for this particular group. I wonder if there has been any thought about how the work of local authorities and the bill itself will effectively match up with the expanded support provided by the Children and Young People Act? I think that the terms of the bill are cast in such a fashion to give us the opportunity to take forward that and fulfil the obligations of the Children and Young People Bill in terms of the powers that the bill takes forward and the obligations that it takes on in relation to registration. Having said that, I am open to considering the issue that Mr Maxwell has raised, because I think that I want to signal to the committee this morning my desire to ensure that we fulfil this capability as much as we possibly can do. If there is another level of legislative provision that we need to consider, we will certainly consider that. However, I do not see anything in the bill that impedes us from fulfilling this obligation, but I will consider the issues that have been raised. If I feel that there is further provision, the Government will engage constructively at that point. Alison Johnstone, your question of disabilities would fall quite neatly into the question area. I am following on from the questions about looked after children who are often overlooked. Young people with disabilities, we are hearing from organisations representing them last week. There is a feeling that, certainly in the past, people with physical disabilities and learning disabilities have often been persuaded that voting is not something that they should take part in. I wonder whether the bill gives us an opportunity to address that, just to make sure that it is as easy as possible to get to a polling station, where it is not possible that postal votes have been discussed with the young people. Even thinking about the materials that come through the post from political parties, are they really appropriate for all age groups and for those perhaps with learning or other disabilities? The general provision of the bill, I am satisfied that it is cast in a fashion that essentially creates the opportunity for all 16 and 17-year-olds to be able to vote in Scottish Parliamentary and local authority elections. In terms of that legislative provision, I am absolutely confident that it is defined in a way that makes it possible for everybody to be eligible to vote in that age category. We then go on beyond that to the questions around the messaging and the motivation to enable young people to participate in the electoral process. In that respect, I think that it comes down to how we design the campaigns that encourage voter registration and participation. Some of that needs to reflect the particular circumstances and needs of individuals either in terms of physical access to vote. All polling places will be obliged under the existing legislation to be physically accessible for all individuals. Postal votes to opportunities are now, if I think back to when I started out in this activity more than 30 years ago, postal votes were—you had to have a really good reason for having a postal vote that was not available as openly as a postal vote was available. Just now, you really had to prove that you had an absolutely definitive reason why you couldn't get to the polling station. Postal votes are now much more readily available with the right scrutiny in place, but I do think that those opportunities have to be made available to people. They need to understand that they are available to enable them to then exercise their participation. As for the leaflets of political parties, I am going to take absolutely no responsibility for them whatsoever. That is for the political parties to get on with. It is hard enough to get agreement about the contents of political party leaflets without getting agreement around the committee room tables about what should be in party leaflets. I do think that Alison Johnson makes a fair point about the need for materials and messages to be available in the accessible form to all individuals. Certainly, for our part, on registration campaigns and participation campaigns, we would ensure that all of our approaches were structured in a fashion to make that possible and practical. We have had discussion in this committee, and we have taken evidence from young people when we were scrutinising the referendum process that there was a discontent about how local authorities and gross schools participated so that 16 or 17-year-olds could have full discussion of what was going on. We raised this last week at committee, and I was quite surprised at the strength of feeling among those who represented young people and those who were very well articulated by the chair of the Scottish Youth Parliament that they felt that what happened over the referendum was entirely inadequate. There was a strong view stronger than I thought it would be, that, despite being the responsibility of local authorities, there should be national guidelines on what was put forward. Local authorities and education authorities could tap into to determine openness in schools. I hesitate to say education, because a lot of these young folk do not need education in their discussion and the ability to discuss openly, like everyone else, how education authorities and schools deal with elections when 16 or 17-year-olds their pupils will be able to vote. I would just like an initial view from the Deputy First Minister as to how his Government sees this and whether that is something that can be discussed perhaps by other colleagues. My general view is that there should be absolutely nothing that stops a fair and dispassionate understanding of the political process and the political choices within the education system. It is absurd that there should be any practical impediment in that happening. During the referendum, I picked up some anecdotal experience where there was a sensitivity being expressed about the referendum