c health colleagues to stem that flow and the outbreak. That starts the decision-making. The governor will then look at that, look at the risks, look at the proportionate impact that it would have. Can it be localised to one area? Can it be contained to a wing? Can it be contained to certain specific areas and then make that dynamic risk assessment based on public health advice? He will then touch base in with himself and the prison's directorate and talk through what the potential restrictions could be and the likely timescales that they will take effect from. The decision that will be made thereby by the governor is also tuned into our national coronavirus response group to have active information and up-to-date evidence from across the country and public health colleagues about the likely impact that they could have on their establishment. Based on that, they will make their decision. We will then keep it actively under review between the governor and centrally SPS for how long that could last and with our public health colleagues. It is stopped as soon as the proportionality is not required. We stop it. That is very helpful. I will hand over to Russell and we will work our way round the room. The inspector of prisons has raised a concern about a lack of communication from the SPS in respect of the use of those powers and the lack of an ability to properly, externally monitor the decision-making and the implications of what happens. Is that something that can be improved upon? I suppose that that is a question, first and foremost, from Mr Purdy. I say first of all that I read out the testimony from the inspector, which was extremely positive about the prison services applying those regulations. Of course, it should be the case that she should have the information that she requires but I do not answer what you want to add to that. Thank you, cabinet secretary. We have regular updates with our Her Majesty's inspector following any outbreak and we are always open to learning as you would be because throughout the pandemic lessons learned has been something that we have tried to integrate into all our practices so we minimise the impact on our population. We have open meetings monthly with Her Majesty's inspector team and they have regular inspections day to day by their independent prison monitors. We are open to learning in any way that we could improve on that. I have not got any specific questions that have not already been addressed by the cabinet secretary. I mean, it is sort of a thought, if you like, rather than a question. It is not obviously not ideal to win a situation when we are looking to extend these things but I think that we are all in the same boat here and we are living in really difficult times and I think that, as you have already highlighted at the start, the pandemic is still with us in certain areas where people are living closer together, such as prisons. We still need to err inside a caution so I have got no specific questions. Thanks very much. Jamie, would you like to come in? Yes, thank you. Just some fact-checking questions. First, what is the current prison population in Scotland? I know that it changes on a day-by-day basis but the light of snapshot. Either as a number or percentage, what percentage of those inmates currently have Covid? We know the figures for wider society. Do we know the figures for the prison population? I think that I mentioned the figures at least from the 4th of March in an open statement but you can check back and confirm that. I will take my stab at the prison population and let's figure out so that there are 7,502 or three but I am happy to be corrected on that. I think if I can just check my statement I will tell you exactly what the numbers that are currently have Covid unless you have that right to hand. I don't know, it's not a rhetoric question, I don't know the answer, I'm sorry I missed it. No, sorry I meant Alison if you had it right to hand but I have it here, I read it out earlier on. I do, Government Secretary, if it's helpful. It's actually increased from the briefing that you had, it was 126, it's now 159 today, yesterday, so it's actually increased this week again. You're absolutely right, the population sits has sat just roughly 7,500 and just over for the last month. Okay, I may be continued then with Mr Purdy, he's got all the facts, I've been apologised to the Government Secretary for not jotting it down but I'm glad to get an updated number. How do you think that compares relative to wider society? Are you finding that you're able to contain cases more easily in a prison environment or is it simply more difficult due to the nature of the state? What effect has any relaxation on some of the restrictions that were needed during the temporary Covid measures such as visitation or people being out on licence or temporary release? What effect has any relaxation had on the relativity of the case rate versus the population to say for example when restrictions were in place? Are we seeing a marked proportionate increase in the positivity rate as a result of relaxation or not? Maybe just Mr Greene, just for some context as well through the Public Health Scotland, the prison's advice is actually a stepped up approach from what the community restrictions would be. We've kept in many of the restrictions and measures because of the high-risk nature of the environment. For example, distancing, isolation, hygiene and testing have been of a higher standard or proportion than the population. We have maintained that and that's been an attempt to try and restrict the transient population from community back into custody as well because that is a key risk area for us as well. We've maintained many of those procedures in an attempt to do that and we continue to do that. To answer your question, it still poses significant risk because of that transient population through the criminal justice system, back into community and back into prisons. We have seen it in line with the community in terms of the variants, in terms of the peaks and the troughs. We have been largely in line with the public omicron and the previous Kent variant and the variant before that, back to March 2020. That's very helpful and your analysis of the differences is helpful as well. I guess my other question is more a wider one to the cabinet secretary and that's that if we, as a society, are to use the first learning to live with Covid in the sense that, as you said, there were 11,000 cases. At the same time, we are also heading a path of moving away from restrictions to the point where we hope that life is as back to normal as it can be, but Covid will still be around. That doesn't seem to be the case in the prison environment where they are maintaining higher levels of restrictions relative to wider society. So, I guess the question is why is that a proportionate use of temporary powers if it is no longer a temporary emergency and simply a long-term pandemic or indeed endemic situation that we're living with in society? I think for the, I think really straightforward reason that there are boundaries, literally boundaries, which apply to the prison state which don't apply to wider society. I think it's true to say that no society caught up with the pandemic would have had their public estate, whether schools, hospitals, prisons, as they would like it to be for a pandemic in terms of ventilation and so on as well, and that will be no less true of the prison service, some of the prison despite the substantial modernisation that's taken place over the last 15 or 20 years is still, some of it is still Victorian. So that's a constraint that they cannot get passed in the same way the society can do at the wider society. We can all do things, change the behaviours, change where we go in a way that prisoners and prison officers cannot do, so that's why they have a higher level and the consequences of one person getting it can be a much faster transmission within an enclosed environment such as a prison. So that's the main, I don't know if you want to add to that, also that's the main constraint that I see, and that's why we had right through the pandemic a different standard as Alan Sir said that we require prisons to meet and I have to say I think it's been really successful, and also just if I can, whilst Alan Sir's on to acknowledge the work and the pressures that the prison service have been under during all this as well. I can't say, all I would add to that is it's the balance of the four harams as we know that we'll be trying to do to try and provide people with that meaningful regime and activity and try to address offending behaviour whilst allowing people to be free as possible, but within a constricted environment we will realise that households are much bigger than they are in the community and the spread is significant. So it's balancing the harms as well and making sure that safety of everybody, as the cabinet secretary has said, who lives, works or visits the prisons is our paramount front of your mind. Thank you, and just one last one is will there be any improvement in the transparency around the frequency or impact of powers as they're used on a case-by-case basis given that they are used in different ways and different establishments? One of the HMIP and other stakeholders who've written to his expressed concern around was the issue of clarity and transparency over how and when the powers were used and therefore moving forward if there remain features and powers that remain if that will be improved for the benefit particularly of the families of those who are in prison. I think that's an entirely reasonable request. I think it's maybe a bit distinct from what Mr Finlay raised in terms of the inspector. It's not having the information that she was looking for. For my point of view, I'm happy to see that that does happen. I think obviously when lockdowns happened very unexpectedly that was probably more difficult to achieve but there should be no reason now for not having the maximum possible transparency given the fact that it's prisoners, but their rights are being if you like affected by this. So I think that transparency is legitimate and certainly I'll do what I can and I'm sure the SPS will as well to meet sure we have that. Thank you. Thank you cabinet secretary. You spoke about the human rights considerations and I presume in particular you'd be thinking about article three and whether these requirements amount to inhumane integrating treatment. Could you perhaps outline what you feel you could do in your role to make sure that there is proportionate action taken by the Scottish Prison Service and Governors in particular and how more resources could be put