Digital

Call for action from the Digital Directorate. Can you help us to build a public participation platform?

July 31, 2024 by Stewart Hamilton No Comments | Category CivTech, Data, Digital Scotland

Blog by Michaela Omelkova, Data Ethicist, Data Division.

In the Scottish Government, we believe that actively listening to and acting on public opinion is essential to good governance. Public participation is after all a key aspect of modern democracy, and one of the building blocks of our trustworthiness.  

At the moment, the Scottish Government uses a range of different methods to engage the public in decision and policy making. These include for example online public consultations, surveys, focus groups or deliberative public dialogues (i.e. involving careful thought and discussion). Each of these methods has its merits and weaknesses, its specific uses, different timescales and different price tags.  

Deliberative public dialogue has been recently gaining traction as the primary way of gaining in-depth insight into citizens’ views, concerns and aspirations on complex or controversial issues. For example, the Public Dialogue on the Use of Data showcased how deliberation can produce nuanced and powerful insights on the difficult topic of data ethics. 

The Public Dialogue on the Use of Data furthermore recommended that Scottish Government does more public engagement on data and AI on a case-by-case basis. This is precisely what we would love to do!  

However, given the severe pressures on resources, we need to look at innovative, cost-effective and methodologically robust ways of engaging with the public. We believe that technology could help us deliver a high-quality, efficient and scalable participation tool or platform for the Scottish Government. Indeed, market research we commissioned from experienced participation practitioners, through the Scottish Collective Intelligence Community, suggests that there are gaps for technology to make participation processes more efficient. But, we need someone to build it! 

Having identified this need, we paired up with CivTech – Scottish Government programme that brings the public, private and third sectors together to build things that make people’s lives better – to try and tackle the following question: 

How can technology help us deliver high-quality, scalable, public participation in decision-making, inspiring trust around ethical data use and sharing, AI, and wider public good activities? 

Call to Action 

We invite anyone with a brilliant idea to work hand-in-hand with us to build the solution. 

Find out more about this CivTech challenge. A live Q&A session will be held on 6 August 2024 at 11:00. Click here to register for the session. 

To bid to solve this challenge, register at Public Contracts Scotland and submit your application. 

You can also support the challenge by sharing this information with your professional networks.  

For more information about the Scottish Collective Intelligence Community, please contact: tom.wilkinson@gov.scot 

Tags: CivTech, CivTech challenge, Data, Public dialogue, Public engagement, Scottish Collective Intelligence Community

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