Llywodraeth Cymru yn gweithio'r cwestiynau trafodol. Felly, rydyn ni'n gweithio'r next item of business, ystafell, by Michael Russell, o'r cwestiynau ar gweithio'r gweithio'r Llywodraeth Llywodraeth i Westminster. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of his statement, so I would encourage all members who wish to ask a question to press their request to speak buttons now, and I call on the cabinet secretary. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Presiding Officer, the data at which the UK is scheduled to leave the EU is now just 38 days away. In terms of sitting days for this Parliament, that equates to 18, including today. Yet, Presiding Officer, there is still no resolution of the chaos that prevails at Westminster, no consensus about the way forward, no relief from the incompetence of the current UK Government, and still no respect for the decision of this country and this Parliament decisively against Brexit. Indeed, with every day that passes the unrealistic, irresponsible, and in terms of realisable outcomes, the Prime Minister's impossible approach only serves to heighten uncertainty for communities, citizens and businesses across Scotland to an intolerable degree and to increase the risk of a no-deal exit. The well-connected political website reported yesterday that, in European capitals, there is now mounting alarm that Theresa May has set Britain on course for a diplomatic disaster. It said that one minister from a major EU power was left so shocked after a meeting with the UK counterpart last week. It concluded that Britain is now hell-bent on pushing the crisis to the wire in the hope of a last-minute concession from EU leaders that will not materialise. Of course, the House of Commons had the opportunity last week to agree to an extension of article 50 to allow us to provide the economic damage of a no-deal or hard Brexit outcome. I pay tribute to those MPs who supported that SNP member, the Liberal Democrats, the Green MP, Plaid Cymru, to Torrey's 41 members of the Labour Party. Of the seven Scottish Labour MPs, three walked into the division lobbies to do what Scotland clearly wants. But all the Scottish Torrey's opposed it, showing yet again that, for a Scottish Tory parliamentarian, there is here the needs of their fractured and fractious party come a long way before the needs of their suffering country. Presiding Officer, this Scottish Government continues to believe that the best outcome for the UK as a whole and for Scotland is to remain within the EU. And that now, given the impasse that exists at Westminster, the best democratic way forward is to give the people the final choice. But we have over the past two and a half years been very clear about willingness to compromise, setting out credible and achievable positions in December 2016 and subsequently which were ignored or summarily dismissed by the UK Government. No doubt at some stage this afternoon the Tory benches will brazenly insist that the only way to avoid a no-deal is to support the Prime Minister's very bad deal. But surely even their certainty in that mantra must have been shaken a little this week, when no fewer than 40 senior retired diplomats signed a letter which pointed out just how awful the Prime Minister's deal actually is. Not only would that deal make Scotland poorer, removing us from the European single market, risking the fall in Scotland's working tax-paying population and putting us at a competitive disadvantage to Northern Ireland, it would also, in the words of those very knowledgeable diplomats, result in what they call a brexternity of endless uncertainty about our future for both citizens and businesses alike. And if there was ever to be an end to that brexternity, the best that could be hoped for at a far distant date, given the Prime Minister's red lines, would be some sort of free trade agreement, which our modelling indicates would mean that by 2030 our GDP would be around £9 billion lower than if we'd stayed in the EU, equivalent to £1,600 for every person in Scotland. And as things stand, even if the withdrawal agreement was approved by the UK and European parliaments, it's entirely possible, even probable, that no deal will only have been postponed rather than avoided. Such is the chaos that now in Galff's Westminster, it's impossible to say with any confidence that the terms of any future trade deal with the EU would finally be approved by MPs. Next week, the House of Commons will again get the opportunity to pass further judgment on the Prime Minister's efforts. We will continue to provide a voice for common sense. For Presiding Officer, a no deal outcome isn't inevitable, but alas, it is becoming more likely with every day that passes, and every attempt that the Prime Minister makes to bludgeon and frighten MPs into accepting her threadbare and damaging plan. So, as a responsible Government, we must act wherever we can to minimise and mitigate the impact in Scotland as far as we are able to do so. And in doing so, we must always be very straight with the people of Scotland. Later this week, my colleague, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, will publish a paper on the likely economic costs and impact of a no deal Brexit. It is vital that this chamber and Scotland knows that things will change and change very fast for the worse if a no deal is forced upon us. For example, a no deal Brexit could we estimate resulted in an increase in unemployment in Scotland of around 100,000 people, more than doubling the unemployment rate? We would go from a record low to a level not far off that at the depth of the last recession, with all the human cost which that would entail. Whatever we as a Government do and we will do everything we can, we simply could not avoid that sort of damage being done to our economy and our country. But one person could. The Prime Minister could, if she were to immediately agree an extension to article 50 and rule out with concrete legislative steps any no deal outcome. Getting such an extension would not be difficult. Indeed, President Juncker said yesterday, any decision to ask for more time lies with the UK. If such a request were to be made, no one in Europe would oppose it. So the only opposition to an extension lies within the House of Commons. The work of the Scottish Government resilience committee and the Scottish resilience partnership on planning, mitigation and preparing arrangements to respond to the risks and impacts of leaving the EU without a deal is continuing and intensifying, as the First Minister made clear last week after our special cabinet meeting. The resilience committee met in Glasgow last week, its ninth session, prior to that cabinet meeting and his meeting again tomorrow. I will be in London tomorrow attending yet another UK cabinet EU exit sub-committee and seeking firm answers to the many questions that we still have. For example, we do not yet know how much ferry capacity is available and what routes it will exist or exactly what priority goods will be carried. Nor do we know what priority will be accorded to each category of goods, nor what arrangements will be made to service Scottish requirements, including the particular challenges of rurality. We have also not yet heard whether export of foodstuffs can be integrated with special arrangements for import, consolidating inbound and outbound capacity to maximise the benefits. There are many more matters on which we need clarity and we will continue to seek that, given that such clarity is essential for our preparations. Yet leaving those difficulties aside, it has to be said that although we are working as closely as we can with the UK Government, even if there was a perfect information flow, we do not now believe that there is the time or the resource to ensure that absolutely everything required will be in the most effective place, in the most effective way, by the required dates. That is not a criticism of anyone working very hard on these matters north or south of the border. It is simply a fact of the shortness of the time available and the size of the task to be undertaken. Of course, there are those who seem to be seeking to normalise no deal, or with a profoundly concerning sense of misplaced optimism who are suggesting that its effects will somehow not be as serious as has been widely predicted. They are utterly wrong. It is clear, and it will be made even clearer in the chief economic advisers paper that will be published on Thursday that a no-deal Brexit remains a significant and live risk that would lead to a major dislocation to the Scottish economy. The impact of any shock is likely to vary across sectors, as well as regions according to their economic structure, and if prolonged, such a shock could lead to significant structural change in the economy. In addition to that, the uncertainty relating to Brexit is already impacting key economic indicators for Scotland, including consumer confidence and business investment. Let me, however, indicate what we are doing against the clock. Transport Scotland is working with providers and ports and airports in Scotland to assess existing capacity and identify how that capacity could help mitigate disruption to imports and exports. In trade, whilst the UK Government is currently negotiating with 40-plus trading partners in an attempt to roll over existing EU third country agreements, there is now no possibility that all or even a majority of those will be in place. Access to some markets will therefore be considerably disrupted. Nonetheless, we are working to secure as consistent and wide-ranging of food supply as possible and to enable improved or new supply chains to ensure that they get to every part of the country and to try and overcome barriers to export of food and drink as well. If free movement is curtailed, as seems very likely, that would have serious and immediate consequences in among other sectors that have health and social care workers. The Scottish Government is absolutely committed to doing all it can to speak up for and to support EU citizens, working in those roles and many others at this uncertain and anxious time. We passionately want relatives, friends, neighbours and colleagues who come from other EU countries to stay in Scotland. We have already committed £800,000 to Citizens Advice Scotland to provide advice and support to EU citizens in Scotland, affected by changes in the immigration rules as a result of Brexit. We will shortly intensify our information campaign to encourage EU nationals to stay. Presiding Officer, in my statement earlier this month, I urged MSPs to reach out to small businesses and their constituencies and encourage them to seek the information that they need on Brexit. It remains of concern that so many small businesses in particular have not yet engaged in sufficient detail planning and preparation. Undoubtedly, the