debate coming into the school and somehow that was not desirable. However, in my experience of interacting with young people, particularly the eligible 16 and 17-year-olds and the very frustrated 15-year-olds who could not get to vote, there was a real appetite and a zeal to be involved in this discussion. If there is a need about that within the education community, I think that it is unfounded, because I think that part of the education process—if you look at the foundations of curriculum for excellence, curriculum for excellence is the whole concept of citizenship education and enabling our young people to fulfil their potential within our society. In my view, part of that involves fulfilling their potential in the democratic process. The absolute stipulation must be that it all has to be fair and dispassionate. It has to give young people the opportunity to participate equally, to understand all the choices, to understand all the choices fairly and squarely and without prejudice. That, to me, is the crucial characteristic of what should be taken forward, and there should be no impediment to that within the schools of Scotland. Guidance and educational resources for teachers on political literacy are available from the Education Scotland website. That guidance emphasises the importance of young people receiving information on political events such as elections in that balanced and impartial way that I have talked about. I think that the provision is all there to make sure that it happens. I think that we have to make sure that it is delivered in that fair and balanced way. I would take it from your answer, which I thought was very fair, that the Government has not received any overt representations on that point from either local government, from other sectors, including for that matter the Scottish Youth Parliament. There has not been a great outpouring of angst about this issue to government in respect of this bill, and therefore the need for the guidance that Linda was very fairly describing earlier on. There is nothing that has come to us on that, no? No. Your view would be that what is currently there in terms of the Education Scotland website, and that being fairly available to all, is adequate in relation to local thought, proper role in this area? I think that the heart of the guidance is the necessity, but it is really the points that I mentioned there, the importance of young people receiving information on political events such as elections in a balanced and impartial way, and I think that that is the foundation of the guidance that is available. I think that when the guidance leaves the website and goes into the school, we may come across some of the issues that I referred to in my earlier answer to Linda Fabiani, that there may be a sensitivity about this debate is getting very intense, should we have this in the school etc etc. However, in my experience, the guidance can all be handled in a perfectly rational, considered, dispassional way, and it is important because it then gives young people the access to the knowledge and the information that they can then mine to their own convenience or to the extent of their interest to find out more on those questions. I am very interested in any of myself because in the evidence that we took from the Electoral Commission, I felt that they had in this regard had a pretty hands-off approach and they have a duty to promote etc. Do you think that there is a stronger role for the Electoral Commission to be involved in helping education Scotland and education authorities to fashion something that at least provides a minimum base requirement of what goes on? From all of our experiences during the referendum, the period where it became most disjointed between local authorities was the very time that young people wanted to be engaged and that was during PURDA. Local authorities across the country took a different view of what they should do during that period. There may well be some real issues that the Electoral Commission could help. The various education authorities in Education Scotland produced at least some minimum standard that needs to be set. Do you feel about that? I would certainly be happy to explore those issues, convener. I think that the Electoral Commission has a statutory role to set out the manner and the style and the content of awareness that is raising on the electoral process. I do not think that that is particularly different for people over 18 and under 18. It is the same type of material. The commission in that respect has to fulfil that statutory test and the Parliament has to be satisfied that that is being undertaken to our confidence. When it comes to how that flows into schools, my answer to Mr Scott is my view that I think that the guidance that is available is perfectly adequate to enable that issue to be handled appropriately and dispassionately within our schools. I think that we will perhaps get into trouble if we then have—as happens, I know that the great word, perda, sends people into almost frozen status that nothing can happen because it is perda. It is a nonsense. There is a lot of things that can happen and there is an election for heaven's sake. Young people have got to participate. I certainly would not dispute that perda gets used as an almighty excuse for nothing happening and for things being stopped because it is perda. I am very sympathetic. I might be displaying some of my irritation about this point, which is currently with me. I quite accept that there may be a problem of the translation of the guidance into what actually happens because people get frightened by, oh my goodness, I do not want to do something that breaks perda. It is going to be hard to do if there is an election on and you are handling things fair, square and dispassionately within the classroom. I could certainly foresee circumstances where a classroom teacher might be put into a position where they