in both in terms of the transparency issues that Jamie Greene was talking about because the Scottish Prison Service did speak about systems issues but also so that there is an awareness in prisons of the importance of these human rights considerations? I believe that they are. They figure in the minds including individual prison officers, not just Governors, about the rights that prisoners have but you've mentioned some of the assurances that we have around that so you have the inspector who's able to challenge where she believes that prisoners rights are not being observed. Jamie Greene has asked for the assurance around transparency, making sure that when it's done it's logged, people know when it's done and why it's been done and when it finishes and the reasons why it's finished and beyond that I think it's also true to say that we can and I'm sure Alice I could do it more effectively than I could although it's Jamie that's the expert on the interplay between different rights. There's a different things which the Prison Service has tried to mitigate the impact of that so in cell telephony for example has been a big boon to prisoners not without its issues of course but so I think that shows that there has been a recognition that these are extraordinary measures which are taking which do impact on prisoners rights and we've tried to make sure that's been mitigated but there are any number I think of checks on that and if we can increase that by responding to what Jamie Greene said in terms of transparency then we should do that. I think those are the reassurances that I would give. It might be worth hearing from Jamie who's the expert on the interplay like yourself and sure on the rights affected. Yeah well I think one of the things that it is well to add is that the Scottish Government does have guidance that's produced with Public Health Scotland and SPS as well around sort of the management of Covid in prisons as well and in terms of the article 3 there's a all of the human rights aspects of this. There are tensions between them obviously in terms of the prisoners access to meaningful activities or purposeful activities rather and also protecting them from the virus sort of ripping through the prisons in a kind of less controlled way anyway and so those balances are always have to be in the mind of the decision maker including Governors because they are bound to act compatibly with the European Convention on Human Rights. Can I ask the cabinet secretary what his understanding is how in terms of how the prisons differentiate between different types of prisoners so for example during Covid children in prison have been subject to the same measures to combat various infections as adults. What's his understanding in terms of how the prisons balance those rights and look at individuals and particularly individuals who may be more vulnerable? I think before going to the specific example you raised about children under 18s in general terms you'll know and I know the committee has visited prisons so you'll know this first hand especially from having been to Salkton prison that there is a big balancing act to be done not just between vulnerable prisoners of different kinds but also between sometimes competing series of nice crime groups as well so the prison service is very good at doing that it's not without its tensions and its problems of course so they've done that and that will include looking after the rights the safety and the health of vulnerable prisoners. In relation to under 18s of course we've got a much much smaller number of those now I think we're down to about 14 from perhaps 200 plus in 2006 but they still are and they are put in prison by the courts that's who decides that they go there rather than to another alternative provision and it's my understanding perhaps as best to hear from Alistair is that they as you said will have the same restrictions although they are based employment which is not currently full in fact far from it so maybe that provides some more latitude but maybe it's good to hear from Alistair on that. Thanks cabinet secretary yeah they are there's a very small cohort of we're held employment and the capacity employment helps us to allow to manage a virus outbreak there more effectively so we don't have to impose restrictions or precautionary measures as we would in other establishments but we do because the committee will know that the virus does not discriminate it's actually it has gone through our whole population and it has impacted on the young people in our custody employment simply because the fact that they are open most of the time we have had an outbreak and that then spreads to the at the time there was 16 or 17 of them it spread to them all but the capacity we have in employment allows us to manage that outbreak more effectively and hopefully the high level information that Mr E's message provided to the committee in her letter of the third of March will kind of outline that employment has not been a one of the establishments or the young people that have had significant impact from the virus but we're always alert to putting the same protective measures in for the young people as any other classification of prisoners across the estate. Thank you and we've been given information as to how the powers have been used since October 2021 and as the cabinet secretary knows the buck stops with him and I just wanted to ask to what extent is he advised of steps that have been taken on a regular basis so he's able to give that political oversight so if that he had concerns in terms of how the legislation was being implemented he was able to take action or express those concerns yes a very regular update which we get which goes down to individual prison level which gives at least during the if you like the worst of the pandemic the level of increases in individual prisons the movement between wings when the wings got to be isolated it also talks the updates I get talk about new prisoners coming in it gives some background on where they think the Covid might have started if it's somebody new coming in it gives details on the level of prisoners who have been vaccinated either ones twice or three times and also it gives levels in terms of testing also gives levels in terms of testing for prison staff as well so pretty detailed and regular accounts I can't think of a time if I have lots of questions to ask and it features into other systems which the government is in place generally for the management of the pandemic but I can't think of any apart from asking for more information if I had to intervene to if you like impose a political kind of steer on it sure but when these powers are used you aren't informed that they have been used in a particular establishment well whether it's the case in every single one every single power know that if there's a movement safe for example for a wing to have been closed down or people to be isolated in that way or whether there's been things like a move to double shifting which means there's more purposeful activity that can take place I'm advised of those things yet thank you thanks very much before I move on to Rhona I'll bring Rhona in just as our final questions can I just pick up on the you're speaking there about self isolation in some of the measures that are required to respond to that I'm aware that Scottish prison service statistics from the eighth of this month a couple of days ago said that there's around about 1140 prisoners self isolating at the moment which in the context of the overall prison population seems quite a high number I'm just wondering if that presents additional challenges in terms of the day to day running of prisons I don't know if that's maybe something that Mr Prowdy might pick up yeah probably Alasers best place but just to say about that number which also will be able to confirm or otherwise of course that includes quite a high level of remand prisoners for reasons that we're all aware of and also the moving in and out of prison so the prison service is more susceptible but it's not at all immune from the wider increase that we've seen certainly over the last week or so but Alasers would have more detail on that yeah thanks cabinet secretary yeah govina that number is correct in terms of those isolating and that simply is a result of the households being larger and it's precautionary measures for to make sure that anybody who has a close contact anybody symptomatic or asymptomatic and they are as isolated for a shorter period as possible so that we can keep the households safe it is it does cause problems as well because it clearly restricts someone's individual activity within the prison on that day or for a number of days until we can make sure that they're safe and that the virus has been cleared or as or the areas as safe as it can be so it does cause operational difficulties in terms of that number our public health guidance for prisons as I mentioned before places are again a burden on us in terms of our isolation different from the community as it is just now simply because it's a high risk residential area and that's to really protect the article three that we talked about earlier to people's health, safety and human treatment so we do have high isolation numbers just now that fact thanks very much that's very helpful Mr Perdie I'll just bring in Rona just to ask some final questions thanks thanks my question is very much in the same line as Katie and the cabinet secretary has answered most it's about purposeful activity and exercise and the briefing we got from Theresa Medhurst shows the very different the differences between the prison estate and you know and reading the notes it seems to be mainly staff related and staff absences that are a major factor in this so I wonder if Mr Perdie could maybe just confirm that to go on the record and also to ask was there ever any thought given to perhaps sort of drafting in retired prison officers to cover temporarily in situations so that the you know more activity could be given yeah thank you and yeah as and you will see from the the outline high level that it has been acute numbers of staff who were off at peak times specifically during the the Omicron as well we have transferred staff from other establishments who are not experiencing outbreaks to other establishments the risk in that is that we may well be exporting the virus from one establishment back into the family home or into the community so we have done that on several occasions and we continue to use that as one of our kind of contingency plans to keep establishments functioning so we don't have to take the precautionary measures and set aside purposeful activity or indeed visits