tendency towards normalcy bias is well established in Scotland, but the UK Government is not functioning as a normal Government. It may well allow a no deal to come about either by accident or design, contrary to all norms of government. Accordingly, I would today strongly urge all businesses to seek out the information that we are providing through our Brexit website at www.mygov.scot or for the prepare for Brexit campaign, the one-door online approach jointly delivered by Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Skills Development Scotland, and to do it now whether you export or not. The chief constable, of course, recently announced plans to put 360 officers on standby from mid-March to deal with any incidents that may arise across the country, such as disruption at ports. That is just one more example of an initiative that seeks to align existing financial and staff resources to the challenges that we face in order to ensure that we have the right people and the right places with the right skills to respond quickly and effectively. We have been clear that any costs related to EU exit should not have a detrimental impact on Scotland's public finances and Derek Mackay again raised this matter with the chief secretary to the Treasury when they met last week, although no satisfactory response was forthcoming. We are actively pursuing the issue of funding for the consequences of a no-deal outcome with the UK Government along with a number of other matters, but it is abundantly clear that if Brexit is going to cost Scotland at every level of governments, in every business sector, in every part of the country, far more than the existing consequentials. Finally, let me turn to the important matter of our legislative preparations. To date, only 30 of the 114 UK SIs to which we have consented have completed their passage in the UK Parliament. I have made clear my concerns on this matter to the UK Government and have impressed upon them the importance of ensuring that the deficiency fixes to which we have given our consent are delivered. We are still on track to process both parts of the programme, UK SI notifications and Scottish SIs through the Scottish Parliament by the end of March, so our laws should be as ready as they can be for the shock of EU exit. However, the Prime Minister has now indicated in the event of an agreement being reached, she would intend to push through the withdrawal agreement bill before 29 March, as well as a range of other Brexit-related legislation. That could mean passing laws of the profoundest importance with consequence for all the devolution settlements in a few days. This cannot and should not be done. If that bill is presented to this chamber for a legislative consent, the Government will recommend that such consent be refused because of that impossible timetable and because the UK Government has moved not an inch on the issue of essential changes to the sewer process. Presiding Officer, let me conclude by reiterating the First Minister's message last week. The Scottish Government remains absolutely committed to preparing as best we can and to safeguarding the interests of businesses and communities in Scotland as far as possible. However, the way that this has been approached by the Prime Minister is reckless and irresponsible. It is now clear beyond any doubt that the Conservative Party and the UK Conservative Government pose a real danger to Scotland. The only sensible solution now available is a delay to article 50, a ruling out of a no deal and a people's vote. We will continue to press for those things with every legislative and political tool and every ounce of energy at our disposal. Thank you very much. The Cabinet Secretary will now take questions. Adam Tomkins will be filled by Neil Findlay. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Another week, another Mike Russell statement and another ever more repetitive account of the dangers of a no deal Brexit with no recognition whatever of the plain fact, Presiding Officer, that those who risk a no deal Brexit are those like Mike Russell and all his SNP colleagues who oppose the Prime Minister's deal. I do wonder, Presiding Officer, what the point is of Mr Russell's statement. What is he seeking to achieve? What indeed has he achieved in the two and a bit years since he returned to Government? His flagship continuity bill eviscerated by the Supreme Court. Three or is it now four iterations of Scotland's place in Europe doing nothing but gathering dust at the back of various filing cabinets. And so desperate is this Cabinet Secretary that today he's reduced to taking his lines from online news sources and websites, casting around to fuel his ongoing addiction to referendums, indeed his ongoing addiction to losing referendums. Meanwhile, Presiding Officer, in the real world, the Prime Minister is working harder than ever both across parties and with newly independent MPs and with our European partners to ensure that we leave the European Union with a deal. It is manifestly in no one's interests for us to leave without a deal. So when is the SNP going to grow up, quit the grandstanding and work with us together with your agreement that we can all support? Cabinet Secretary, I don't get much time to catch up on movies, unfortunately, but I am keen to see soon the Stan and Ollie movie, I have to say. And because in that sort of slapstick comedy there's always a moment in which one of the protagonists runs head first into a rake or a ladder or a wall, and that's how I feel about the questions from Adam Tomkins. He just gets up and runs straight into the wall because who's responsible for the mess that we're in? It is the Prime Minister. It is the Conservatives. But who has failed to back that deal? Who has failed to back that deal? The Conservative Party at Westminster. Who was she defeated by last week? The Conservative Party at Westminster. So I'm afraid the slapstick from Professor Tomkins is wearing a bit thin. Because the reality of this situation is the only repetitive nature is the flights, the backpacking flights that the Prime Minister takes to Europe again and again to be met with the same answer. The answer that came this morning, I have to say, from the European Union spokesperson who said, the EU will not reopen the withdrawal agreement. We cannot accept a time limit to the backstop of a unilateral or exit clause. Yet again, I have to say, the Prime Minister will fly to Brussels tomorrow and come back empty-handed. So it is time, it is time for the Conservatives to accept responsibility, both at London and here, and to recognise they are causing this disaster. They could avert it. But we've heard nothing yet from the Tories this afternoon the shows they are conscious of that. And Scotland will judge them harshly for it. Neil Findlay, to be told by Patrick Harvie. Mr Tomkins says he wonders what the point is of those statements.  We've got less than 40 days to go until the UK is supposed to leave the EU and we still have gridlock. The Prime Minister has desperately tried to bribe her own backbenchers and failed. She's tried to bribe MPs, representing former mining communities, and failed. As she's tried for the first time to meet trade union leaders, and again that has failed. Her red lines remain in place and the EU has rejected her wish to throw Ireland under her Brexit bus by Renegan on the backstop and they are right to do so because there must be no return to a hard border. And all the while businesses grow more nervous, workers fear for their jobs and the public grow ever more exasperated. Yes, there is anouncement by Honda at Swindon, while not exclusively about Brexit, undoubtedly, has a Brexit element to it. The issue of the backstop can be resolved with a permanent customs union. The EU want that, businesses want that and trade unions want that. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that that should be an immediate priority? And that would very lightly gain a majority in the House of Commons. Does he agree that close alignment and working with the single market is the best way to protect jobs and rights and ensure that there is no race to the bottom and that we should continue to work across Europe with agencies and institutions and areas such as research and development, education, environmental protection and our future security. Those are clear steps proposed by Labour that could be taken now and I believe build a majority in the UK Parliament and provide certainty for our people. Tory chaos has to come to an end with record defeats in Parliament, fortnightly humiliations and repeated rejection by EU leaders. It is time for the Prime Minister to end this chaos and admit that our Brexit plan has failed and to support Labour's robust and legally binding legally binding amendment next week that will prevent a no deal. Finally, will the cabinet secretary update Parliament on what work has been proceeding on common frameworks and on the redrafting of the intergovernmental agreements if the EWB proceeds? Before the cabinet secretary replies, cabinet secretary, one second. Just before the cabinet secretary replies, this is a very robust argument but could I ask all members to be refined from being so personal in their political attacks? Can I deal with the common frameworks and the intergovernmental issues? First, on common frameworks, as he will be aware, there was a publication 10 days ago between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations saying that work was continuing and significantly that no section 12 orders had yet been used. As long as the section 12 orders are not used, we will continue to work with the UK Government on a voluntary basis. However, the same proviso has existed in the last two publications. If section 12 orders are used, we will cease to do so. On the intergovernmental relationships, the UK Government is still doing nothing. We are trying to bring those forward. We are talking about issues that arise in there and we are just getting no response. However, they are rather busy messing everything else up, so maybe we should keep them away from the intergovernmental relationships for a period of time. On the customs union, can I say that I am pleased that the Labour Party is now in a position where it recognises the importance of the Norway or Norway Plus model, a model that is not dissimilar to the model that we were talking about in 2016? To that extent, I am happy to welcome the customs union issues, but I do think that the customs union on its own does not resolve the issue of Northern Ireland entirely, and that is an issue that would have to be addressed. There is also the issue of freedom of movement within the single market, which is crucial for Scotland, absolutely crucial for Scotland. And without freedom of movement, then we will have very considerable problems. But the customs union and the