are dissuaded from taking forward some part of the electoral awareness process because some local authority official has warned them about the great P word. I would certainly concede that point. That is what we need to make sure that the guidance is properly understood, not improperly understood, which in certain circumstances is around the question of perda. I would accept as the case. I follow on from that, convener. Morning, cabinet secretary. I think that we have got the situation where the problem of translation of guidance is something that really is down to a degree of confidence in the organisation's concern. Having been a teacher, I think that the problem of risk aversion from teachers to head teachers to local authority managers is a big one. I think that the evidence that we took and received during the referendum campaign highlighted that considerably. When the electoral commission says in further evidence to us after last week that people should be confident that their voice is count, that word confidence jumps out at me. I do not think that it is a matter of the guidelines. I think that it is a matter of the ethos, the way in which we are encouraging people to be a part of this process that has to be conveyed to the people from the classroom to the administrators. Somewhere or the other, that is not captured just in the bare question of the guidelines. I agree with that point. Mr Gibson sums up perfectly what I have been trying to say. I think that it is in the guidance to me seems absolutely comprehensible and crystal clear as to what can be done. However, I do concede that there will be on occasions a nervousness within the school system that somehow they may be transgressing across guidelines and clearly. Members of the teaching profession want to operate within the correct statutory framework, so we will give some further consideration to that issue. Obviously, the committee may wish to deliberate on that point into the bargain. However, I do think that it is about the distinction that Mr Gibson makes between the guidance and the ethos. It is, in my opinion, the resolution of those issues all within the ethos and not the guidance. Stuart Maxwell, I think that you had questions about data issues. The policy memorandum talks about the existing rules on protecting voter data will be put in place as far as possible and also talks about the data for those under 16 will be treated with particular sensitivity or more sensitivity errors. I just wondered if you could expand on exactly what that means in terms of more sensitivity in relation to young people's data and, in particular, the safeguards that the bill would bring in relation to those under 16. Essentially, the contents of the bill are designed to ensure that only electoral registration officers and those working for them will have access to information on those aged under 16. Essentially, out of the collection of information about who would be eligible to vote within the 14 to 15-year-old age group, that information would be held by the electoral registration officers and only available to those who work for them. There are three limited circumstances in which that information can be made available to anybody else, and the breach of that duty would be a criminal offence. It is at the highest level of scrutiny in that respect. Information on 14 to 15-year-olds will be suppressed from any version of the full local Government register that is published, sold or otherwise made available. That would be out of that version. However, shortly before an electoral event, returning officers, the Electoral Commission and candidates will be entitled to a copy of the register for electoral purposes. Of course, that comes with similar issues around statutory offences for unauthorised use. That version of the register will contain details of those entitled to vote who are already aged 16 or over or those who will become 16 on or before the date of the electoral event. In practice, only those aged 15 years and 46 weeks and upwards would be on that more publicly available register. The only other exception to the principle that electoral registration officers and their staff cannot disclose information is where it is necessary for the purposes of a criminal investigation or criminal proceedings in relation to issues around voter registration. There are very limited circumstances in which any of that information can be accessed by anyone other than those involved in the Electoral Registration Office and their staff. Any unauthorised disclosure of that information carries with it the risk of criminal penalty as a consequence. Thank you very much for that. There was some discussion last week about whether or not there was a possibility of other groups or organisations accessing some of this data. You seemed to be very clear that that would not be the case. The examples given were, for example, credit agencies and other organisations that legitimately accessed the record of electoral data. I can expressly rule out the fact that it makes clear that the credit agencies will not have access to that information on under-16s. That is good. Can I just ask one other question, convener, which is to do with those children and young people? I should say young people who, for very obvious reasons, may not wish their name to be published on an electoral register. Because of their particular family circumstances, those fleeing difficult situations such as abuse and a whole variety of other reasons, I wonder if you could expand on what the Government's view is on protecting the interests of those young individuals who, unfortunately, found themselves in such circumstances but at the same time allowing them to fully participate in the electoral process. I think that there are two points that I would make in response to Mr Maxwell's question. The first is to say that there is provision for anonymous registration. That exists where it