Digital

Care Inspectorate’s Stage 2 Digital Transformation project – using assurance proactively

July 15, 2026 by Stewart Hamilton No Comments | Category Digital Assurance Office, Digital Scotland

Blog by Niamh Duncan, Independent Assurance Stakeholder Communications Manager, Scottish Government, Digital Assurance Office.

Introduction

The Care Inspectorate is a scrutiny body which supports improvement, looking at the quality of care in Scotland to ensure it meets high standards. Over 600 staff work across Scotland, specialising in health and social care, early learning and childcare, social work, children’s services, and community justice.

The Care Inspectorate have been undertaking the second stage of an ambitious digital transformation project since May 2020. Stage 2 of the project builds on the replacement of end of life legacy systems and aims to continue the replacement of applications and simplify their data landscape. The project has taken a user focused approach to ensure frontline staff will be able to access and use the information they need easily.

Context

The Stage 2 project has received assurance under the Technology Assurance Framework (TAF), observing the mandatory major digital project reviews as well as requesting bespoke health checks.

The reviews have recognised the project team as being exemplary in their proactive approach to using independent assurance. The Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) chose to embed independent assurance throughout delivery, rather than relying on mandatory assurance gates.

Activities

The project team:

• invested time and resource into planning and preparing for health checks beyond the mandatory required reviews under TAF
• timed the health checks deliberately at points of uncertainty or transition, rather than waiting for fixed stages
• framed assurance as anchor points for the project, and used each review as an opportunity to pause, reflect and sense‑check, not as a pass/fail exercise
• acted on recommendations promptly and visibly, in line with their exemplary governance that was recognised by the review team
• appointed a trusted critical friend early in the project to provide ongoing challenge between formal reviews, this acted on a review recommendation that noted the value of retaining skilled members of the project team who had supported the business case development

Reflections

The project team found that:

• proactive assurance helped unblock issues earlier and reduced the risk of compounding problems, with such a large scale, high profile project the outside perspective was valuable to give the project team confidence that they were taking the right actions at the right time
• having continuity of reviewers across several reviews benefited them as it helped ensure reviewers had a detailed understanding of the project’s context, history and constraints
• at the outset of the project assurance was seen as a burden, but quickly saw the recommendations as invaluable to their progress
• reviews required time and effort, although they ultimately saved time: the team used independent assurance when they hit blockers and were able to tackle issues at a better pace afterwards
• external challenge from the reviewers increased confidence for senior leaders and governance groups
• assurance worked best when embraced rather than treated defensively: the team found being open to reviews helped them get the most out of the process

Find out more

For more information about this case study contact: digitalassurance@gov.scot

The Technology Assurance Framework (TAF) is designed to help prevent digital projects from failing for common reasons, improve delivery and ensure that the lessons learned from previous experience are reflected and embedded in future practice. The Digital Assurance Office are working with organisations to share information which might help others deliver digital projects and we have been publishing our insights and case studies on our digital blog. If you want to get involved contact us at DigitalAssurance@gov.scot

Other case studies focusing on the value of assurance include:

Digital Support Service Procurement- SRO reflections on the value of independent assurance

Digital Support Service Procurement- SRO reflections on embedding assurance

Digital The Social Security Programme – approach to integrated assurance

Digital Moveable Transactions Project – Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) reflections – Digital

For further information and signposting to advice and support on project and project management contact the Project and Project Management Centre for Expertise. The Scottish Government project and project management principles are available and apply to any project of any size.

The Scottish Digital Academy is the public sector centre of expertise for digital capability and can provide information, advice and guidance on developing digital, data and technology skills to support transformation.

For expert guidance on delivering a digital project visit the Digital Scotland Service Manual.

Tags: Care Inspectorate, digital transformation, Technology Assurance Framework (TAF)

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