proper membership of the customs union I continue to support, but more is going to be required. What we are getting, however, from the Tories is no movement at all. The red lines, as Mr Finlay has rightly said, are excluding movement. Until those red lines change, we will stay in this impasse. Patrick Harvie, to be followed by Willie Rennie. Thank you, and I thank the cabinet secretary for the advance copy of the statement. Those of us who support a people's vote are sometimes challenged that if the public are given the chance, finally, to cancel this mess, there will be a backlash and that it would drive people toward the far right. But isn't it clear that far right sentiment has been cultivated deliberately within the UK over decades of racist rhetoric and policy, and that far right sentiments have been deliberately cultivated and unleashed by the Brexit campaign, to such an extent that the far right threat is rising whatever the consequence of Brexit, whether they use a sense of betrayal and defeat or of triumphalism at the end of this process? So what discussions has the Scottish Government had, either within government or with Police Scotland, about the potential for the far right threat, the ways that we need to tackle it and the ways that we need to oppose the toxic values that underpin it? I think that I should ask my colleague the cabinet secretary for justice to respond in terms of detail of Police Scotland and the justice issues in there. But of course we would all agree that the rise of the far right and the encouragement of the far right comes not just from active encouragement but from passive encouragement. And it arises when the EU is misrepresented and when people do not stand up for the virtues of co-operation and working together as sovereign states within the EU. And that is the really crucial issue here. The people's vote will give people a chance, I would hope, to have a reconsideration, not just of what has taken place, but a new consideration of how this issue has developed and been presented over the last two and a half years. And the people who have walked away from their previous support for the EU, because they were told to do so by the Prime Minister and the Tory party, are hugely culpable, hugely culpable. And we have to recognise that and make that clear to them. Members of the Tory benches here are hugely culpable because not one of them has been prepared to stand up and to say that what is going on is utterly wrong and should not be allowed to continue. And I long for the day when I see a Conservative with the courage to do that in Scotland. Willie Rennie to be told by Ruth Maguire. The penultimate sentence of the minister's statement says, the only sensible solution now available is a delayed article 50, a ruling out of a no deal and a people's vote. I agree wholeheartedly with the minister. Seven MPs left the Labour Party yesterday because they feel so strongly in part about Europe. So what practical steps has the minister taken over the next few days and weeks to further build support for a people's vote so that we can get out of this mess? I am not going to get involved in the private grief of the Labour Party. I will leave that matter to others. But I can say that Westminster, our group, has shown itself to be very constructive on those matters. For example, the amendment that I acknowledged that the Liberal Democrats supported last week was a very positive amendment that actually said, let us immediately ensure that there is an extension. Indeed, it is obvious now from what one is hearing from the EU that the extension would happen. I have quoted President Junker on that. All that needs to happen now is that the Conservative Government needs to ask for that extension. They may well get an extension beyond three months. That is also quite clear that that atmosphere is changing and some of the fears about questioning the legitimacy of the European Parliament, if UK representatives were not seated, appear to be passing away. So that is there. I am working with our group at Westminster. I am sure that Mr Rennie is working with his group at Westminster to try and ensure that there is a broad support for the people's vote. It would of course be transformed if the Labour Party were to wholeheartedly support that, and I wish they would. And I have said that repeatedly in this chamber, constructively, and I go on saying it. Ruth Fogwar, to be followed by Donald Cameron. Presiding Officer, I note with a really heavy heart the cabinet secretary's warnings in his statement about the impact on Scotland's unemployment figures. Given what we have seen this past week from job losses to souring trade relations, will the cabinet secretary agree that that must act as a wake-up call for all members of this chamber, not least the tories, about the seriousness of the situation that we find ourselves in and the risk posed by Theresa May's approach to Brexit? Cabinet secretary. I would agree that unemployment is, of course, a major problem of the economy, but it is also a personal tragedy for every single person who experiences it. And in these circumstances, we should try everything we can to avoid those personal tragedies. Now, there is a way to do so. An extension of article 50 would find the first step at which confidence could be restored. But, of course, the warning about this matter has been there for a considerable period of time. The Japanese Government issued a letter in September 2016 to the UK Government, which made it absolutely clear what their attitude was and what the attitude of their companies would be to Brexit. The Prime Minister chose to ignore that letter. If you now look at that letter, and I read it again last night, if you now look at that letter, you realise that everything that the Japanese Government did not want to happen has happened and has been allowed to happen by the Conservatives. It is therefore a little wonder that they are now saying, circumstances have changed, we cannot continue with the investments that we've had. But widely businesses are now saying they cannot cope with this. The CBI, the NFU in England today, whole ranges of businesses saying that it is impossible to live with. And still, the Conservatives do nothing. And still, they pursue the Schimera in Brussels, where the Prime Minister rushing back across to negotiate something that is not negotiable. And in these circumstances, the Prime Minister needs to wake up, to actually recognise that this is her responsibility.  That would be the most youthful thing that she could do. But if she's not going to resign, then the next thing she needs to do is to get that extension of article 50 to make sure that there is a circumstance that is put in place so that there can be no deal and then to have a people's vote, vote. Then she can resign. Donald Cameron to be followed by Stuart McMillan. Thank you. The Scottish Government has previously conceded that there are circumstances where this Parliament will consent to Brexit-related UK primary legislations, such as the healthcare arrangements bill. Does the cabinet secretary accept that there may be scenarios in the next few months where a similar situation may occur and that it will be in a national interest for this Parliament to consent to UK Government Brexit legislation? Not entirely sure that Mr Cameron and I would agree on the definition of the national interest, but let that pass. I do agree with Mr Cameron that there may be circumstances in which it is the right thing to bring forward partial or complete legislative consent motions. We did it in the healthcare arrangements bill because I think it was utterly wrong. Although, in the end, I don't think that individuals would have suffered. There was a potential for individuals and vulnerable individuals to suffer. I think that it was the right thing for this Government to say that we will make an exception in this case. What we are not going to be done is to be bludgeoned, bullied or frightened into doing the wrong thing. As I was delivering my statement, some people may not have heard and microphones may not have picked it up, but Mr Tomkin spent his time shouting remarks about voting for the Prime Minister's deal. That would be the utterly wrong thing to do. To give legislative consent to a withdrawal bill that is the utterly wrong thing will not happen. I certainly will recommend to the chamber that that does not happen, but I do not want people to suffer individually in the healthcare bill. If there are circumstances in which that is the case, I hope that I will make the right decision on that. I respect Mr Cameron for raising it. Stuart McMillan, to be followed by Jamie Greene. Thank you, Presiding Officer. With the increased likelihood of a no-deal Brexit following last week's vote, can the Scottish Government say what clarity it has had from the UK Government on post-Brexit funding? Especially funding to replace current EU funding that supports jobs, infrastructure, research and also sustaining our rural communities? There is no clarity on replacement funding. There are some guarantees in place in terms of continuation funding, for example, in the agriculture sector, but those are limited and the closer you look at them, the more insubstantial they become. So what we have tried to do is to make it clear that where those guarantees exist, we will honour them by providing funding to one of them, but in the wider issues, there are no such guarantees. That is very concerning. For example, infrastructure funding, which would be of enormous importance to the Highlands and Islands, has dried up completely. Money availability from the European Investment Bank has dried up completely. If you look at the potential for new schemes and the so-called shared prosperity fund, which is a regional fund that is going to be run from London, which seems a bit of a contradiction. We know virtually nothing about how that will actually operate. There was meant to be a consultation on it at the end of last year. It hasn't taken place. So we would like to know what the proposals are. Even better, we'd like to be part of the discussion as to how those things should move forward. But we simply do not get the answers in those circumstances. Jamie Greene, to be followed by Keith Brown. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The Cabinet Secretary made a statement saying that it remains of concern to him that so many small businesses have not yet engaged in sufficient Brexit planning. Can I ask if he has a sense of the scale of how many businesses have not yet engaged in any form of preparedness, why he thinks that that might be given the prominence of Brexit in politics at the moment, and what he feels that both he and his Government, but all of us as MSPs, could do to better signpost their own local businesses towards some of that excellent joint agency resource that is available to them, including some of the many excellent events that they are hosting right across Scotland? Cabinet Secretary. I say anything that each individual member should know their own constituencies or regions, should know how to contact small businesses, should be in the local newspapers encouraging that to happen. As for an estimate of number of businesses, I really would have to rely on, for example, a chancellor who has indicated that vast numbers of small businesses have not yet taken this up. I think that the experience is true across these islands regrettably. And I think that that is, for a number of reasons, I indicated normal say bias. People do not believe that the Government could be as incompetent as the Tory Government is, and they are now waking up to the fact that it could be as incompetent as that. But if members have the ability to talk to others and to talk to small businesses, please use it and make sure that they use the resources that are available. Keith Brown to be followed by James Kelly. Access to European structural and social funds has been a very important source of additional resources for my constituency. Indeed, since the Thatcher government in the 80s slashed regional aid to the north of England, Scotland and Wales. For example, the club manager has helped to support economic development, job creation and trading to the tune of £1.13 million since 2014. Can the cabinet secretary therefore provide any update as to whether that vital funding in my constituency will be continued after Brexit? And advise, and I think that I know the answer to this, if the UK Government has provided any information, given that we've only got 38 days to go, as to whether the shared prosperity fund will replace those resources. The second part is no. We have no such information but I think that the member is absolutely right to stress the importance of those funds. In the current 2014-2020 programme, there's already been £480 million committed to projects across Scotland. I would just ask members to think of the circumstances in which, let's say, in the next six years, £480 million was abstracted from the Scottish economy because there was money not available to do so. So I think that we are in a very serious situation. I know that member speaks for his constituency, which has received £1.13 million in that programme. There are many constituencies who have actually received more. It is vital that we know what is happening, but we have heard no more about it largely going to the complete chaos in the Westminster Government. James Kelly to be followed by Angela Constance. Thank you. The cabinet secretary has outlined how the Government has made representations to the UK Government in relation to funding required to meet the costs of EU exit. If the full costs of that funding are not met by the UK Government, what contingency planning has the Scottish Government put in place to deal with that scenario? Cabinet secretary. The member raises an important point, I have to say. The Scottish Government is very limited in its ability to produce new resources. If money is not provided, then it becomes a choice of whether we are able to spend it or we are not able to spend it. In the second instance of a no-deal Brexit, I think that we would feel an imperative to do everything that we possibly could, but we could find ourselves very short of resources to do so. That is why my colleague, the cabinet secretary for finances, is pushing this issue with the chief secretary to the Treasury, amongst others. There needs to be that sort of commitment, but that commitment has not been entered into. I think that this will be sort of a time issue. We will have to continue to spend money to do the things that we need to do. Will we find ourselves in those circumstances and continue to pressure the UK Government? The UK Government did indicate that in the event of a no-deal, there would be a supplementary budget. We would be very clear that we would require to have a substantial resource made available within that supplementary budget to do the jobs that we had to do. Angela Constance to be followed by Rachel Hamilton. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Cabinet Secretary, Patterson are an award-winning food and drink company and employ 200 people providing much needed employment in my constituency. They have written to me in detail about their concerns, about the, I quote, catastrophic consequences of Brexit, given the impact on their cost-based supply chain, delays at ports, etc. Therefore, will Mr Russell and or Mr Ewing visit Patterson Arran to discuss their concerns and what more can be done to support the small but key manufacturer in our food and drink industry? Cabinet Secretary. I'm sure Mr Ewing would be happy to visit and so would I. I mean, the origins of this company are fascinating and it's a company that's been in existence for, in its earliest incarnations, for over 100 years. I think it was founded in 1896, the Patterson part of it. It is world-renowned for its shortbread, for its oat cakes, and the Arran brand, of course, in terms of preserves and chutneys. And it will present an enormous problem if this chain of export and production is interrupted. So, Mr Ewing, who is, he tells me, undertaking a food resilience teleconference within 10 minutes, will, I'm sure, come back to you about visiting and I'd be happy to do so as well and to, might I suggest, sample the oat cakes. Rachael Hamilton to be full by Jane Gleith. Thank you. The UK Government gave Derek Mackay 92 million in funding to prepare for leaving the EU. In England, the funding was passed on to local authorities. In Scotland, it was not. Why not? Cabinet Secretary. Well, I'm sorry, I dispute that account. I know that some people have said that. I dispute that. I have met with COSLA, I continue to meet with COSLA. I'll be seeing COSLA again later this week. We recognise that they will have a requirement for funding and in these circumstances we will work with COSLA to make sure that funding flows from the UK Government. And of course, one of the differences in this and Rachael Hamilton just needs to think about this for a moment, there is a direct line from the UK Government to local authorities, but in Scotland there is a direct line from the UK Government to the Scottish Government. And if they want to have a direct line to local authorities, well, that's a discussion to have, but the routes for money are different. We will ensure that we assist the local government as much as we can, but I do think, Presiding Officer, that it is very rich for a Tory to criticise lack of funding to local government given A, their attitude to the budget in this place and secondly, their attitude to Brexit, particularly from a Brexiteer, an original Brexiteer, I believe.  Did you originally espouse Brexiteer or has she come to Brexit new form? Whatever it is, it's pretty rich anyway. Jenny Gilruth to be followed by Joan McAlpine. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Has the Scottish Government considered commissioning an equality's impact assessment on the UK Government's settled status fee given that the payment of £65 for those over 16, which, whilst now refundable, remains in place and that people are being forced to travel from places like Glynrothus in my constituency to Edinburgh to register for the scheme at personal cost. Cabinet Secretary, I understand that the travelling is required for document upload if the app does not upload documents and that is unacceptable and the technological history of this matter is pretty sad one. In terms of the fee, I'm very glad that the fee has now disappeared. It is an extraordinary thing for a Government to say, here's a fee, you're going to pay it, and then to celebrate when they actually abolished a fee themselves. It is quite extraordinary, but I'm glad it's gone, but even so, it should never have come in the first place, there's a wider issue round us, which is how do we say to EU nationals we need you here? It's not a question simply of being nice to people, the Scottish economy needs the presence of EU nationals. People have chosen to make their home here and I want to hear that from the Conservative benches. I don't want to hear Brexit from the Conservative benches. There's lots of people doing that. I want to hear them saying stay to the EU nationals instead of pandering, instead of pandering, to the hard right within their party, which is all that they're presently doing. Joan McAlpine Thank you. The Tory defence secretary, Gavin Williams, in cause great offence when he suggested a post-Brexit Britain would use lethal force and threaten to park a new aircraft carrier in China's backyard. The Financial Times reports that this has resulted in UK trade talks in Beijing being cancelled. What effect does the cabinet secretary believe Mr Williams in speech has had on Scotland's trading relationship with China? Gabor Seger Well, if anybody is listening from Beijing or elsewhere, I would want them to know that the Scottish Parliament has no interest in supporting Gavin Williamson. He is a comic opera figure. He is the private pike of the UK Government and his speech was nonsensical. It also used words that weren't in the English language but it is completely nonsensical. For a speech to have that effect, it shows that we are dealing with people who have no sense of how a Government should operate. The real tragedy, Presiding Officers, as I am saying that, there are words of support for Gavin Williamson coming from the Tory benches. They are so out of touch with what is happening, not just in Scotland, not just in the UK but in the world, that really it is time they step back. And as my old granny said, take a jump to themselves. Thank you very much and that concludes our statement this afternoon, and we are going to move on shortly to our next item of business, which will be a debate on motion 15879 in the name of Derek Mackay on the Scottish rate resolution. We will just take a few moments, a few seconds, a few moments anyway for the minister and members to change seats.


I've not heard a bad sermon in the North Texas Conference yet. Now I've not been everywhere, but I haven't heard a bad one. You know, I know that some of you think that this is a great job I have, and it is, and I really do enjoy it, but I miss many of the things that I once did. Because I know that over the last 30 years, until July the 20th, I was the pastor of a local church, like most of you. And I can tell you that every time I walk in a church in the North Texas Conference on Sunday morning, I envy you. Because what you are privileged, called, and honored to do each and every Sunday morning is the things that really are part of my deepest soul. I know that in local churches and in ministry settings, the North Texas Conference is where disciples of Jesus Christ are made.