that we know that are so important to the rehabilitative program for for our people and our custody in families thank you that's fine thank you very much okay thank you very much everybody and that brings this part of the meeting to a close again thank you to the witnesses for attending and we'll just have a very short break to allow for a change over of officials thank you very much thank you very much everybody so our final item of business this morning is consideration of the service and case management system used by social work and prison staff to assess risk management in the justice system and thank you to the cabinet secretary for justice and veterans for remaining for this agenda item and I also welcome to the meeting Cat Dallrymple deputy director community justice of the Scottish government and I refer members to paper five so in light of the time available I'd like to move straight on to questions and I want to just ask members if they would like to indicate if they'd like to ask a question I'll take Russell first and then Jamie thank you very much now cabinet secretary understand that one of your responsibilities is to consider first grant temporary release applications for those serving life sentences it's a two-prong question and the first part is how many of these have you had to consider in your tenure and the second part is how many of these were based on the incorrect risk assessment due to this problem I should say I think I'd mentioned in response a similar question during the statement last week I would I hope to be able to give a reassured response to Mr Finlay and I should say I have not granted any first grant of temporary release however it's also true to say that for a number of years now that function has been carried out by the minister and the justice hopeful so in this case by the minister for community safety and having carried out a reconciliation of the sps system with the identified affected cases eight cases where first grant of temporary release have been granted were found these have all been looked at again and I'm able to confirm there are no immediate or concerning public protection risks highlighted although these eight cases will be further reviewed by the risk review group which I mentioned last week in a statement to provide further assurance thank you another question of this okay yep now presumably some prisoners will believe that they may have suffered a detriment by being kept in prison longer than the risk assessment might have suggested they should are you anticipating any form of legal challenge from prisoners given how litigious they can sometimes be but if there was to be a legal challenge it'd be for others to take that decision but I think the important thing from my point of view and from the justice portfolio's point of view is to make sure that we can identify that if that has been the case and that's why I've mentioned previously about the risk review process that we're carrying out it's quite a plenty detailed and technical process there are different layers to it but it would be very thorough process I don't know whether it's possible to hear from Katas to how else that's going to be carried out but we as I should also mention it may well come up I mentioned last week we had 265 I think cases where we that were open we were concerned and we've now been able to check just as of today or certainly yesterday every single one of those cases and not one is giving us rise for any issues in terms of public protection but on the process for other cases where somebody might feel that they've been wrongly assessed from my understanding and from the different layers of checks which are carried out that's unlikely to be the case but maybe a good idea to hear from Katas. Thank you if I could start around the first grant of temporary release I think there was a briefing paper that was provided to members yesterday which provides significant detail that's okay significant detail around the approach that's taken to those types of decisions and and hopefully that briefing paper will explain to members that in making that decision to apply for that first grant of temporary release it's a holistic decision from the whole risk management team and it considers a wide range of factors and available assessments and it does include the outcome of an LSCMI but it gives an indication across that whole risk management approach around the manageability of that risk within the community. So as the cabinet secretary has indicated there were 285 live cases that were identified in relation to the risk score and level issue and these have all now been checked in the last two were confirmed this morning so social workers have been absolutely amazing in terms of coming back and checking all these cases and they're confident in those cases that there's no live immediate or concerning public protection risk. In terms of the wider assurance in relation to the first grant of temporary release cases and those cases will be looked at because they're part of the 1317 cases that have been passed on to the risk review group that's going to be chaired by the risk management authority that group met for the first time yesterday and are agreeing in terms of reference there are a number of different organisations met on that group 11 I think different types of organisations right across the justice sector and they will assess any wider impact in any of these cases and if you think about the numbers I mean it's 1% of the you know about 1% of the numbers in the whole system and that is a good sample exercise in terms of that 1317 and if there is any impact assessed in terms of of their consideration of those cases then that I suspect will inform any future lessons in any future work that would need to be undertaken. Thank you I want to hold the questions I'm sure everyone else will say. Okay thank you I'll bring in Jamie Greene and then I'll bring in Fulton MacGregor. Thank you and can I thank the government for the briefing albeit 18 pages trying to digest overnight wasn't easy given the technicalities of this is a very technical problem but I just want to just get my head around the bigger picture we didn't really have a lot of time in the statement last week due to chamber pressures but this is a great setting to do so. Is 1317 the absolute maximum amount of cases that any IT glitches that have led to a wrong risk assessment have happened? Is that the absolute maximum or is it the case that there could be more but you simply need to do some more work to find out how many more and how far back the problem goes? So let me enter this. We've been lasing with a lasing with our IT provider on the second issue that the cabinet secretary highlighted so we know in the first issue that those cases are the ones that are affected and we've provided a high level of assurance around those open cases. Initial advice from the IT provider has confirmed the second alcohol and drugs issue and they've indicated that that's likely to have an overlap with the initial issue so there's still work on going. It suggests that there's a very small number of cases that will be affected as that error appears to retain information following revisiting of that score. So in order to address that we are working with the risk review group and professionals in the system to identify what additional level of assurance we are able to provide on the existing cases within the system. Now that needs to be a really balanced and proportionate approach because there is no suggestion that you know there's a significant number of these cases affected by that issue. We know we've got a high level of assurance already on these cases that are identified as having been confirmed and affected so we are working with the professionals to work out what is the best way to provide that level of assurance with the existing cases in the system and we're taking advice from the professional experts in terms of the risk management authority in terms of what that will look like but I should say that in terms of ongoing case management of individuals within a community there are a number of different points where a social worker will provide assurance around that LSTMI assessment so on the fact that there is now a known issue within the system that has been identified we have been told by all the professionals at any point when a decision is coming up about that individual. So a court decision you know preparing a parole dossier and a decision in the prison service around progression they will obviously assure the LSTMI assessment that that individual that they are confident in that LSTMI assessment because we know that whilst it you know no decision is based on that assessment alone it is part of that more holistic approach and then sorry. Sorry I appreciate this technical answer to a simple question but I haven't heard the answer yet is the problem so are you saying that sorry I'm getting a lot of feedback thank you. So sorry just to be absolutely clear the 1317 cases of which 1032 are closed cases and a couple of hundred are open cases there is the potential that there may be other cases affected by the and the second question that linked to the first is if this goes back prior to the IT centralisation project which the cabinet secretary said may have brought the issue to light in the first place then that would surely mean that for a number of years the system was getting it wrong so what a work has been done to identify how many other cases may have been incorrectly risk identified what do you think the scale of that might be are we talking tens hundreds thousands how many prisons have been released in the last 10 years I suspect it's a substantial amount so does the government know how many people may have been wrongly risk assessed prior to release not just current cases but those going right back 10 years. The answer to that is at this stage there is no suggestion that there are a significant number of cases affected what requires to be done is an end to end assurance process of that system going through every different functionality part and I don't want to get too technical and understand but it is technical risk assessment is technical and the 18 page briefing paper probably demonstrates that but the LSEMI there's the first part of the LSEMI which is a kind of screening tool and that she's predominantly for court social work reports and that doesn't have a risk score that's necessarily calculated that's a kind of eight question predominantly six of those are yes no questions and there are a significant number of those on the system and that we know from the identified issue extremely unlikely to be affected we can't see how they could