is judged by a court order or an interdict or the view of a chief social worker or a police officer above the rank of superintendent that the safety of an individual or someone living at them would be at risk if the register disclosed her name and address. There is a specific mechanism that enables anonymous registration and participation. In a statutory basis, the circumstances that Mr Maxwell raises are entirely covered by the bill. The second point is that that is only as good as people are aware that that is an option. If people are not aware that is an option, then that is at risk that that young person may not be able to do as Mr Maxwell suggests to fulfil their democratic participation. In the awareness raising around the question in the whole registration process, there has to be an understanding that it is possible to undertake anonymous registration in the circumstances that I have set out. It is important that that point is understood and reflected more widely within the process. You come to my final point, which is exactly that. What are the circumstances that you envisage in terms of the process that will be undertaken by local authorities, electorate registration officers or the Electoral Commission in order to ensure that families and individuals, particularly young people, will be provided with the information that you have said correctly that they should be entitled to? The general canvas process is designed to identify all those individuals who are eligible to be on the register and able to vote. In that process, the circumstances of individuals who may need to be registered anonymously would crystallise, because individuals—I can only assume—would present and say that I am concerned about my name being on that register because of whatever issues of implications there may be. The key test is that those who are handling such information must have at the front of their mind that there is another option for those individuals, rather than saying, oh well, if you don't want to register, you don't register. Or we can say that there is a mechanism if there is an issue of safety or circumstances, that there is another option available for anonymous registration. I think that making sure that awareness is there that that is the case. There is also the proactive responsibility of local authorities as a corporate parent to identify individuals who are highly likely to be involved in supporting those individuals because of their circumstances. As part of that process, I say actively to those individuals, well, you should be registered to vote, but because of your circumstances, it shouldn't be disclosed by your name or your address. Therefore, there is a mechanism that we can put in place to sort that and to make it easier. Crucially, those involved in the electoral process have to have that option at the front of their minds in articulating that to young people. Thank you very much. Thank you for following on from that one of the discussions that we had last week related to the issue of attainers and the issue of donations. I will just quote you from the evidence given by Andy O'Neill, where he says, another issue that we need to think through relates to donations. Under the bill, a person who is 14 years and nine months is likely to be an attainer on the register. It may be improbable, but if the law on registers remains the same, we think that an attainer can be a donor or a lender to a political party or a candidate. The issue for candidates and political parties on regulated donors is that the permissibility of donations of more than £500 must be checked. If they cannot access the donor's details, that would create an issue. Is that an issue that the Scottish Government has had flagged up to it before now, or is it something that you have any consideration on how you might address? I think that what Mr O'Neill has said is absolutely the case. We would agree that the proposals in the bill mean that 14 and 15-year-olds will be entitled to be registered as attainers on the local government register and therefore will be permissible donors. There is then a practical issue, given the answers that I have just given to Mr Maxwell, that that information would not be readily available to political parties to check whether it would be available to political parties to check whether the individual was on the register. The way around that is that young people would be able to obtain a letter from the electoral registration officer to confirm that they were on the register, and they themselves could make that available to the political party to satisfy the political party's obligations in terms of the political parties elections act, which will specify the basis of the obligation on political parties to ensure that donations are compliant. So would it be your expectation that that would be spelled out in the guidance that accompanies the legislation in order to verify that? We certainly will make that option clear, whether it will be in the guidance and I'll consider the contents of that in due course. The Law Society and the Howard League have both given us some views on prisoner voting and compliance issues under ECHR. What's the Government's views on that? The issue is essentially constrained by the contents of the representation of the people at 1983, which is reserved legislation. Section 3 of the representation of the People's Act 1983 includes a ban on prisoner voting across the United Kingdom. We have no ability to vary that legislation, and that is reserved legislation. Therefore, the issue of prisoner voting is determined and defined by the contents of the representation of the people of 1983. I don't think that there are any other questions. I'm very grateful to you and your officials for coming along, giving us evidence today. It's very helpful. I'll just suspend for one minute until we get to the next item of business.