Hi. Good afternoon. Welcome to our research deep dive on containers. My name is John Garrett, the founder and partner of ClearPass Strategies. We are an international political research and strategy company. We work for heads of state political parties all around the world from Ukraine to Georgia, Australia, Austria to get this out of the way. No, I don't work in the US. No, I don't think Donald Trump will win. And no, you can't blame me if he does. In addition to our political work, I've been working with Sam Ramji at Cloud Foundry Foundation since 2008, back when he was an open source strategy lead at Microsoft. He brought me and the company I was with at the time in to help with what he saw as more of a campaign related challenge with selling open source from the Microsoft perspective or becoming more open. And so when he went to the Cloud Foundry Foundation, he brought me in to help with another campaign like project, a little project called Cloud Foundry, and how Cloud Foundry can be brought to compete against the likes of AWS, Microsoft, Google, et cetera. So here I am, political consultant talking about containers. We do regular surveys for Cloud Foundry Foundation, broad IT pros and executives. This is what we've done our four surveys and the one we're going to talk about today is the fourth iteration, the latest research today. In July, based on the third round of research, we did a report on containers called Hope vs. Reality, which is based on a survey that was exclusively on containers. And this is an update on that research at the time, how six months later the industry and the use of containers has evolved. To help me do this, someone actually into the tech sector. The real star of the show, many of you know her already, Abby Kearns. Abby is an 18-year veteran of the tech sector, currently is the VP of industry strategy at Cloud Foundry, Cloud Foundry Foundation, and she's been part of the CF community, the Cloud Foundry community for a couple of years now. She's decidedly unencumbered by career in politics and bullshitting like myself, so you can trust her, maybe not so much me. What you won't find in her bio online, she is an Olympic triathlete and a circus lion tamer. Abby, so why don't you tell us a little bit about what you've been doing with Cloud Foundry and then we'll kick it off. I don't know where to go with the lion tamer. So before we get started also, a little bit about this research, this will all be released in a report over the next couple of months, but this is a sneak peek, so you are seeing what no one else has seen to date. We do want this to be an interactive session, so if you have questions, please feel free to ask them. Otherwise, we're going to try to end a little early to offer time at the end for you to ask questions about the data, or if you want to drill down a little bit deeper. The research we released that he referenced in June around hope versus reality was really interesting to us around containers, container usage. Having been in TAC a long time, I anecdotally thought I understood the market. Turns out I did not, and it's amazing how data can really unveil usage patterns as well as trends, and I think that's what's going to be the really interesting part of the conversation today. Great. Thanks. So let's get started. And before we get started with the data, I wanted to start with a little cartoon, someone from my office sent to me, which I thought was really appropriate, and it's a Dilbert cartoon. And to me, this mindset, this mentality sums up what a lot of enterprise things was, whether it's DevOps or containers, you know, rub a little bit of containers on it and poof, all of a sudden digital transformation. That is not how it actually works, is it, Abby? No. Containers will not transform you any faster. But we did learn through this data, and as well as the data back in June, is that more and more people are using containers, and they are using them for workloads that aren't necessarily density-centric. So one of the key points that we made in our report in June was really that, while containers have been around, I mean, for most of you here, you're like, containers aren't new. Containers have been around since 1979. The use of containers really picked up in 2005 with Solaris zones. But containers were used historically for improving density and increasing density in the existing hardware you have. But what we saw in June was a shift in that trend. So using containers less for increasing and improving density, and more for shifting the way that you work with application workloads. So using them more along the lines of versioned run times and consistent build environments, and leveraging them as part of CICD, using them for continuous delivery type solutions. So in short, no, it will not magically make you better, but it is a great first step. Right. So it's a part of the landscape, the tech landscape that everyone's evaluating as they move towards CICD, as they move towards or down the journey towards digital transformation. But it's not the solution by itself. No, but it helps you frame that up. Is you're thinking about digital transformation and realistically, here at this summit, when we talk about digital transformation, we're talking about digital transformation alongside cloud and the use and adoption of cloud, both public and private. And as we think about the value of containers and containerized workloads, it allows you to think about the cloud and think about the abstraction of your application as you move towards those types of workloads. Great. Okay. So finally, let's start getting towards numbers. First things first, I'm a pollster, which means I have to have my hygiene slide up here. This is the methodology slide. This is what we did. Hi, Devin. This is who we talk to. It's a broad IT Pro and executive survey. As I mentioned, it's not a cloud foundry survey or a user survey. It's not a developer survey. It's a broad IT Pro and an exec survey. It's global in nature. We talked to folks in eight different countries, translated into the native language of those countries. It's not just enterprise. About two-thirds of it are enterprise. It's not just enterprise. It's across the roles, devs, ops, managers, line of business. So it's a broad look. It's also a more informed audience. We like listening to respondents that actually know what they're talking about. So some people, when they're taking online services, just click, click, click and go right through. We make sure we have some traps in there to make sure people are actually informed and not just speeding through the survey. So if there's any built-in inherent bias in the survey, it's that they're actually maybe a little more informed than the broader audience. All right, so let's dive in. So the first slide. And just so you know, all numbers are percentages, unless I say otherwise. So as you see here on the left-hand side, that's our previous survey, 47%. What this is showing, this is showing container deployment. Who's using containers, companies that are using containers, the percentage of companies using containers, and at what stage? So you see on the left-hand side, six months ago, 47% of companies were not using containers, which means 53% were, and that declines. That's the major trend on this slide. The other trend on this slide is that the usage that we're seeing increase, 22% to 35% of container usage, it's all in the early stages. So POC, trial stage, that's where the use, that's where the increase is. What we're not seeing is any uptake in the limited deployment, rolling out in business groups or the broad deployment, rolling out across the entire company. And so as even though container usage is increasing, what we're seeing here in this data, what the data is showing me here, is that the depth and breadth of the usage hasn't increased. That stayed flat. Why is that? Well, even more interesting, we referenced earlier the research we did in June, was that most of the container usage was early stage. It was POCs, it was under evaluation. With most of those saying that within the next six to 12 months they would be moving to broad deployment. So we termed it mainstream in that research, but essentially moving these containerized workloads from dev and test and moving them out into production. And so we were expecting when we did this research to see a massive upswing in that. And turns out we were wrong. Because what ended up happening is, yes, more people are using containers, but they're still using them in POC and development type environments. Which means they haven't quite taken that leap to take things from internal dev and test and moving that to production. And while we're seeing more people using it, which is great, if you'll notice the percentages, we're still sub 50. While we talk a lot about containers and containers have been part of our conversation for a couple of years within this community, we're still not seeing broad adoption. And what's really interesting for me, particularly being intact and being in the community, we talked about microservices, we talked about containers for several years now. But looking at how people are actually using these in organizations around the world, they're not there yet. And so we use a lot of buzzwords, microservices, containers, cloud native application architectures. But most people are still trying to figure that out and how to make use of those technologies. So six months ago, what you're saying is that the users were saying that in six to 12 months we were going to be mainstreaming containers. We'd be using containers crossing to our company. Clearly that hasn't panned out. So they were all wrong. But how about you? What do you think? Six to 12 months from now? Or when are containers, when are we going to see broader adoption of containers? Or is it just a fad? They're going to play with it and they're going to kick it out. Well, don't think containers are a fad, nor do I think the cloud is a fad. Even Larry Ellison's bought into it. So clearly it's not a fad anymore. I would say the next six to 12 months we'll start seeing broader adoption. I think some of the other data that we're going to talk about here in terms of workloads and use cases, we're starting to see an uptick in cloud-native application architectures. We're starting to see an uptick in use and then the conversation within our community with large organizations that are starting to work towards digital transformation, which means they're trying to figure out how to take cloud and use cloud and make that part of their technology-centric approach. So I think we'll see, starting to see an uptick. I don't think it's going to be a massive swing in the next six to 12 months, but I think we'll start seeing both an increase in container usage as well as an increase of those broad deployments. Great. And you alluded to cloud-native architecture. Conveniently, this is our next slide. How are people using containers? And what the data is showing us on the left hand are the workloads that they have deployed in containers on the right. We'll get to the right in a second. And what we're seeing there is what the data is showing basically, a rough split between microservice applications and legacy Java applications, maybe leaning more so towards cloud-native applications, if you include the 12 factor on the bottom and the Node.js as well. So it's kind of both, but more leaning towards cloud-native. Is that a correct read of this data? Yeah. And I love this slide because I think we, I personally made a lot of assumptions about what people were using containers for. I think we, depending on the community that you're in and the organization you're in, you make a lot of broad assumptions around what people might use containers for. But it's interesting to see the breakdown with cloud, as you said, cloud-native application architecture is taking the lead. While nearly half of them are still using them for legacy Java applications, we're still majority looking at cloud-native application architectures. And that's encouraging to me, going back to my prediction going forward, is we're starting to see that shift where more people are using cloud-native application architectures in containers, particularly with microservices, which means more people are taking advantage of the capability and the technology. But they're still also, especially with the larger organizations, trying to figure out what to do with the legacy applications that they have. Can I move those to the cloud? Or can I put those in the container? Can I wrap them in APIs and make them accessibility via services, but building out to microservices to take advantage of those and still be able to take advantage of all the things containers and cloud can give to me? Right. So containers are fundamental to this transition. As companies move towards more cloud-native architectures, also still trying to deal with their legacy Java apps, containers are fundamental to that transition. Well, containers are fundamental to take an advantage of cloud. When we think about what are the things you want when you want to move into the cloud, you want elasticity, you want scale, you want the ability to have flexibility with your workload. And containers allow you to have that with your application. You can move it, you can use it, you can scale it out, you can scale it up, you can take advantage of the cloud in that way. And I don't know that I'm going to set up here and advocate that by wrapping your existing legacy application or monolithic application in a container and putting it on the cloud is going to magically provide you cloud-native properties. But I do think it is an important step towards understanding value of container. And if you look at what some of these organizations and people are using containers for, when I come back to standardized deployments and standardized environments, I think, okay, well, this is a great first step in building out continuous delivery practices and a great first step in really understanding the value of cloud towards your application workloads. And what about the right-hand side of this graph? Those are the languages people are using in their containers. That's a lot of Java. It is a lot of Java. What does that mean? What does that tell us?  