be affected at this stage and thereafter once an individual is being managed and on a community payback order they're likely to go on to the more detailed LSEMI assessment and that is where the risk score is is is tallied up and comes out with a risk level and that's only part of that detailed assessment so there is there is that part then there is the secondary part of that which is considered structured professional judgment that is applied in relation to a number of different questions about that individuals criminogenic needs and about their pattern of offending about all their the wider information so that's the professional judgment that is applied within that secondary aspect of the risk assessment so that's not just a score and a level and then obviously there's a third part of the LSEMI which if if considered necessary by that professional they go on to do a risk of serious harm assessment so it's kind of three different stages and what we need to do is assure every single part of that stage through the IT and we'll be user led in that as well in terms of that ongoing review of those types of cases but that being said I think I'll need to check the fish report I think the language you used is that there's an expectation that it won't be a large number of cases but you don't know I think is the answer we don't know if there if 1300 is the absolute number that have been affected or if there are more if we if we start delving back into historic archives and looking at on a case by case basis which is a tremendous amount of work by the way of people who have been previously released where this system has incorrectly scored them when will we know exactly when will that piece of work be finished so that we have a much bigger picture of it so if I could be clear that there are two pieces of work that need to be on-going the first is the piece of work under those the 1317 cases from the risk review group and that will inform any future assurance that is required there are a number of different outcomes from that group they could assess given the holistic nature of risk assessment and the fact that lscmi is one small part of that or not small sorry one part of that then that's likely to inform any future assurances in terms of other old cases within the system if they assess on that and they are confident that there has been no impact then it may be that that provides a high level of assurance but that we will take our advice from that in terms of the experts and that's not something for me to sit here and and say would be appropriate because I'm not an expert in risk management and we need to make sure that we take proper advice on that and then we've got the wider review of open cases within the system and that is very much working with the IT provider and the professionals and the risk management authority to identify what will provide that level of assurance and public confidence in those existing cases I suspect it's not likely that every single case will be reviewed because there are automatic built-in review points as an individual is being managed so there are obviously when a decision point is up you would expect a professional to have a look at the LSCMI and make sure that it's assured and accurate and thereafter as I understand it from from the professional social workers that I've spoken to individuals are ordinarily reviewed on a three-monthly basis so within three months I would like to think that a lot of these individuals on these open cases would have had a case reviewed. Just to find the connection to the cabinet secretary if any of those people who are the language being used as live public protection issues or known public protection issues but can ask cabinet secretary are you confident that no one has been released earlier than they shouldn't have been under normal circumstances and if anyone has been released earlier than they normally would have been were it not for the IT glitch that any of those people did at any point in the past pose a public protection issue or went on to re-offend or end up back in the system out with what would be normal re-offending rights which we talked about earlier so I guess we're looking for a little bit more comfort that those who were released did not go on to re-offend inadvertently. I think on the one hand given what Katz said about the further processes that we have to go through it's right to wait for those processes before being absolutely definitive but I think two things if it's comfort that's being sought one is if you go through 285 cases and not one single one gives you cause for public protection concerns and the views of the experts that have looked at that's that's a good sign a good indicator of where we're at but it's not definitive and I'm not trying to pretend that it is and the other thing to say given some of the publicity that flowed from last week is LSCMI I think this was it may have been in the briefing I can't remember we've been other briefing that I've seen is almost like a general triaging tool whereas over and above that if somebody is a sexual offender or at high risk because of violence of causing pollution there are separate tools which deal with that that's not just LSCMI may be involved but it won't be the end there'll be other things which deal with that which I think should provide reassurance but can I just add a couple of points please can be because I know there wasn't time to take the opening statement but I sought within that to address some of the questions which members quite rightly asked of me last week so Paul McNeill had asked about and I think Jamie Greene made mention of it as well the technical nature of the update and I would hope that people will see both from the briefing that's been provided and from what Cat said how technical this is although I did specifically ask for the briefing for members to be as in plain language as possible because it is quite sometimes difficult to understand the different aspects of it I should say I also had a question from Stephen Kerr but I was asked when it first came to light and I said the 24th of January apparently the first person to see it was an individual in SPS on the 13th of January I may have said that as well but certainly I mentioned to Stephen Kerr the 24th the 24th is when Government officials became involved and started running tests in parallel with the system and I was advised as I said last week on the Friday previously and it came to parliament and I'll just say that in relation to being quick with that there was a case down south where they wiped 400,000 prisoners I think those prisoners were offenders records and there was no statement made to parliament down there until after the event I was very keen to make sure that we didn't do that and we came as soon as possible but one consequence of that just to get back to Jamie Greene's question is we don't all have all the answer we are working this through just now we're providing as much assurance as we can I think it's pretty substantial assurance given the 285 live cases which we have that have not produced any cause for public concern but I just wanted to make sure that the questions there's probably one or two others that were asked last week we have tried to deal with if not in the briefing I would have dealt with them in the opening statement and hopefully that's given some of the assurance as well. Much apologies I was just very very aware of the time hence going straight into questions but I'm sure that members are certainly very well to come back and answer further questions. Is that you Jamie? I'm keen to let... I think we'll just move on thanks. Katie I'll hand over to you. Just picking up on the point about other systems have you been able to work out yet exactly what the profile of the kind of cases we're talking about and in particular some of the more serious offences for example how many sexual offenders are involved and in terms of the huge workloads that's involved in reviewing the case how have you prioritised and have you been able to prioritise some of the cases that would cause the public most concern and perhaps if you could maybe outline in a lay person's language the approach that you've taken? Can I come in first on that because you raised a similar question last week and say I would have addressed that in the statement I think what's here should provide some reassurance so you'd asked about the kind of offences involved particularly around sexual offences and I was grateful for you raising that issue but the LSEMI is not an offence based system and doesn't record a type of offence. I've tried to explain it's a kind of generic system a kind of tri eye system which may seem strange but it's entirely consistent with the risk assessment approach and as we set out in the briefing paper it's a general tool that looks at general factors including potential offending but part of the judgment applied relates to the different part of the assessment to come into your question that looks at the nature of offending and provides structured consideration around nature. I know we've said this a number of times it's important to get across there are different elements to every risk assessment that takes place that element of the system does not have a score for example individuals convicted of a sexual offence will have bespoke risk assessments carried out likely focusing not just on general offending but on risk of harm which are particular to that type of offending so there are other processes which cover that and I think what we've done so far is to concentrate or you've asked about priority the 285 live cases so that's the priority we've taken so far and then moving on. That's why I asked about other systems whether you were able to use other systems that you have to pick out certain types of cases that perhaps may be of the greatest concern and whether that has been incorporated into the work that's currently ongoing so that perhaps some of the most serious offenders or the types of offences that would be likely to be the ones that people might be most concerned about with the cases that were looked at first. Are you able to do that with the systems that you have available to you? I would make an assumption that the professionals within the system know the type of offending from the individuals that they are managing and that's why we're working with the professionals to identify what level of assurance and what type of review we do in terms of any other open cases within the system so we will work with the professionals and the risk management authority to identify what those priorities should be and one of the messages that's been coming out from our social work colleagues