Digital

Care Inspectorate’s Stage 2 Digital Transformation project – communications and engagement

July 29, 2026 by Stewart Hamilton No Comments | Category Digital Assurance Office, Digital Scotland

Blog by Niamh Duncan, Independent Assurance Stakeholder Communications Manager in the Scottish Government’s Digital Assurance Office.

Introduction

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. Read our first case studies (using assurance proactively and governance in an agile delivery environment) with the Stage 2 digital transformation project team on the proactive use of independent assurance and governance.

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 Stage 2 project represents significant change for a workforce with long service and varied confidence around digital change. Early in the project lifecycle a Business Justification Gate identified the need for the project to develop effective communication and engagement plans and maintain them throughout the project. These types of recommendations, early in the project lifecycle are common, and you can read more about them in our deep dive on communications and engagement.

The team proactively responded to this recommendation and subsequent reviews have called out the engagement with business leads and the wider Care Inspectorate staff in planning and preparation for change management as best practice.

Activities

The project team:

• embedded a dedicated communications resource within the project from the outset recognising that the organisation’s business as usual communications team would not be able to dedicate adequate resources
• recognised, as the project evolved, that communications and change management needed to be considered together and they needed specialist expertise to support this
• understood the stakeholders to be targeted for communications and engagement with tailored approaches for internal and external audiences
• purposely used multiple communication channels, making use of team visits, intranet updates, shortform videos, interactive sessions and awareness campaigns
• ensured every team in the organisation received direct engagement from someone in the core project team, to increase visibility of the project and foster good relationships
• established a network of volunteer change champions across the organisation, securing around 10% of the workforce as invested partners
• actively monitored engagement through analytics, surveys and informal feedback and adapted the approach based on what was working and what was not
• used a ‘single source of the truth’ approach to governance information, using a standard set of slides which could then feed different requirements meaning information is consistently provided across different forums

Reflections

The project team found that:

• effective engagement takes time, iteration and dedicated resources
• there was a need to integrate communications and change activities which was achieved by procuring specialist support later in the project lifecycle to support change management
• different people absorb information in different ways and repeated messaging is needed to reach all stakeholders adequately
• dedicated resource is essential for managing a major change and engaging staff appropriately so they feel actively part of the change, rather than having change forced upon them
• listening and adapting improved trust and engagement, bringing colleagues along through an open communication style
• a strong change champion network helped the project reach parts of the organisation that formal channels could not

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

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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