Digital

Getting ready for beta: inside data.gov.scot

July 7, 2026 by Stewart Hamilton No Comments | Category Digital Scotland, Digital Strategy, Open data

Blog by Auren Clarke, Senior Product Manager in the Digital Directorate’s Open Data Team, Data Division.

The Scottish Government is working with Storm ID to build data.gov.scot, a new service to make it easier to find, access and reuse data about Scotland. This blog is the second in a series. You can read the first here: What is data.gov.scot and why are we doing it?

Since our last update, the Data.gov.scot Programme (DGSP) team has continued to design, develop and test the service. We are on track to launch in late summer. The launch will mark the start of our public beta, giving users the opportunity to explore the service and help shape its future development.

Building data.gov.scot

To deliver a better experience for users and data publishers, we are building a service made up of four connected applications:

• data.gov.scot – the Scottish Government’s public service for finding, accessing and using open data about Scotland.

• data publisher application – where public sector data publishers can publish their data on data.gov.scot. Using this app, they can add, edit, review and publish their data and metadata.

• content management system – an Umbraco implementation used by the Open Data team to manage content across the service.

• data management system – a CKAN implementation used to catalogue, manage and provide access to data.

All applications are hosted on the Scottish Government’s cloud platform, helping us provide a secure and reliable service that can grow as demand increases. The data.gov.scot and data publisher app use the Scottish Government Design System to provide a consistent and accessible experience.

Together, these applications provide the tools needed to publish, manage and access data through one service.

What you can do with data.gov.scot

We are building data.gov.scot to make it easier to find, understand, access and use data about Scotland. When the service launches, you’ll be able to:

• search for datasets across organisations and topics

• preview data before downloading it

• sort and filter data to find the information you need

• download datasets in available formats

• access data using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

• view dataset metadata and supporting information

The service includes a built-in data table. This lets you preview data directly in your browser without downloading the whole dataset first. You can sort, filter and export data to explore it more quickly.

Datasets will include a data dictionary explaining what each variable means and how it should be interpreted.

The service also supports recognised metadata standards including DCAT, Schema.org and Croissant-ML. These standards help people and systems find, use and reuse data.

For users who want to work with data programmatically, the service provides API access through CKAN’s Action API and Datastore API. These APIs support dataset discovery, metadata access and querying data.

Let us know what is and isn’t working

Once we launch, your feedback will help us improve the service. You’ll be able to share feedback in several ways:

• use the feedback banners near the top of the page to tell us what is working and what isn’t.

• complete the contact forms on data.gov.scot and the data publisher app.

• email the team directly

We will review feedback regularly and use it to identify problems, prioritise future work, and test and refine new features.

We look forward to sharing more updates as we prepare for launch. In the meantime, if you have questions about the service or the wider programme, contact us at contact@data.gov.scot.

Tags: data.gov.scot, Digital Directorate, scottish government, Scottish Government Design System

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