is that they do want clarity in terms of what it is that we're asking them to do so we will make sure that we provide such clarity. So is it the case there for the serious sexual offenders or individuals that have been involved in serious violence would be the kinds of cases that professionals would be asked to look at first? It certainly could be but I think that the point that the cabinet secretary made is that looking at an index offence does not necessarily help you to understand the risk of an individual. You could have somebody on a relatively low tariff offence that creates a greater risk and you could have the reverse I've spent previous to coming to government 20 years as a procreator fiscal and I remember one case that I prosecuted on indictment that on the face of it if he'd looked at the index offence could have looked you know as if there were five breaches of the peace but it was clearly of a very sinister nature that case in itself ended up being referred to the High Court for a detailed risk assessment from you know risk management accredited assessors for an order of lifelong restriction to be considered in that case so it demonstrates that the index offence is not necessarily linked but in terms of public concern I understand that and that assurance level that we can feed in where the professionals tell us that that should be prioritised and we can feed that in. So you're asking professionals to look at their current and former case loads and to take a judgment as to any individuals that they may have concerns about and those cases would be prioritised? Well certainly we're working with the professionals we haven't asked them as yet because we're working with them to identify what the parameters are to make sure that we provide clarity on that. So you haven't actually asked professionals to do that yet? We had a meeting with them on Monday to try and work out what the parameters of this review should be and then we take advice from the risk management authority to make sure that they're content with what it is that we're proposing to do. So the concern was first brought to attention on the 13th of February although I appreciate that the full extent of the problem might not have been apparent at that point but as yet we've not actually got to the point where cases are being looked at by those who deal with this work is that the case? The priority has been on the 285 and that's what the professionals have been doing since we've identified the cases to them. They have been providing that assurance and the last two cases were reviewed overnight and the confirmation was provided this morning. The priority was the 285 live cases which have now been completed. That's the priority we set for those involved. I should say it's the 13th of January for Scane to Light, 24th of January for the test done by government and then leading up to 25th of February but just to go back to the previous point again about the types of offences that 285 would have been subject to the LSEMI which is why we've looked at those 25 but if they were for those that were sexual offences or high risk violent they would have been subject to a different tool which manages them in terms of that high risk as well so that's also their reassurance and what Cat's now talking about is how we go further and go back in time with these to make sure we're satisfied with the rest of the system as well. Cabinet Secretary, on the cases that have been looked at have you asked for a breakdown on the kinds of offences that are involved in that cohort? Did you ask for that information? I like Cat coming but a priority was to make sure there was no issue of public protection in relation to that and sometimes as has been mentioned already the index case for which somebody's first convicted doesn't give you the full information middle if you want to add to that. I appreciate that point that somebody may be a very dangerous individual but they may not actually have been convicted of any serious offences but many of that cohort would have had convictions and did you ask for that information? I don't recall that that information was asked for in the initial reassurance as soon as the issue was identified and it was the priority was checking that there were no concerning or immediate public protection risks. Thank you very much. I'm just watching the clock there. I just think it's probably very, very quickly, Jamie. Apologies, I didn't realise you were waiting to come in. If someone has been released, they've basically been released, there's no recall to prison for example, that's the first technical question. Is there anyone who's currently due for error release given that it is an automatic process for some sentences rather than an assessment based release who will be eligible for early release but may have been incorrectly risk assessed and if so will there be a moratorium on their release, automatic air release, if there is a potential that they have been wrongly risk assessed by the IT system? I think that what you're talking about is the release from prison and that short-term prisoners and long-term prisoners. If we start with long-term prisoners over four years, they're only released from a parole board decision and that's contained within the briefing pack. In short-term prisoners under four years, they'll be released at the statutory point of their release and I think it was highlighted this morning in terms of the statutory provisions around what they're obliged to take in terms of that through-care support. So they'll be released anyway even if they've been wrongly assessed, is that the crux of my question? Just due to the nature of the policy? The release date will be set as part of their sentencing in the first place. In relation to longer-term prisoners it'll be a decision for the parole board and they will have all the different experts there to provide that assessment at that time. I should say maybe it provides further reassurance to say that everybody's been made aware of this now so all assessments currently being done have been looked at in light of this and in any event it will be overtaken very quickly by the three-month assessment which prisoners and that's or not just prisoners but offenders in that situation will be subject to so even if we had discovered something this process is starting to bite whereby this is taking to account with future assessments that have been done if you follow me so the original court sentence handed down by the court in relation to a short-term prisoner and cap will correct me if I'm wrong as a former fiscal is set by the court so that we don't have the ability to change that. Apologies again for not bringing you in and then I'll bring in Rona. No thanks convener and apologies as well because I wasn't sure whether when I indicated earlier you took it as I wasn't wanting in or I was so it was also awful my fault. Obviously I would be really keen to come in and draw members' attention to my register of interest as before I became an MSP in 2016 this is exactly what I done for my work so the LSCMI is a system I'm very very well aware of doing several, I was going to say a week but more likely several a day and I was on the initial training in 2012 and the system changed as well so and I think that it's a very very good system for what it's worth as well but I wonder so I might be able to ask some helpful questions in terms of the LSCMI to the cabinet secretary you know I know you spoke a wee bit about this but would you accept that it's not just the LSCMI that's used and that there's a whole range of risk assessment tools so it's not as if you know perhaps to put members' minds at ease you know you wouldn't just do an LSCMI and say oh computer says yes so that means that that means this you know is that is that a point that has been made to you when you've been speaking to people? Yeah and I think last week during the statement I read out the different categories of professionals that look at this and as you'll know better than any of us Mr McGregor there's a whole list of experts you know that look at this as well as the tool that's mentioned and just to say that going back to Katie Clark's point you know have we asked for a breakdown in terms of the offences no we could do that and we'll look into that but the simple fact is the individuals the social workers and others know exactly what the offences are they're the ones that prefer apply the professional judgment and I think that's probably the most valuable part of the system is the professional judgment of social workers and others that look at these things with other experts to help them so it's a point I've made it a number of times it seems to be lost sometimes but Tim it's very important to realise how this is a part of the system and when you go into the other side of sexual and high risk offending there are other tools which are used for that in addition to LSCMI. Yeah and building on from then is in terms of the cases the cases that you have identified and have been working through have all of them that have been subject to the professional override that you were talking about in the chamber last week and I'll come back to be a bit about that but have they all been cases where the risk has been lowered from what the LSCMI said or not is that information you've got? Sorry could you just so in terms of the clinical override is that what you're asking and so I think the what we were able to confirm in those cases is that the risk level has changed in both directions and clinical override had already been applied in a number of those cases but not all of them. Yeah so that was actually the point I was hoping to make that you know to you know if the cabinet secretary wants to comment on the fact that the clinical override which I felt last week in terms of some of the questions that you can understand why that would be the case you know that it's about it's been about that the override bringing a risk down to what the LSCMI says but actually it's as likely if not more likely that you know if the LSCMI is indicating a low risk but actually professional judgment indicates higher risk that you know is a higher risk because actually put in and is that a point that I think I gave the example last week in relation to the issue that we have with the alcohol assessment whereby it seemed more likely that what was being done is somebody progressing away from alcohol addiction that may not have been captured below the lower score that we've been justified might not have been captured was example I'd given but the professional lower override and I'm saying this as a layperson I'm sure cat will correct me has now been applied again to 285 cases