And I want to thank you to the organization of this conference to admit my proposition and also to the board of the conference here to admit this request. Well, I'm going to give you another point of view of the formation of an archaeological collection because I want to show you how the social network, as he said, the colleague, made possible to do things in this collection different to another one. And it was in the pioneer of the management and the ordering of the archaeological collections in Spain. So let me introduce you this man, his Jorge Bonzo, who is called George Edward Bolsa Marta. I miss him here and there, sorry. So he is well known in Spain as Jorge Bonzo. He was a man who came to Spain as a tourist to form a panther. So he came to do these things, these kind of things. He came to the country to discover our culture, to make some paintings about our holy week, our fair thing like this and our landscapes. But in this moment, when he arrives, he not also has the opportunity to discover Spain and our traditions. He also has the opportunity to make contact with a lot of people interested about the study of archaeology and history in Spain. He went, he made a travel, you go here in the app. He went, he made a travel through all Spain and he decided to stay in the south, just see the red point. And over there, he developed all his work because he had the opportunity to visit one Iperian Roman Tom in the Necropolis de Carmona. And he saw the painting over there and he said, he's writing, he said, and now I'm looking at these paintings, I decided to be an archaeologist. So, and this decision was crucial because in our history of archaeology in the south of Spain because this is what he's considered was one of the pioneer archaeologists here in this part of the country. His work was one of the pioneering different perspectives. This first work was in association with the local pharmacies and some people from the town of Carmona, a little village who was nested at Roman, an important Roman necropolis. So, with this association with the local pharmacy for Fernando López, he decided to excavate this site. And this site was the first archaeological site presented to the public in Spain. And it was, I mean, inside it, he has also the first archaeological site, archaeological museum in Spain you have here. So, and the tons, as you see here, they were presented to the public. So, it was pioneering in this site. So, but he decided not only to study the necropolis because he was really concerned about the study and the geography and the relationships of the culture and the ancient culture in Spain, in the south of Spain. So, he decided to go to the territory. He was a former pioneer. He was here, arrived to Spain with the fine arts degree, with an hour in archaeology. But it was not scientist archaeology as well as well. But knowing this situation, I think, I've been looking at all the works that he developed after the excavation of the Roman necropolis. And it was always accompanied by someone. It means he always collaborates with someone to do his kind of works, archaeological works. So, he decided to explore the territory, as you say. I collected a huge archaeological collection. Most of them, these pieces were from proto-historic sites. So, he need now, just I saw, I said to you, he made the excavation of the Roman necropolis. After that, he made a museum. Now, he has excavated the territory and he needed a museum. So, this is the origin of the collection that I want to continue. Here, you have some phases that I prepare, I think, more or less. And we have the 1889 to 1902, the first phase, the origin of the collection, all the first excavations he made at the region of Los Alcorres, near to Carmona, close to Carmona. And then, the second phase is in 1902 and 1907, when the rehabilitation and refurbishment of the Mairena de Alcorre Castle where will be its talents collection. And then, the third phase, it was 1908, 1911, it was the second exploration of the Alcorre region and the collaboration with the Spanish Society of America. And after that, in 1912, 1930, the fourth phase, the collaboration in other projects, I saw by a local audience at the Filla, I will show you. But the very beginning of this collection, this proto-story collection that will be nested in the castle, it was the contact with Apurenga and Pierre Paris. They were invited by the minister in France to look for the Iberian collection in Spain. So, these relationships made him to feel attracted by the study of the proto-historic collection sites in this region. So, as I told you, he built the castle in 1902 and he refurbished. As you see, it was half demolished and was in ruins. So, he decided to make a new sale inside, trying to recover all the former walls that remain small. So, he made this kind of a museum like this and it was also his private dwelling. He made contacts. After, one of the most important things in the origin of this collection, the impact that I'm going to explain to you is the relationship that he had with a lot of scholars and researchers all over the world, we can say, Europe and America, Africa. He said, we have a difference with the other collection that we have been exposed before. We have remains of almost every document and every debris remains that he had in the collection. So, we have a huge level of archives that let us know with who he had contact at this moment. And what was the meaning, the things that we can relate to this. So, at the very first beginning, he made the exploration of the Alcoris area with the many proto-historic sites and he made all these plans that we preserved at the moment and he decided that this time he published all the results in the archaeological review in Paris. And he decided at this moment to send this article to many of the researchers and archaeological researchers that they are working around Europe in this moment. So, because of that, he made many, there were many