Stewart Hamilton
Written 214 posts
Communications and Engagement Officer
Reflections on the Warm Scottish Welcome programme
15th May 2025
Blog by Robbie Fergusson, Senior Product Manager, Design, Digital and Data team (Warm Scottish Welcome programme). I worked on the Warm Scottish Welcome programme for nearly three years as part of a mixed team. We were responsible for delivering applications to help match Ukrainian guests with host families in Scotland, who offered their flats and…
Scottish Government Data Maturity Programme – Information session
7th May 2025
Blog by Sally Kerr, Data Transformation Lead, Technical Data Policy team. With the rapid adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI), data maturity has become even more important, and becoming data-ready for AI is one of the key drivers for those organisations who choose to take part in the Scottish Government Data Maturity Programme. To become data-ready…
Digital Support Service Procurement- SRO reflections on the value of independent assurance
30th April 2025
Guest blog by Laura Johnstone, Continuous Improvement team, Digital Assurance Office. The Digital Assurance Office (DAO) are working with project and service teams who have received independent assurance through the Technology Assurance Framework (TAF) to share their experiences. In our last blog we heard from Eddie Turnbull, Deputy Director, Agriculture and Rural Economy (ARE), Scottish…
Tackling child poverty with machine learning
23rd April 2025
Blog post by Spencer Thompson, Economic Advisor, Scottish Government The Data Science and Innovation Accelerator is a programme for public sector organisations in Scotland that supports the innovative use of data. In his blog, Spencer Thompson discusses his 2024 Accelerator project on child poverty. “Over the past 6 years I’ve been working towards the Scottish…
Digital Support Service Procurement- SRO reflections on embedding assurance
23rd April 2025
Guest blog by Laura Johnstone, Continuous Improvement team, Digital Assurance Office. The Digital Assurance Office (DAO) are working with project and service teams who have received independent assurance through the Technology Assurance Framework (TAF) to share their experiences. We recently caught up with Eddie Turnbull, Deputy Director, Agriculture and Rural Economy (ARE) Directorate in the…
Care, code and text: Accelerating understanding of care data
28th March 2025
Guest blog post by Sam Henderson-Palmer, Information Analyst, Care Inspectorate. The Data Science and Innovation Accelerator is a programme for public sector organisations in Scotland designed to support the innovative use of data to solve real-world business problems or discover new opportunities. In his blog, Sam Henderson-Palmer, Information Analyst in the Risk and Intelligence team…
Reflections from SEPA’s Future Flood and Incident Messaging Service programme team
19th March 2025
Guest blog by Laura Johnstone, Continuous Improvement team, Digital Assurance Office. Introduction SEPA (Scottish Environment Protection Agency) is Scotland’s environmental regulator and the national flood forecasting, flood warning and strategic flood management authority. The Future Flood and Incident Messaging Service (FFIMS) programme was initiated in 2020 to replace the previous Flood Warning Dissemination System and digitally…
ScotPayments Design in Action (Part 3: Accessible design)
4th March 2025
Blog by Catriona Binnie, Senior User Researcher in the ScotPayments team, on the process the UCD team follow to ensure we’re building an accessible payments service for all public sector staff. We want ScotPayments to be easy to use for all public sector staff. Accessibility for our user base is key. What are we doing…
Iteration and continuous improvement – a Blockbuster story?
12th February 2025
Guest blog from Jayne Purcell, Service Design Lead, Social Security Scotland. Iteration and continuous improvement are words I hear a lot. What I have observed over the years is that iteration and continuous improvement usually means iterating and improving the current design, with not enough effort put into exploring the future and the vision to…
The Social Security Programme – approach to integrated assurance
5th February 2025
Guest blog from Lois MacFadyen, Head of the Digital Assurance Office. The Social Security Programme was set up to build and implement the new Social Security System in Scotland, making arrangements for the delivery of 17 benefits. The design and development work on the first end to end service started in October 2017 and the…