that's what's now happened the experts involved have looked at this and come back and say there's no public protection issues on the 285 that they've looked at and those are live cases what we now have to do as has been urged by others is to go back and look at previous cases before but it's a pretty new indicator about the level if 285 out of 285 come back and we have no issues but that's what we now have to do we accept that that's the interest of public issues on the literature of the lscmi tool is that that professional judgment and that override and facility is available when you look at the literature around all the different risk assessment tools that are available I thank you for that and in terms of the the override function which I think which I agree with you as a very important part of it does the cabinet secretary and officials accept as well that when those are used or utilised if you like it's actually quite a reverse process so I wouldn't I think I would take the opportunity to to say that you know I wouldn't I wouldn't want anybody thinking it be an individual social worker another worker sitting somewhere doing an override and then you know that that would be it it needs to go to several levels of management in most cases and then the higher management are going at a higher level of experience as well and also you'll have seen from seen the forums a complete you know a narrative around the justification of that decision in either direction so you know would the cabinet secretary take the opportunity to join me in terms of offering that reassurance? I think I was aware of some of that but not aware as you are of the detail of that and it does provide further reassurance it's not the case that as you say something takes from one computer system and that drives the whole process the professional judgment shouldn't be kind of rushed past it's a really important if not the most important part but as you're saying it's not just that professional that seems to be then checked again by others as well to make sure there's nothing that should be questioned and listened to it so it is a very robust system obviously we regret of course the two issues that we've had with the IT system and we have to learn from that and we will learn from that there'll be an ongoing process of going back with the providers to make sure that we try and cover this in future and make the risk assessment system as robust as we possibly can it is robust it has been these two issues with the IT system I've given us the concerns which we've addressed and come back to Parliament with but we want to have the most robust system possible and it's also probably worth saying that one feature of the Scottish justice system which has more people on demand and more people in prison than many other systems is we're not or we are rather or we could be accused of being risk averse given that so but we have to have the proper system in there and we should both be accountable for anything that hasn't worked as it should and make sure that we get remitted as quickly as possible and that's what we're now trying to do. In just one more very very brief question I hope I've been able to use my experience and this area to ask some helpful questions to the cabinet secretary that would maybe be able to reassure people out there but on the other side of that I'd also like to ask problem almost challenging question in that respect then in terms of the override or the professional judgment question it has obviously been an area where even way back to the training that has had question marks obviously over it in terms of people's feeling confident and that's why it's got that level of management experience in that around it but given what's happened it's very likely and I've been spoken to previous colleagues that people's confidence will have been impacted by this what steps are the government likely to take to support people in the profession to bounce back from this and to feel confident and not end up having more work as they try and make these decisions. I mean is it funding, is there resource issues there as well? There obviously will be a confidence issue now moving forward. With that latter point of funding I did briefly touch on last weekend we have made it clear that we're willing to of course respond to any requests for financial support which derive from needing more resources and more people to look at this but on the question about rebuilding the confidence I mean I think there's a number of levels so that one is the IT system itself so that would be IT people that we've now engaged with and will engage with others to make sure that that is right and as it should be and beyond that is I think as a number of members have raised the issue about going back in time to previous now closed cases and making sure that it operated as it should have done despite these IT issues in the past and those two things I think should help to provide that conference. We're also taking the opportunity to see if we can look for further improvements in the system as well as you should do at any point but this seems the right point to make sure that we do that as well. I don't really have a question because so many questions but just a very brief comment. Having listened to the evidence this morning having read the briefing note I feel very reassured and I feel my initial instinct that this is largely these decisions are based on a whole series of professionals and it's not so much about a computer. That's what I felt from the start and you've confirmed that so I'm quite reassured. I think just in the spirit of timekeeping we'll bring things to a close. I apologise once again for my sloppy convenership this morning for getting to take you in and not allowing you cabinet secretary to make your statement. You are of course welcome to make any additional final comments at the moment or share information with the committee in due course and on that note I suppose I would just on behalf of the committee just ask for a reassurance that the on-going review process that we've spoken at length about today is something that perhaps the committee will be kept updated on. Happy to give that assurance. It's a long-going process as you say convener so it may be worth more than one update as we go through the process but we'll make sure the committee are informed. My thanks again to cabinet secretary and yourself, Ms Doddampoll, for adopting this part of the meeting to a close and we'll now move into private session.


What's up, guys? Welcome to today's video. Today I've got something extra special for you guys. I'm going to show you guys how to cut a curtain fringe. All right, here's a couple things, couple tips about this. Here's the hairline here. That's where we're going to take our section. So what I want to do is I want to follow this hairline up. I'm using a wide tooth comb at this point, so I don't like to pull on the hair too much and I don't need a lot of tension when I cut dry hair. So I go up from this point up to create the first line in this triangle section that I'm going to be creating in the hair. I'll twist that just lightly twist it and I'm going to slide a clip up underneath just to hold it out of the way. So we're following the hairline up through to this top point of the head right where the head starts to curve from that fringe area. So again, straight up from the hairline here, I'm going to go up to this trying to complete the triangle section. So she's facing forward. Here's the bridge of her nose. I've got my two triangles. So it comes from this point here all the way down the hairline.  I'm going to take out the left hand side section. Like that, and I'll just slide my clip up here. Now, what I want to do, this is going to be condensed cutting as well. So what I'm doing is I'm pulling this hair not to the center bridge of the nose. I want to pull it past to the other eyebrow to the edge of the other eyebrow. That's where I'm going to cut it. My fingers are going to be parallel to the wall, right? So as I come over here, I'm holding the hair out and my fingers will be parallel to the wall and I'm over directing it over to the other eyebrow. I want to show you guys from multiple angles here. So out from the head here, just over the nose, but then bring it to the edge of the eyebrow. So what I'm doing is I'm pulling all this hair over here to the edge of the eyebrow here, and that's where I'm going to start my cut. I let this go. It's going to create. See that already? I'm going to tie this into I'm going to do the same thing with the other side. You can see that curtain fringe start to open up. Now I can decide how do I want? Is it light enough? Is it? Does it still feel a little bit heavy? It felt a little bit heavy. I can always take into some of this fringe and just do a little bit deeper point cutting into it to soften it up.  So grab my palmatule, neuro, smoothie iron. I'm going to take slight diagonal parting. All right, let me show you guys how to cut it with a trirazor. How we took our sectioning, we're going to do it exactly the same. So right here, find your hairline and I'll draw my line straight down the hairline hairline straight up to the top here. Now we're going to do the same thing on the opposite side. So there we go. So now we've got our big triangle. I'm going to take and cut that in half. Here is the edge of the eyebrow that we're going to. So here we go just above the eyebrow. If they've got thick hair, then you take the 25 texture side. You take the 25 texture side, which is right here. And first I go from the start of the eyebrow to the edge of the eyebrow. It's kind of a nice little rule there. So start of the eyebrow to the edge of the eyebrow. One little kick. Now that takes out 25% of the hair. Now I go to the edge of the eyebrow and I can do my 100 cutting side across. So you see the texture, you see all the different lengths. When I comb this over, that'll give me a little kick. And this, like if it feels a little bit long, this I sectioned a little bit further down. You can always cut into that and I'll show you guys that. I'll let down both sides and hit it with an iron like I did before. What I'm going to do is what I was telling you guys about before, which is take up some of this on the side here.


