Digital

Shaping the Future of Statistics.gov.scot: From Discovery to Alpha

December 2, 2025 by Stewart Hamilton No Comments | Category Data, Digital Scotland, Statistics

Blog by Auren Clarke, Senior Product Manager, and Sean Nugent, Technical Architect in the Scottish Government Digital Directorate, Data Division.

We’re pleased to be able to share with you the latest from the Statistics.gov.scot Improvement Project. This blog is for those wanting to stay up to date with what we are planning for statistics.gov.scot, and for anyone who is simply curious to find out more.

Statistics.gov.scot Improvement Project re-cap

We began our journey to improve Statistics.gov.scot in early 2024. Our first step was to run a discovery phase, which helped us better understand our users and their needs. You can read more about this in the blog and the full user research report we published at the time. Through this work, we uncovered a significant gap between what users needed and what the current service was delivering. It became clear that a comprehensive overhaul of the site was necessary. Staying true to the agile delivery, we decided to move forward into the next phase: an alpha.

Alpha

During our alpha phase, we set out to achieve several key objectives. We aimed to design, build, and test prototypes that would help us explore different approaches. At the same time, we wanted to refine our understanding of users’ needs, build the capability of our project team, and begin shaping what a future state service might look like. A particular focus was to identify the minimum viable solution we could prioritise first.

Taking an Agile approach

Through creating a series of agile prototypes, we explored the needs of our users and data publishers. The goal was to better understand what functionality and design would best meet user needs, while aligning with the Scottish Government Design System.  We adopted an agile approach from the outset, working in sprints with clear objectives and regular stand-ups. This helped us stay focused, iterate quickly, and respond to feedback throughout the development process.

Accessibility and usability were key priorities throughout. We registered our prototypes on the Digital Scotland Service Manual’s Accessibility Cloud testing platform. We had many accessibility-focused sprint goals, and ran specific accessibility-focussed testing sessions in our programme of user research.

Two prototypes stood out.

Prototype 1: CKAN based platform / Cobalt

CKAN was a natural starting point given its widespread use across government and public sector organisations. We began by familiarising ourselves with the out-of-the-box interface and we quickly identified limitations around customisation and accessibility.  To address this, we planned a custom frontend using the Scottish Government Design System. Through workshops and design sessions, we shaped a user-centred interface and built it using React, connecting it to CKAN’s backend via existing APIs. This prototype became known internally as Cobalt.

We maintained two environments within the Scottish Government’s Cloud Platform, development and production (though not live), with weekly releases to Dev for testing and bug fixes, followed by major releases to Production once stable.

We selected a sample of 14 datasets to migrate and opened the platform for user testing. Feedback was gathered and addressed in line with agile practices, ensuring continuous improvement.

Prototype 2: PxStat / Emerald

In parallel, we explored a second tool: PxStat, developed by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) in Ireland used on data.cso.ie. The CSO kindly walked us through their platform and codebase, which allowed us to build a tailored frontend aligned to our requirements.

This second prototype, Emerald, followed the same agile process, albeit a few sprints behind. It is a heavily statistics orientated platform and offered advanced data slicing features and a different user experience, giving us a valuable point of comparison.

Sharing our findings

As with our discovery user research, we’re pleased to be able to share with you the full report on the programme of alpha user research. Tom Farrington, Storm ID User Researcher said “Working with such an enthusiastic, forward-thinking, and user-focused team was as inspiring as it was satisfying. For me, this was an exemplar of how a team should work together during Alpha, striking just the right balance between pace and thoughtfulness”.

In summary, for an Open Data Portal, users want:

• minimal jargon and plain-English labelling wherever possible
• efficient, intuitive, accessible search (e.g. typo-tolerant, fuzzy string searching)
• a simple, accessible preview of tabular data
• example visualisations with clear labelling (e.g. an example graph with uncoded x and y axes)
• prominent and useful metadata (including easy-read data dictionaries)
• short paths to multiple data download formats and APIs
• quick access to key statistics about their local area

In summary, for a data publishing platform, data publishers want:

• a reliable, efficient, accessible, and logical service
• clear guidance (in context) and help documentation
• minimal jargon and plain-English labelling where appropriate
• clear progress indicators with the option to save progress
• automated quality assurance (QA)
• preview and/or staging before publishing

What’s next?

We’re currently in the process of initiating a beta phase. This involves forming a dedicated service team and procuring a Service Provider to work in partnership with the Scottish Government. Looking ahead, we’re planning a multi-year programme to replace and enhance the existing statistics.gov.scot platform. This will include consolidating related services and delivering a modern, user-centred solution for publishing and accessing official statistics and spatial data. Our first major milestone is targeted for 2026, when we aim to release the first version of the new service to users.

We are always interested in hearing from you. You can get in touch with the Scottish Government’s Open Data team directly at: statistics.opendata@gov.scot.

Tags: improvement, Statistics, Statistics.gov.scot

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