Digital

Making It Happen: Scotland’s Vision for Public Sector Data

August 26, 2025 by Stewart Hamilton No Comments | Category Data, Public sector data

Blog by Joyce Dalgleish, Data Innovation and Change Lead, Scottish Government.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 months since we shared the draft of the vision for public sector data. Since then, we’ve been genuinely heartened by how many of you have leaned in—giving your time, sharing your experiences, joining groups, and contributing ideas. Your input has helped shape the journey to bring this vision to life.

This update is for those who have been walking this path with us—and for anyone curious about how we’re turning words into action, together.

New to this work? Start here:

Here’s a quick timeline to catch you up:

• January 2024: Commitment made to take the vision forward.
• February 2024: Facilitators brought in to help shape the approach.
• May–July 2024: Horizon Scan Group formed to co-create the vision. Result: “Scotland’s data advances innovation and wellbeing for people and planet”—supported by five ambitions, objectives and enabling conditions.
• October–November 2024: Draft published and feedback gathered during the ‘challenge’ phase.
• February 2025–present: Volunteers meeting monthly to explore how we make the vision real.

How we’re making it happen 

Our brilliant Realisation Group is bringing the vision to life. It’s a space for open discussion and creative thinking, using service design approaches to explore where and how we can have the biggest impact.

Here are 3 pieces of work the group are supporting at the moment

1. Iterating the draft vision: Taking the feedback gathered in the challenge phase to update and finalise the ambitions, objectives and enabling conditions.
   
   
2. Ways of working: Setting out what will make the group more effective and productive. The intention is that the approaches we develop here can be captured and adopted by others.
   
   
3. How Might We?: Building a picture of the spectrum of data challenges to inform what solutions will be most impactful. Is it strengthening the influencing skills of data professionals? Raising awareness of how data supports policy and service development? Boosting confidence in using data across the workforce? We want to make sure we deliver on the outcomes that matter most to organisations (and btw we’d love to get your views on these).

You asked us to be more specific

One of the most common bits of feedback during the challenge phase was: “Be more specific.” And we get it—sometimes it’s easier to be told what’s needed. That’s how policy often works.

But this vision was never about creating a policy. It’s about supporting those working in data by offering a big-picture context. That’s why it’s designed to be relevant to any organisation, no matter where they are on their data journey.

Your Five-a-Day for Data

We believe everyone reading this has a role to play in realising the vision. Here are five ways to get involved:

1. Awareness: You’ve already taken the first step by reading this—thank you! Let’s keep going…
   
   
2. Amplify: Share this blog with a colleague and your network. Repost it on LinkedIn, drop it into Teams or Slack. There are still many people who haven’t heard about this work.
   
   
3. Assemble: Want to hear directly from us? We love to come and talk—whether it’s at a team meeting, at a conference, at any kind of event. And not just to ‘data people’—because everyone needs and benefits from good data.
   
   
4. Apply: Take a look at the vision’s wording. Does it align with what you’re already doing or planning? If so, consider referencing it—like the Unlocking the Value of Data team, who are talking about connecting with the vision.
   
   
5. Align: Could the vision help spark meaningful conversations within your organisation or with collaborators to create alignment? Albyn Housing has already used the vision to support discussions with public sector partners. It’s organisational neutrality offered a shared language and direction to bridge different perspectives. We see strong potential for the vision to enable discussions that could lead to more joined-up approaches to data sharing, infrastructure planning, recruitment, and procurement.

Let’s keep the momentum going

These five-a-day ideas are just a starting point. You’ll have your own—and we’d love to hear them. This vision is here to support you make conversations about data easier, and to remind you that you’re not alone in wanting to improve data use and reuse in your organisation — and together, we can make that happen.

Drop me a line at joyce.dalgleish@gov.scot and let’s talk more.

Tags: Data, Data Innovation and Change, public sector data, scottish government

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