So that's not my turf exactly how to operate this office suite. But if you come with a question like trying to build that with my latest GCC6 version and there's a 10 line error message, that's a question that I would like to discuss with you. But what we'll actually talk about today is seeing to get LibreOffice integrated or working with the XCG app thing, which is a kind of two-thing approach. So what actually is XCG app is, I think, even a Wikipedia site for it now. So it starts to get popular. It's an approach to this common set of problems that you have programs on the internet, programs from anywhere. You want to make sure that they do run on your computer on the specific set of libraries and APIs that you have on your machine that might not be the ones that the person who actually built that software has. You also want to have security if you download some program from somewhere. You might not be too sure that that is something that wouldn't do something malicious to your machine. So the idea for the Linux ecosystem is XDG app, which started off in kind of the GNOME, Fedora, Redhead world. And yeah, there's these two ideas behind it. Have some format to ship software to the end user in a way that it will definitely run there and make it run there in a way that ideally it can't do any harm if it turns out to be more from a guy you would want to trust. So the other part of the puzzle is LibreOffice in this case. It is huge. It has nobody exactly knows how to count the number of the lines of code, for example, because it's so many months, but it's in the millions. It has a very long history through time, through various incarnations of StarOffice, OpenOffice. Now we're at LibreOffice. It dates back to the 1980s, even the oldest parts of the code. It runs on all different platforms or all the ones that are still relevant today. We dumped the OS2 port at some point, but we're still Linux, Microsoft, of course, Mac. Building that is often kind of a challenge because we come with, like, in the hundreds of configure switches, you can enable, disable kind of anything from whether you want to build a debug build through the help content and the UI and what kinds of languages you want to bring that along. And all the libraries that typically on Linux you find on the system. But on Windows, for example, they are not there, so we need to bring along these, at least for Windows anyway. So we have a zoo of, like, 100 sub-modules that are integrated in our code. So we don't ship the actual code of those. You need to get them from the internet as well as Tables. We automate that. But then we integrate that into our build system so that we have just one make, everything that then goes into all these sub-modules so that you did want to include and build that as well. So typically, typical sub-modules are built-only-boost thing, for example. But we also ship our own complete Python 3 because some platforms just don't have it. And then more of a specific stuff like this zoo of little libraries that help us in importing the various file systems, document file formats that are out there. So we have split that out as well. Another part is that, as I said, you can specify which languages. And we have localizations in around 100 languages by now. There's a quite vibrant community around LibreOffice translating it into all these various languages. And there's ever more coming and trying to pick that up. So yeah, that's what LibreOffice is. And we're quite prominent for whatever toolchain there is out there. We sure to break it at least in one or two places. So that's also my main point of interest in this big office suite is not the applications that you actually run. But this large corpus of software that when you think about some compiler improvement, for example, that will be cool to try out or implement it in Clang as a plug-in, then you're sure if you run it on that 1,000,000 code base, you'll at least find one or two places where that your check actually hits and you can find a unit there and be happy that you improved our code base with a dent. That's great. So a natural fit for a new environment to run applications in like XGJAP is to try one of the big ones. And if that one sticks in there and works in there, then we can be pretty sure that XGJAP is a technology that works also for the humble little, all the other apps that are out there. So what do we do? I'll first start with a part about actually building LibreOffice so that it fits into XGJAP. That's the one part of XGJAP so that we can distribute it. The other part, of course, is the sandboxing, seeing that it doesn't do any harm. And I'll come to that in the second part. So as a set, we have a multi-platform. So the easiest platform to target actually is Mac because that's a very tightly controlled one. You exactly know what's available if you target Mac 10.8, for example, as your minimum baseline. Then you're sure what to find there. Windows as well. But unfortunately, Linux is more fractured because of the more free approaches we have here. So that's a pro and can be a con as well if you actually try to build your software and distribute it there, like the different package formats, different versions of libraries. So what that leads to is that every Linux distro actually builds and packages and distributes LibreOffice to themselves. Problem solved not completely because some distros might be outdated. We have a very active development cycle. So every half year, we deliver a new version, a minor version. So 5.1 is around the corner. Next week, I think, we'll happily put that out. So people want to use the latest and greatest always. And QA people want to test that stuff. So we need to have builds available from our LibreOffice itself. So when switching hats from my Red Hat hat to my document foundation, that's the legal entity kind of thing behind our LibreOffice upstream. And we need to see how to build that stuff and get it out to Linux users. So what we do at the moment is to have some old Santos baseline that we settle on, but that, of course, is drawbacks. Because when it's an old baseline, you don't have the new features you only could use GTK3, for example, since recently, and other problems. And some people use KDE. So there's also problems if you use some known specific functionality, like the spec ends to talk to all these various internet protocols to download documents from, then there's no alternative in KDE, for example. So we need something better there. And our hope, of course, is that the XCG app will gather enough traction that it is the new format in which we can deliver this to all happy Linux users. And another benefit, of course, will be that for Distro, you can stay on a stable baseline there on a stable fundament. Don't need to update Nome on your complete Distro, just to benefit from Nome updates that you would have in LibreOffice. So could also be a cool feature for Distros like REL. Another use case where it might be definitely be interesting is there's a LibreOffice developer who had that cool idea. You want to find out something broke with one of the latest builds, something you can't see in the UI, which doesn't work anymore. So what you do is you get bisect that. When you want to do that with LibreOffice, the problem is building LibreOffice can easily take hours. So your bisecting experience will be very poor and you'll need tons of coffee for the in-between times. And you can't easily tell one of our eager QA people who would like to bisect that down, but you can't tell them, yeah, see for yourself how to build that and see which build actually broke it. So the idea, do a Git repo for bisecting, but we don't put the code in there but the pre-built binaries. So you do a, for every version of the source, you do a build, you put it in a Git repo. I want this grow, but not that much because many of the libraries will stay the same from build to build. So we have now huge Git repos full of versions from the 5.0 to the 5.1 time period of LibreOffice. And the QA people just once download this huge blob and then Git bisecting is a snap because actually switching, checking out the actual state is very, very fast with Git. So that's cool, but the people or the person who invented that and then that was a cold winter. So we started up as Fat Machine and actually did all these builds because you once need to do these builds and he had a warm house for a while doing that. But when you do a mistake there and do it not on our Sanders baseline, but for example, our stupid and do it on a Ubuntu thing, then what will fall out of it is binaries that do work mostly, but there might be one library on Ubuntu that we depend on that has a different version than on Fedora. So many of the people who want to run these can't actually use them. That mistake did happen. The actual fix happily was to only do some sim linking of just the name was wrong for that system library so we could work around it with a sim link. But that guy didn't want to go back and reheat his house again because by now it was springtime. So if he would start it out with XG app in the first place that problem would never have happened. So this is another use case where building to a well-defined platform that is guaranteed to run on everybody's machine is definitely a win. By the way, if there's any questions, you can just ask now or wait until later. So the builder actually building the office for XG app is still quite in the kind of experimental stage so there's no official repo of it yet. But I do manage to get it built, for example, the latest the office version. What you do to get that build is the idea of XG app is that you have some specified runtime, like there's, for example, a GNOME 3.16 or a GNOME 3.18 runtime that has a defined set of functionality of libraries. Then there's the kind of SDK complimenting that that you also have the devil headers also available, which you don't need at runtime, of course, but for actually building that. It is based on some project that is a bit different from what you know from the next distro. So there is some minor places where it didn't quite fit to just download the LibreOffice Git repo and do a configure in and make. For example, we're using some obscure code still in our millions of lines to bundle stuff up. That is from, I don't know, 20 years old stuff that nobody ever bothered to clean up or rewrite in Python or whatnot. And that uses some code that's just not there in that thing. We had some glue headers. We got rid of them. So that's a benefit anyway that we cleaned out some stuff that we turned out didn't really need. So there was, for example, no glue devil packages in that XG app SDK.  Then in that Yachto thing, it was hard coded as doing an exit one. So I wondered why our internal copy of LibxML refused to work when to compile until I dug deep enough into that to find it out. I disabled some of our zoo of stuff that didn't quite work, like there's some minor issues with trying to get GStreamer. We have a GStreamer backend. We have a GStreamer 1.0 and a GStreamer 0.10 backends in there. So the 1.0, there was some glitches that just, for the first experiments, I just left it out and have to revisit how we get that working. Left out our whole Java. So the option would be to include a JVM in our bundle as well to get our Java parts running, if you want to use that at all.  