deborahamzil
Written 42 posts
What keeps Scotland connected? The hidden infrastructure behind everyday life
23rd July 2026
Robbie McGhee, Deputy Director of Digital Connectivity based within the Scottish Government’s Digital Directorate blogs about digital infrastructure. More than just broadband When people ask me what I do, and what my team leads on, they tend to think about broadband. But digital connectivity is much bigger than that. It is one of the foundations on which modern Scotland relies. Every day, millions of…
Scottish Government Digital Academy: Progress Update on Deliverables
16th July 2026
Lee Dunn, head of the Scottish Government Digital Academy provides an update on the progress being delivered through the Scottish Government Digital Academy. The Digital Strategy Vision Statement and the Sustainable Public Services Delivery Plan were published in November 2025. Co-owned by the Scottish Government and Local Government (Digital Office for Scottish Local Government and COSLA) these documents…
The most common myths about User Research (and why they persist)
13th July 2026
Aileen Baxter, Lead User Researcher at Social Security Scotland blogs about some common myths around user research. User research has never been more important in government, yet it remains widely misunderstood. Even as research becomes more embedded in teams, misconceptions still exist about what it is, when it should be used, and the value it…
Moving beyond clear and simple to reach overwhelmed users
9th July 2026
Sarah Waterfield, Senior Content Designer blogs about using a test and learn approach to improving letters issued by Social Security Scotland. Imagine you’ve waited months for an important decision. One that will shape your daily life. The process has been long and sometimes difficult: gathering documents, sharing personal health information, asking for help, then the…
Why our team blogs
26th June 2026
Claire Robertson, Senior Content Designer in Social Security Scotland guest blogs about the value of blogging. On the 2 year (ish) anniversary of our Social Security Scotland content design blog, I thought it would be useful to reflect on the value of blogging and how it has helped our team. What do other teams think…
Boost creativity and collaboration: The power of pair writing
18th June 2026
Morven MacAllister, a content designer in Social Security Scotland blogs about pair writing and its benefits. What is pair writing? Content designers create content for everyone. We make complex services and systems easy to use and complex language easy to understand. We help users complete tasks and help teams design tasks for a user to…
What is data.gov.scot and why are we doing it?
3rd June 2026
This blog post has been written by the Open Data team in the Data Division of the Scottish Government’s Digital Directorate. We are building data.gov.scot, a new service to make it easier to find, access and reuse Scotland’s data. This is the first in a series of blog posts which we’ll be releasing over the…
Improving data access for ethical research and innovation
23rd March 2026
Blog post by Chris Bergin, Strategic Data Policy Adviser, in the Scottish Government’s Digital Citizen Division. Today marks the publication of an Operational Framework to support the secure and ethical use of public sector data, by Scotland’s innovators and researchers. Scotland’s public sector personal data is a rich resource, that if used in…
Supply25: supplier assurance and supply chain management fit for the twenty-first century!
18th March 2026
Lee Rutherford, Sam Ernstzen and Mark McKenny in the Scottish Government’s Digital Directorate and CivTech 9.5 co-sponsors blog about addressing the challenges of procurement. Across Scotland, the public sector navigates hundreds of thousands of procurements every year. These range from quick, routine purchases to major, highly complex projects, and the private sector faces a similarly…
Reflections on FutureScot’s Digital Scotland conference
19th January 2026
Becca Fairless, Head of Digital Strategy and Policy in the Scottish Government blogs about launching our refreshed joint Digital Strategy for Scotland at a recent digital conference. At the end of last year we published our refreshed Vision for digital in Scotland alongside our joint Delivery Plan for Sustainable Digital Public Services. We launched this at FutureScot’s Digital Scotland…