It's a lot of Java out there. I think there is a lot of Java, although I was excited to see 40% C++. So it looks like there's a tremendous amount of complex workloads going into containers, which is exciting. But we're still looking at majority Java. And I think as we look at the majority of cloud native application architectures, that's the workloads, with the majority of the language use cases being Java, we can assume that Java is primarily being used to develop these microservices in cloud native application architectures. And I think we've seen that in some of the other data within some of the other communities with the uptake and spring and node and other communities spring and like the uptake and spring source and the ability of it and how it's being used with microservices in the cloud. And I think this really reinforces that use case. Great. And so I'll move to the next slide. And you had mentioned earlier about how larger enterprises are taking advantage of containers and using them to help to make use of their legacy Java apps. And what this slide shows the data here shows a nice progression. The larger companies, reinforcing what you just said, tend to be more focused on the legacy Java apps, the smaller companies, either because they don't have them and they're starting from scratch, tend to be more in the cloud native architectures. Is that progression fit with what you're seeing and hearing? Does it reinforce the notion of companies either straddling the two worlds or moving away from one world to the other world? How do you see this data broken down by enterprise? Well, it's not larger. It's giant. Giant. Excuse me. Giant enterprise. To use your nomenclature. The giant enterprises. I don't think any of you would be surprised with the fact that those organizations that are running legacy Java applications in containers are predominantly giant enterprises. I don't think anyone would be surprised by that data. I do think it's interesting that still 34% of those giant enterprises are working with microservice applications, which going back to where we started in terms of predictions and predicting the future, I think I would wager that the next six to 12 months we'll start seeing that number increase. And either the legacy either stagnating or decreasing as they're making more use of microservice applications to take advantage of legacy data.  There is going to be a shift. Just like digital transformation for super enterprises will take a long time. And digital transformation takes five to seven years for large organizations. And so I think we'll start, we'll see that straddle for some time, but it's amazing to see how containers can help bridge that. They can provide that scale. They can provide that that entrance into continuous delivery practices as you try to become a more software-centric organization. Great. Thank you. And thank you for jokes at my expense. I always appreciate that. The final slide here, this one strikes me as super interesting. So maybe we saved the best for last, especially interesting for anyone not buried under a rock who hasn't missed all the buzz about Kubernetes and MISOs, which has been what all the news has been about. When I look at this slide, the data here, what we're seeing on the left is data showing how people say they are managing their containers broadly. And what we're seeing is near a majority, 49% are using either self-managed or provider-managed platform as a service to manage their containers with a much smaller share, only 11% now, saying they're using self-managed orchestration tools, Kubernetes and MISOs and the like. And on the right-hand side, we're seeing pretty strong uptake of Kubernetes, if you include Chorus Tectonic, within the orchestration tools, but the orchestration tools are actually still a small space, and mostly people are managing their containers using platform as a service. In politics, I live in a world where perception is reality that clearly is not the case here because the perception is all about Kubernetes, Kubernetes, Kubernetes, that's not what the data seems to show. So anecdotally, you were talking earlier, anecdotally containers are everywhere, but maybe they're not, anecdotally Kubernetes is everywhere, maybe it's not. How many of you in here have heard of Kubernetes? How many of you have heard of MISOs? How many of you are actually using it? Either. Right. So the point of this and the point of that exercise was to really articulate that it has captured a lot of market buzz, these orchestration tools. There's been a proliferation of them and they have escalated, particularly over the last six months. We've seen Kubernetes scale and grow in terms of brand awareness and marketing and messaging as well as outreach, which I will be the first to say that it's an amazing tool as well as MISOs. But there was this perception that they have taken over and were gaining in mass adoption. But when we look at the people that are using containers and we look at people that are using containers and are trying to use containers at scale, that penetration within the market was not there. And that's important not to say that I'm undermining the value of Kubernetes and MISOs because I'm not because I think they're great technologies in their own right. But when we look at organizations that are contemplating running containers at scale and they're looking at running containerized workloads in large, particularly large and giant enterprises that have other needs and other aspects that they have to be worried about like security, compliance, health monitoring, health management, routing, identity management, all of these things that they have to worry about, they start looking to platforms to help them manage and manage that scale and manage that breadth of their organizations and maintain the availability needs that they require. Great, thank you for that. Now we only have a few minutes left so I thought I'd pause here instead of following up and ask if anyone in the audience has any questions they'd want to ask of Abby or of me, but presumably Abby. If anybody has any questions, open it up please. So the question is how would the graph on the right look if you broke it down by company size including giant enterprise? Well first, I'll pass it off to Abby in a second, but first of all it's a very small sample size. The people on the right that's only 61 people. So breaking that out by company size, we're getting into very qualitative anecdotal level. My hunch is probably less valuable than Abby's hunch in terms of your anecdotal understanding from different companies. Well, Mr. Data tells you that I shouldn't even be talking about it, but what's your anecdotal take about this, Abby, since I can pull up the data but it's very grain assault level data. So anecdotally as you talk because you talk to folks all across the industry, as you talk to them, what is your sense? Where do you see more Kubernetes uptake? My instinct would be these smaller companies, more NIML companies, when we've done focus groups around the world, Beijing or what have you, we get a sense that the enterprise level, they're worried about the maturity level of these companies, so maybe they're focused more on a platform. Is that what you're hearing? Because that's what I'm hearing, but you talk to more industry insiders, so maybe you've got different insights. I feel like, and I've said this in a lot of different panels in a lot of different ways, but essentially I feel like there is, it comes back to the right tool for the right job, and I think there's a place for Mezos, I think there's a place for Kubernetes, and I think there's a place for a platform like Cloud Foundry, and oftentimes all in the same organization, because it's entirely dependent on what you're trying to do and the scale at which you're trying to run. I know anecdotally, there are many large organizations or super organizations that are running all three, and they're running all three in tandem, and they're using them for very different things, and I think we'll continue to see that for some time, because I think we're starting to see them all shake out to offer very different specialties. For Mezos, we've seen a lot of use cases where customers that have needs for state are using that in tandem for our smaller workloads or stateful requirements, and I think for Kubernetes there might be a case for specific protocol requirements, and so I think the technology is all evolving, all three are actually more, because I probably shouldn't forget Docker, all of them are evolving and are evolving at a really rapid rate, and I think the technology, I think about it almost as a line, we have the technology evolving at a rate, but then in parallel to that, we have what we've talked about here with the platforms and the users, the users are evolving at a rate too, so as we're seeing this uptick in usage of containers, and as we're seeing the uptick of use of cloud native application architectures, all of a sudden you're developing more apps, and you're getting more speeding, you're getting more traction, and your needs change, and that continues to evolve, and the ask is going to be different of the technology, and I mean, as we think about where we are today at the end of September, we're so far away from where we were in Q1 of this year and where the technology was and where the users were, and I think we'll continue to see that evolve, and my prediction right now is that we'll see that evolve probably every quarter, if not every six months at an almost exponential rate in terms of the shift and the adoption. Thank you for the question. We have maybe another minute or two, we could probably squeeze in another question if anybody else has a question. You could totally squeeze another two questions in. Another two questions. If not, I have one. Yes? Alex. So the question is, are there people that don't understand, don't realize they're running containers? That is a very fair question. Amazing question. My instinct, because it's almost impossible to ask that question, do you realize that you're using something you're not using? That's not true. The data from earlier this year, that was actually one of the questions. Do you realize you're using something you're not using? Yes. Remind me how we phrase the question. Do you realize using? Do you understand what you're using? Can you define it? Well, I do. We do ask in every survey, so we ask people to define certain terms, do they understand certain terms, and in particular we have a hard time with platform as a service, which we defined at the beginning of every survey, because people have a different definition of platform as a service. Is AWS a platform? Well, not really, but it has platform-like features as dev add-ons, et cetera. And so we know going into this that it's a very fuzzy space already. So we know there's going to be a subset of people in this that either think they are or don't think they are. We asked a question in this survey that's not included here. We asked a battery of questions about is this deployment, whether it's AWS or Azure or Cloud Foundry, is this a platform as a service or is it something else? And you find a large share of people saying, AWS is a pass, and equally large share of people saying AWS is not a pass. In fact, a larger share of saying AWS is not a pass. Point being, you have a broad range of fuzzy range of answers. So my instinct is that, yes, there are a lot of people using containers that don't realize they're using containers and probably some people who think they are that aren't. Anything to add? No, I think you nailed it. I think it was super interesting in the research we did earlier in the year that there were a lot of people that were using a platform, but then when asked to define it, they compared it against things that were not a platform. And I think the same can be true of containers. And it's just going back to where we started, we use a lot of words in our industry. And to quote Duncan Nguyen, you're using that word and I don't think you know what that means. We talk about that a lot because we talk about microservices, containers, cloud native, 12-factor app. We drop those terms all those time. I drop those terms all the time. But then as we reach out to people that are actually using and running these things in organizations and I think they're still struggling with, I don't really understand what that means. And what does that mean in respect to me? Great. Thanks for the question. Thanks, Alex. So we're at two afters. Is there a session in here after us? Are you all coming in for another session after this one? Just trickling in. They're all nodding. So probably, even though no one's kicked us off, we should probably leave. Oh, you're here for this? Oh, you are here.  All right. So then that's that. I'm happy to answer additional questions. Anyone has any? Abby, I'm sure, has got a million things going on. Come find us after we're around. But come find us after we're around. Thank you very much for attending.


