Digital

Refreshing Scotland’s Digital Strategy, part 2

March 24, 2025 by deborahamzil No Comments | Category Digital, digital outcomes, local government, Scotland's Digital Strategy

Guest blog post by Colin Birchenall, Chief Technology Officer, the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government.

At the heart of Scotland’s Digital Strategy is the recognition that digital is a fundamental enabler for achieving the country’s priorities. Whether it is economic growth, social inclusion, or environmental sustainability, digital solutions play a crucial role in driving progress and innovation across all sectors.

Introduction

In her blog post Refreshing Scotland’s Digital Strategy: Process blog part 1 (of a few), Becca Fairless, Head of Digital Strategy at Scottish Government, sets out the rationale for refreshing Scotland’s Digital Strategy and the approach that is being taken.

I am excited to have the opportunity to be working with Becca and others to refresh Scotland’s Digital Strategy at this crucial time. This refresh is vital. Although Scotland’s digital ambition remains the same, we need to address today’s challenges and priorities and embrace opportunities from the rapid advances in digital technology (particularly Artificial Intelligence).

A Collaborative Approach

When Scotland’s Digital Strategy was launched in 2021, it was a joint strategy co-developed and co-owned by both Scottish Government and Local Government. Refreshing the strategy now offers the chance to enhance this collaboration, providing greater clarity on outcomes and roles in driving them forward.

Local Government can play a vital role in implementing the strategy, being closest to communities and facilitating local partnerships to develop innovative solutions that meet local needs, whilst at the same time collaborating as a sector to scale solutions and adopt common solutions where feasible. The Verity House Agreement emphasises the principle of “local by default, national by agreement”.

Early Engagement

Given the expansive role that digital is playing in society, economy, and public services, it is essential to engage a diverse set of stakeholders. By involving stakeholders from the outset, we can ensure that a broad range of perspectives are considered. To help achieve this, we have just completed a series of workshops that have brought various stakeholders from both spheres of Government together to gather insights into the opportunities, challenges, and possible interventions we can make together to help us to refresh the vision.

Empowering People to Deliver

Empowering people to deliver is crucial for the successful delivery of the refreshed vision. We want to create more of a common purpose for digital across the public sector aligning with Scotland’s priorities. Then, by involving people closely connected to these outcomes in the development of delivery plans for Digital Inclusion, Digital Education and Skills, the Digital Economy, and Digital Public Services, we aim to create a greater sense of ownership and clarity of roles among stakeholders.

We hope that this inclusive approach will enhance engagement (building upon our initial steps) and creating an environment that energises and empowers those who can help us to achieve our goals. The success of the strategy refresh will not be measured by how we develop it or how it looks, but by its ability to inspire, motivate and drive collective action at both a national and local level.

We will be writing a series of blog posts here giving updates on our progress. You can also keep up to date on what we are doing by subscribing to our Digital Scotland stakeholder newsletter which we publish six times a year. 

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Scottish Government’s Digital Directorate, COSLA and Digital Office for Scottish Local Government are working together to refresh our joint Digital Strategy for Scotland.

Tags: Collaboration, digital, digital public services, local government, local government collaboration, scottish government

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