 "Scotland bans WhatsApp on govt phones amid debate triggered by UK’s Covid inquiry")
Government officials in Scotland will stop using WhatsApp for communication after the administration reviewed its policy on employing informal messaging apps.
The announcement for the same was made on Tuesday by Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes after an external review ordered by former First Minister Humza Yousaf was published.
Apart from WhatsApp, the government will also remove all “non-corporate mobile message apps” from official devices by next spring.
“Government business should happen on government systems which are secure, searchable and allow the appropriate sharing of information, in line with our statutory duties,” Forbes said in a statement.
What led to the ban?
The move comes after the United Kingdom’s COVID enquiry revealed how ministers and top civil servants deleted messages from the Meta-owned messaging service during the pandemic.
Senior figures, including former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, faced criticism after acknowledging that they had deleted many of the messages they sent on the app during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, those who did not delete their messages came into the public gaze over some of their texts. Yusuf faced particular scrutiny.
In one conversation with a senior Scottish health official, Yousaf — who was the health secretary at the time — referred to former Labour lawmaker Neil Findlay as an “a_s*hole” and a “tw*_t.” In a separate message, he called a prominent Scottish lawyer a “Tory f*ckwit.”
Improvement work underway
The external review was led by former Channel Islands data protection commissioner Emma Martins.
Martins proposed 20 recommendations covering various aspects of corporate governance, such as the Scottish government’s core values, its training and development systems, recruitment practices, record-keeping, and the management of mobile messaging apps.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“Technologies are changing our lives at home and in the workplace. No organisation can afford to sit back and hope that navigating those changes will come without effort. Values need to be clear, individuals need to engage, and governance needs to be effective. The Scottish government already understands this and there are a number of improvements already in train,” she said.
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