Digital

Refreshing Scotland’s Digital Strategy: Part 6 –Recommitting to our collaborative plan

November 18, 2025 by Stewart Hamilton No Comments | Category Digital Strategy for Scotland

Blog post by Becca Fairless, Head of Digital Strategy and Policy, Scottish Government.

Welcome to the sixth edition of our blog-along on our refresh of the Digital Strategy for Scotland.

My colleague Martyn Wallace from Digital Office for Scottish Local Government provided the most recent update – in it he gave you a wee sneak preview about what you can expect from the Sustainable Digital Public Services Delivery Plan.

Today, we published that Plan and our renewed vision for Digital in Scotland. The vision represents our collective long-term ambition for digital as it pertains to society as a whole – so including digital economy, the education and skills agenda, digital exclusion and digital government. It’s big and bold and I hope that those of you who work in these areas can see your work reflected in it.

As for the plan, it covers the actions we will take together over the next three years to move us closer to that vision for digital government and public services. It is also clear about where there are actions that fall to either us in Scottish Government or our colleagues in Local Government to deliver independently in service of that vision. It is split into six themes; system leadership, common approaches, data, public sector capability and workforce, advanced technology and AI and cyber resilient services. Given the conversations and engagement we’ve done I’m pretty sure that these are broadly the themes you might expect to see. We have worked hard to deliver a plan that is clear about what we will do, by when, and who is responsible. For each action, we’ve also published a set of potential success criteria – or the kinds of things members of the public might notice as we deliver each commitment. Our deliverables are also routed in the outcomes we hope to progress for people in Scotland.

This should be just the first plan in a suite of similar documents that set out actions in the medium term to make real the vision in terms of education and skills, the economy and digital inclusion.

It’s the vision though that inspired the title of my blog; because although it is a massive achievement just finalising and agreeing the words on the page – not least proof reading in the last few weeks – this is really the beginning of the hard work. The strategy has to be more than words on a page; we’ve been robust in our planning and engagement to date so I am confident that what we’ve committed to will actually be delivered. But this is really where it is at. It’s in making things happen together that we will deliver real impact and improvements for people in Scotland.

We’ll be at the Digital Scotland Conference tomorrow – our Minister Mr McKee will be doing a joint keynote with Councillor Hagmann and you can also hear from Geoff Huggins and Martyn Wallace as well as our Permanent Secretary, Joe Griffin. 

Come and find me and my Digital Directorate colleagues at the Scottish Digital Academy Stand.

Scottish Government’s Digital Directorate, COSLA, and Digital Office for Scottish Local Government have worked together to produce the refreshed Digital Strategy for Scotland Vision.

Tags: Collaboration, COSLA, Digital Strategy for Scotland, local government, scottish government

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