interests about the researchers, have many interests about the results that Bolsor has discovered in this region. So, here he begins the context and the management of the collection. So, for example, he made contact with Archinton Boulin, who was a botanist of the Malaecological Society of London. So, looking at the results of this collection, of this research, he told him it was necessary to study the Malaecological remains that he found over there. So, he decided to do it in collaboration with him and now in the museum we have this collection of Malaecological items, and even catalogue at this moment, and now there are really important things to show to the new researchers because they are coming to the museum to look for them and the information that they have. So, and also another thing that I think is really important is that they have the same presentation that Archinton Boulin sent to Bolsor at the time, at the end of the 19th century. All that contact was if you have a collection, a Malaecological collection, you don't have only the pieces, you have always said to look for them in order to present them. So, metal items also are usually difficult to preserve the concern. So, he made contact with Adrian Oger for the Naval Archaeological Museum in Belgium who was developing a formula who lets the pieces to preserve the pieces, the metal pieces, iron pieces. So, he used it, he asked him for it, he used it at the museum, and he recommended to another persons who he knows to the research to do it. The formula we don't know because we've got this method of what was applied in Estoppel, Bergen, Chalderua, Liedia, and a lot of museums. We have no contact with them, maybe. We have to contact with them because we have some of these pieces to see here. And these pieces that David applied, this method applied, and we have them still now. So, it works, but we don't know if inside there will be the piece of metal or not, which is also only a cover. We have to consult to the other museum. But it's important at this time to have this notice about the preservation of the metal collection. Also, he has really, we were three interested concerns about the territory as I told you. So, he decided to study the river, the low valley of the Guadalquivir river, in order to look for the Roman factories. So, he made, again, a collaboration with the University of Cambridge, Cambridge and Cambridge Foundation, and worked with William Giltrick-Lad much well. So, the conclusion of this study was published as well. And at the museum, we have the values and remains, like this crystal glass. This remains, these positions, where we have all the handles with seals, even the seals, and in the other one, we have all the conclusion that he had. So, now, when the people come to the museum, even the childs, it's really easy to explain them what he found and what was on an archaeological, centrifugal archaeological study. So, this was another thing that we have over there, glass case. I know the collaboration really important was that where he did with Pierre Paris in Bailoclaudia, Gadit of the South, also, of Spain. And over there, he was condomental to do all the plans of the Necropolis of Roman, again, of Carmelburg, of Bailoclaudia. So, over there, he made it, and he dissolved it on his work. He also did try gifts to the collection and some pieces like this, that you can see. There are also some exchanges of pieces, like this one sent by Petri Barra to him from the archaeological site that we have found at Amadeuilce. And also, another one, another one from Nomancia, he worked also with the Chulten in Doniana and he has also some pieces, we have some pieces from there. It's also important to note that he has also concerned about the protection or the preservation and other type of remains, like the bone remains. So, here we have this school, which is the oldest school trepan in our region and it's preserved over there. The collaboration with the Hispanic Society was also very important because he added some pieces, some items to the museum in New York and the Museum of New York published many of his works also over there. So, he also buys many items like this, alabaster base of this statue of Romain Efebo and it's also in the collection. So, the collection is really huge. Well, I have a lot of time, I have a lot of time. So, this relationship with the Hispanic Society gives him also the interest to collect any other things like artisan pieces of work of art of Spain and things like that. But the most important that I wanted to explain to you about my English, let me, is the museography that he applied. New Italy and Spain and this out, we have this kind of museography, sculptor's coins and top epigraphic tables. And now, plates. And he has a context with another type of museography made in Egypt and Europe. So, he visited many museums and he take notes and he made this kind of presentation that is really different of the other one. It was more positive, presentations of the time. So, he made some notes about the presentation. He put the presentation like he see, like he saw over there. And he also made some replicas to make it undistable to the public, the collections. And he made also, he was also concerned about the context. Did you see? He made, he discovered some things and he made some glass cases and made a reconstruction of how it was. And he made also context, precious context about the dorm and that he excavated like you can see here. He made also what is spread of this collection with the tourist management of the castle. And also, the impact of the collection and the way to manage it was spread all over the world and there were a lot of people who came to visit the closer and to consult their collections as we have in the film, in the signative books that we present the moment of the new set. So, sorry about my English, it's the first time. And I hope to you, thanks. Thank you very much.