So we're definitely one of the bigger bundles that will be available for XG app. The idea is that, of course, smaller apps will be just tiny in comparison to that in what you need to download. That's the price for our heavy thing. So for coming to the second part, I guess I'll give a quick demo of what we have. Can we read that? So I prepared something and called it LibreOffice. So the idea is that every application in XG app has an identifier that reversed DNS name style. So I built that package that up, downloaded it from my computer to my computer, installed it in the local XG app cache to have it available there. And then you run it that way. It no longer works, Libre. Did I mistype that? Or what is it? Not low, orc. So the error messages from XG app are still a bit... There's room for improvement there. So that just wasn't a low LibreOffice, but just an orc LibreOffice, of course. So boots up in no time. Looks like your average or normal LibreOffice experience. So there's a rider here. And you can just type in something. There's a help should even work. That's the other one. Help should even work. Help won't work. Demo time. Doesn't matter. But we want to open some document to edit it. Where are my documents? Well, they're not here. My computer, what happened? My home directory is completely empty. Yeah, that's because the thing I built here also uses the second part of the talk, the sandboxing, that this instance of LibreOffice looks like a normal one, but doesn't have any access to anything on your machine. So it has a fake file system. The app itself is installed in some app tree. So we have LibreOffice here. We do have some license file that is part of LibreOffice. We can open that. That works. But there's nothing else we can reach on the machine. So that's the sandboxing part for something like an office suite where you want to operate on your files, on your documents, modify your documents. Yeah, that's not ideal. So we can opt out of that with telling XDG app to give access to the whole file system. So there we are. We can now open a file from my home directory. And there's, for example, the very presentation I'm doing now. And that works. But there's another, even cooler way. So we stop that again. So I now opt it out of having the file system hidden. I'll opt in again to have the file system hidden. That's the original one. I'll start again. There's nothing here. But we have multiple file open dialogues in LibreOffice because we have everything. There is a way to switch that. I'll use the internal one. And I hacked that one. And what I do there is use some tunnel that is provided by XDG app via Debus to get out of the jail which LibreOffice runs in to the whole system. And I have some kind of file chooser where I get access to the complete file system to select a file but nothing more. So I can go to my slides here, select them, open them. What happens there is that I don't get access from inside the jail to the outside. I just get access to that file chooser that picks that file for me and then tunnels it back in. Just that one file, nothing more. And it's even read only here. I'll come back to that in a second. So that's the idea of how to get access to your functionality you want to have inside your XDG app jail via these portals that connect you with the outside way world in a secure way. So back to the presentation. The real one. Yes? Yeah, that's coming in a second. So that's basically what I said. With that opt-in or out, you can have that for the file system and for other things as well for talking through sockets and stuff like that. There's a fine-grained way of telling XDG app which parts of the outer world or of the system you want to get make available to the app. And for that access to the file system, how it works or the underlying idea always with these portals is that there needs to be some code that actually does not run within the jail. So we can be sure that the app in the jail cannot modify it or temper it or do any bad thing about that. It doesn't have any control about it. It just has some connection to there to ask, I want to open a file, display to the user, a file chooser. And because of that display to the user in there, it is clear to the user that that app cannot sneakily try to read your password file because the users actually ask what file do you want to open by the code that does not run in the jail. So there's no way for the jail to try to do sneaky things there because it's always code runs outside the jail. The important code has to ask the user to do something. There needs to be a trigger that the user does. So the user can be sure that he initiated the operations that operate on potentially dangerous parts. So that's the trick behind it. Same would go with printing. You would naturally open a print dialogue. Anyway, in that print dialogue, again, would not be the LibreOffice one inside of LibreOffice, but some portal-provided print dialogue. And for an app like LibreOffice, where people, of course, do trust us that we do not write code that is malicious. So this part of being afraid that this app that you download from the internet might do harm to your machine is not the most important part, maybe, for LibreOffice. But another big benefit, of course, is we're not perfect. We do have bugs. There are documents that when you open them, they might trigger a bug that does a bad thing and rewrites your hard disk. But when you run this inside of a jail, you can be pretty sure that whatever a bug in whatever obscure import filter that we have cannot cause a zero day for you. So that's the big benefit with an application like LibreOffice that consumes documents from the outside and can trigger problems in those. And then there's some special things about LibreOffice that make it not so easy to get into a sandboxed jail. Like we saw this when I got my presentation into the jailed LibreOffice and displayed it there. It was displayed read-only. The problem there is that all I get from the portal is the file itself or rather some overlay file system thing that makes just that one file available to me. LibreOffice, with its history of being cross-platform, file locking works differently on all different platforms. So it has come up with its own invention of how to do file locking by placing some small file with a special file name next to the original file. And that contains information about who locked that file. So there's even some mode in Calc where you can have multiple users interacting on a single Calc spreadsheet and then there's multiple slots in that file designating who is using it. So that's a quite elaborate format there. And that's of course something that is simple portal that works great for other apps where that falls short a bit for LibreOffice. Where you can't, you just get access to that one file but you can't put a file, put any other file into that directory that the portal gives you so there's no way we can place our lock file there or see the lock file from the outside world. So we figure out we can't put a lock file there so it must be a read-only document so we display it read-only. The API for those portals like this file chooser portal or a print dialog portal, that's all not set in stone yet that still work in progress in a way. So that would have been the first approach how to do that would have been a bit easier for LibreOffice but we'll certainly find ways around all that plus this is all bonus. So the good thing about XCG App being this bundling or packaging so that you can easily distribute it can be seen independent from the second part from the sandboxing. So you can benefit from all the things of the first part without actually needing to modify your apps so that they live in this jail well because that does mean you need to modify in many cases needs to slightly modify your apps. So for example with this file dialog that you need to talk to that special portal file dialog so you need to do some changes in the code there but for the first part that's generally not needed. So the idea is to roll that out in faces and be happy with the first face and then see to get all the little knobs fixed, little knobs adjusted to get this sandbox experience to something that pleases the user. And yeah, that's it if there's any questions there is. Yes, yes and this one was for example allowing no access at all. So you can configure that at the time you build your application and bundle it up for XCG App you specify that time what the defaults are that you want but then of course they can also be overridden at runtime when you start that up. And of course the idea is not that the end user will type in that XCG App and mistype and get a confusing error message as I did but that that will get integrated into GNOME software for example that you just can download it from some well-known repositories of XCG App applications and just run it with a click as you normally do. Scarfs, there was one going up there the man is sleeping and there was one there. There, any more scarfs, any more questions? There's one, yeah of course. So that's again something that you want to weigh the benefits and the problems of it. So what XCG App does offer is that you do have that file system for the app where only the app is mounted but you also have some space in there that is persistent for the LibreOffice configurations. For example when I restart that now that I have opened that one document once it will remember that I opened it and that switched which file dialog to use and all that stuff so all our LibreOffice configuration data does get persisted for the benefit of the user because that's what you typically want. But of course that can mean that you can persist some kind of problem inside the jail. Of course if you are paranoid enough you can always approach that and restart. I think there's even switches to make that easy with XCG App. So if you want to be very, very sure that there can't be any problem with the multiple documents you open or once you open one document and that does look suspicious you can flush out the cache with the downside that all your tweaks to the LibreOffice UI configuration stuff will be gone but you can control that and you can have multiple instances of an XCG App that behave differently in that way. So you could have that one just for these very obscure documents from your employer that you're not sure that you don't want to look at them in the wild. Thank you. Okay. Great, thank you.