There are many different ways to implement a quadratic voting, especially if he wants to use quadratic voting not just to make a one-time set of decisions, but to decide policies for an organization or for a country over a long period of time. There is questions like, for example, who gets to start a vote? What is the process for starting a vote? So just like regular voting isn't just one kind of voting that is always the same process everywhere. Instead you have rules on when elections can happen, when referendums can happen, what conditions you need to pass, and these rules usually differ system by system. With quadratic voting is the same thing. There is also a new technique similar to quadratic voting that Glenn and I recently developed called quadratic funding, or sometimes also called liberal radical funding, which is focused on the specific use case of funding public goods. So this could be maintaining a park, writing open-source software, building a road. But the idea is that you don't need to have the mechanism specify what the public goods are, right? Instead you just have this process where anyone can start projects, anyone can donate to projects, and these projects could just be anything. And a formula similar to quadratic voting is used to put additional funding from a common pool toward projects that many people donate to. So if many people are willing to donate money to some project, then the formula kind of thinks that, oh, this is something that a lot of people care about, this is a public good, and so let's kind of magnify people's donations and put more money toward it. So this creates something that's like halfway in between a market and a direct democracy for choosing which projects to fund it how much, and there's math that says that under certain assumptions this kind of approach is actually optimal. You know quadratic voting is already being used in the Democratic Party in Colorado to vote on which policies to fund. It's being used in the Taiwanese presidential hackathon to vote on projects, and there's many other places around the world that are considering different ways of applying it. Now Glenn and I both think that tools like quadratic voting and quadratic funding can be used to create a powerful new set of mechanisms for collective decision making, like a better version of the democracies and markets that we have today. They could be used to decide policies of governments and organizations, collectively fund public goods inside of a community for use cases like zoning, improving the quality of discussion, and voting systems in internet forums, and many more use cases. But these are still new ideas, and they are for now still experiments. So I'm very happy to see that the Taiwanese presidential hackathon is taking the initiative to experiment with quadratic voting so that we can better learn how well it works and how people react to it in real life settings. I hope that this can be a great learning experience for both of us.


So, hi everyone. My name is Tomášek Lozár, and I prepared a presentation about the disadvantages of Arduino and trying to fix them using LLVM. I am a high school student in the last grade, and I also work as an intern in the OSN application, OSN application modernization group at Redhead here in Bernal. This is the same team which develops LEAP, but I don't work on LEAP, I work on Divcamp, on which Viktor had a presentation today. And now briefly what exactly is Arduino. Arduino is an open source hardware and software company and project, and it's also the name of their AVR, mostly AVR-based microcontroller boards, and also the platform for developing software for those boards. The platform consists of three parts. One part is an IDE based on processing. The second part, they sometimes call it a programming language, but it's actually a library called wiring, and there is some preprocessing that adds something to the file, and then it goes normally to AVR-GCC. So, it's C++ compiled using GCC, it's not a special language. So, this is the most common board that's used. It's called an Arduino Uno, and you can see the chip here. It's an AVR chip. It's called an ATMEGA 328B, and now to the advantages of using Arduino. It's much easier to use for developers that are not familiar with AVR, because you don't have to have the knowledge of registers, interrupts, and the low-level things like that. And there are also plenty of tutorials online, and you can use object-oriented programming like C++, and you have the libraries prepared for that. Another great advantage is that many libraries for peripherals are available online, and you can't get them as easily for the components if you didn't use Arduino. And also, the board is designed that you don't need to have that much of knowledge of electronics. Of course, this has also some disadvantages. One disadvantage is that the library is quite large, and it feels a significant portion of the limited memory of the chip, but this disadvantage is mostly fixed by using link-time optimization that leaves out the unused functions. Another thing, and this is the thing I am optimizing in this project, is the calculation of port registers and masks from the pin number every time you want to write something to a pin. And this takes a lot of time. There are also some other disadvantages like the SD card library lacks some functions. You can't read continuously, and it's slow, but I won't be solving this thing here. So why use LLVM with Arduino? The main reason is that you can write LLVM passes, and you can optimize the code in the LLVM IR bytecode, and you can, it's possible to replace the calls to the IO functions that take a lot of time and make the IO much faster this way. And also, you can implement other languages like Rust. There is a project on GitHub, you can use Rust on AVR. And when developing this, there is also a possibility of improving the LLVM AVR backend. So the problem is that the backend is experimental, and you have to actually compile a custom compiler to get it, and it contains quite many bugs. Like it can't link AVR, so you have to use AVR GCC for that. And it's now merged into upstream. It was originally developed outside of the LLVM project. So using C-Lank with Arduino, C-Lank is a C compiler for LLVM. We have to disable link time optimization, because the linking doesn't work. And the link time optimization works like it compiles it to the IR first, and the AVR GCC can't handle that, so that has to be disabled. And also some parts of Arduino don't work because of bugs in LLVM. Like the interrupt table had to be removed because LLVM won't handle function pointers in an array. And as I already said that GCC is used for linking. So now to the optimization of IO. This concerns the function's digital read and digital write. And they take a pin number, which is numbered in some way using the Arduino numbering. And this has to be converted to the native way of writing to the pins. Here is a picture which shows that the digital pin numbers correspond to the ports. And it's implemented like there is a register which contains eight bits. And each bit is one of the pins, like PC0, PC1. That's one register. And when you write to the digital pins, the numbers, this has to be recalculated and this takes time. So I implemented an LLVM pass that removes the calls to the function digital write and translates them at the time of the compilation. And for the testing, I used this simple program which simply blinks the built-in LED at the maximum speed. And when you measure the frequency using an oscilloscope, you can see that in the picture on the left, this is the original function from the Arduino library or from wiring. The frequency is around 144 kilohertz, while with my optimization, the frequency is about two megahertz. There are other opportunities how to improve the library, like removing unused functions and variables from the binary, which is the link time optimization, which AVRGCC can do that too. But in LLVM, this doesn't work at this time because of the reasons I talked about earlier. And we can also optimize analog IO, not only the digital IO, and the problem with the SD card can be fixed by adding a function to the library and when you want to process the data, a function pointer can be used. So where you can find the project, I have uploaded it to GitHub. It has two parts. One is hardware directory inside the Arduino IDE, which is configured to use CLANK instead of GCC. And the second part is the pass which optimizes the IO. So that's all. And now it's time for your questions. It takes so much time because it has to take the number. It has to look in some table which port it is. Then it has to calculate it to a mask. It first reads the state of the port register. Then it needs to change only the one bit in it. It needs to calculate which bit it is. And then it can do the actual writing. And it's of course unnecessary to do this while running the application when you can do this in the compilation. So if you don't have any other questions, then...


Hello, I'm Tina Salzer. Most of you have finally had the opportunity to either meet or work with you in person. So first of all, I want to apologize that I am not there in person today, but I did not want to miss this opportunity to fill you in on the advisor updates for your district and some direction that we've been given from the state. And I want to remind you that I am here to support you through this process. I am a member of the virtual support team and that means that I get to help provide you and your district's support as we move along in this process. So I'm going to take a moment to share some slides with you and to talk with you about some of the latest updates that we've received on the advisor and the timeline that the state has given to us. So the first week in December, I attended a training at NDE on advisor and connecting both PowerSchool and Infinite Campus to the advisor system. From that training and through the virtual support team meetings, we have been given some updates for our districts and information that we are to communicate to our districts. One of the changes include hiring a new manager for the advisor system through NDE, who is very focused on moving this forward and so she's given us a timeline event of events and more specific dates to move our districts forward. Again, I want to remind you that I'm here to assist you and to support you through this process and to let you know that you can contact me anytime and I'll also be working to communicate with your advisor or people within your district to communicate any updates or any information that I get in a timely manner. One piece that I'm not sure has been communicated well to our districts is what is the purpose of advisor and what does it provide for our districts? The state goal is to use the advisor system to do state reporting. So instead of entering details in both your SIS, then reporting it into the NSSRS system, which goes to state, you won't only have to enter the information or the data correctly into your SIS and then it will automatically upload to the state or the data that they need from the SIS. At this time, they are focusing on student data. The projected timeline is in 2017-2018 school year will be the last year for student submissions in the NSSRS. So after June 30th, 2018, you will no longer upload your data for students into NSSRS. It will come directly from your student information system. So what does this mean for you? So what are our district timelines? Coming directly from the state, all infinite campus and power school districts need to be signed up for the EAP-2 districts now. So if you are an infinite campus district or a power school district who have not applied to be a part of an EAP-2 district, you will need to sign up for that and I will give you a link for that here in a few minutes. Also, power school and infinite campus districts need to be publishing data by October 1st, 2017 and what it means to be publishing data is that they have made a connection from their student information system to the advisor edfi dashboard and that the data is going from the SIS to the advisor system. They are sticking to the timeline that all districts will be publishing their data by December 1st, 2017. Now for vendors, they've also given them a deadline of March 1st to have all the confirmations of the vendors that will be participating and the ones that won't. So if your vendor is one in question, the information will come out as of March 1st who is and who is not for sure. So from the vendors perspective, here is our districts vendors as they stand right now with NDE. First of all, power school already has several districts publishing. Power school had some EAP-1 districts who have been publishing now for a while and there are several EAP-2 districts that are power school that are currently publishing. So they're good to go. The infinite campus, they are still waiting on one large district to validate their data before they can be officially certified, but once that district has validated their data, they are certified and then they're ready to move forward. JMC, they are actively coding right now and they're going, once they're done with the coding, their certification should be here in the next couple months and they will be testing then with one of our districts or possibly two of our districts in order to become officially certified and moving forward. I did have contact with the JMC rep from our area. who will be supporting the advisor system and he has stated that he's ready to move forward in January and February with the certification districts and I have also asked to be a part of that so that I can help support those districts as well. Sycamore is another SIS vendor that we have within our districts and they are actually have set up their second meeting. It was supposed to happen sometime this week. They have all their primary coding done and their next step then is to work with the district again to get certified and I have no data as to what district or what districts they're looking for to do that. So what are your specific requirements as they apply directly to your districts? All districts have to have a valid SIS by the beginning of next school year. So Power School Infinite Campus, JMC and Sycamore really are of no concern and I did verify that with the state. If you are still with Tyler Technologies or School Master they are not going to certify with the state. So that means if your district uses them you will need to select a different vendor and migrate your data this summer in order to be in compliance. Now as I stated before all Power School and Infinite Campus districts need to apply to be part of the EAP-2 system. So if you're already in EAP-2 that doesn't apply but if you are not you need to sign up here at this bit.ly or this link and I've also included that into the schedule for today so you can click on that and sign up. Per Amy Mueling, which is the new manager for the advisor system at NDE when you click on this link the last question has you agree to attend a conference that's already happened. Go ahead and sign it and date it anyway and then once you are registered for EAP-2 then you will be asked to attend or your lead in your district for the advisor will be asked to attend a bi-weekly virtual meeting that they have on every other Wednesday, which will continue to help your district move forward and to get the information that you need. Now each student information system vendor is a little bit different on how we go about or the process that we go about setting up the SIS into the advisor. So we're going to be again with Power School going to walk you through each one and what you need to be doing as of this time to prepare for this. First of all is Power School. Currently the ESU-8 has 10 districts using Power School as their SIS. So within our area we have some districts that are in the consortium and so you've actually paid the consortium to do some of this piece for you. So Shiri or Peggy should have already contacted you or contacted the people doing your advisor to set up a time to get your data connected. You will also need to fill out the paperwork that I mentioned before there's two forms that we have to post on the website if you haven't already done that. If you haven't again, I would love to come out and help you get that filled out. It's they're pretty we use this couple standard forms that we fill out and then I'll help you post them on the webpage where they need to go. And there's a link on the presentation that I included in the agenda for today. So the non-consortium districts which we have a few of those, you will need to sign up for EAP-2. Again, that's the same site that we mentioned earlier. Then ESU-8 is going to host a workshop for those for these districts. That are non-consortium power school districts and we are going to fill out the paperwork at the workshop. We're going to then load what's called the key-in-secret and that's basically the tie that tells the SIS that it's okay to talk to the ed-fi system, which then talks to advisor. And then hopefully by the end of the day, we're going to be able to start publishing some data into the advisor system. So infinite campus districts. Currently, there are three districts in the ESU-8 area using infinite campus as their SIS. Daniel Weber may have already been in contact with you. If he hasn't, he will be in the near future. We are the two districts that we're going to set up. He's going to help set up. In January is Norfolk and Stanton and then he's going to do Madison in the third round. But he is going to, from what I understand, he is going to contact you to help you walk through that system. And I've also asked if I could be there and attend those sessions as well. So I can be of support after he's done with his process for you. And then JMC. Currently, we have two districts in ESU-8 using JMC and then we have two possibly transitioning for the 2017-2018 school year. So those districts, we are still waiting on the vendor to finish their communication with the state. And once they start testing with the district, then we'll start working on the paperwork that I mentioned above for the power school and infinite campus districts. And then eventually, we'll start publishing. And I'm going to be working closely with the JMC representative to find out how they want to go about doing that. And I think we'll start working through that process as soon as they start to certify their data with the district. And I will be getting back to you all on that. Sycamore, we currently have one district within our ESU-8 using Sycamore. And basically with them right now, again, we're waiting on the vendor to finish their communication with the state. And so once they do that, then they're going to start testing with the district. And again, I have not heard what district they are testing with. So if you have a Sycamore contact for me, I would love to get that contact information. And I'll reach out to them to see what they're thinking of for the districts to work to certify with. Then once that process is underway, we can start working on the paperwork and eventually apply it to publish the data from the SIS. So what is the support from our area from the ESU going to look like for your districts? And what can I provide? Well, first of all, I have to mention that in order to make any contact with your SIS, they will request that I have an instance within your account. And so basically that means that I have an email, a username and a password within your system that certifies me as a contact person. If you choose not to do that, that's fine too. I just have to refer back to the support directly within your district in order to make any contacts there. I also, if you have a meeting or set up a meeting with your SIS in relation to Advisor, I would love to be a part of that so again so that I can help you throughout the whole process once the vendor is done with their piece and then I can help connect you beyond that to the Advisor and hopefully keep your Advisor working as it should be. I'm also going to work very hard on keeping you and your districts updated on any information that comes down from the state or from our virtual support team meetings, hopefully in a very timely manner as soon as we get that. We'll get those out to your Advisor support within your district. And please, again, if you have any questions or anything that I can help you with or any information you want to know more about, just contact me, my email address is on the screen or you can call or just ask any questions you might have. And I'm looking forward to working with you on this and I'm excited to be a part of the team. I hope the information in my presentation made sense to you. But again, if it doesn't, please reach out to me and I will get your questions answered. And again, I apologize for not being there in person to the season for sick kiddos. So thank you very much for your time and again, I look forward to working with you.