Stewart Hamilton
Written 231 posts
Communications and Engagement Officer
Scotland’s LiDAR revolution: First data release to reveal Scotland’s landscape in unprecedented detail
29th January 2026
Guest blog by Prof. Mathew Williams, Scottish Government Chief Scientific Adviser for Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture. We are pleased to announce this week the first release of data from Scotland’s new national land Light Detecting and Ranging (LiDAR) programme, delivered by the Scottish Government with multiple partners. The goal of the programme is to…
Putting users at the heart of ScotAccount: How research shaped the service
26th January 2026
Developed by the Scottish Government, ScotAccount launched in 2023 and delivers the Digital Strategy commitment to provide a secure and simple way for people to sign-in and, if needed, verify who they are and that they are eligible for a public service or benefit online.
Enabling faster, secure access to data by industry for public benefit
22nd January 2026
Guest blog post by Roger Halliday, Chief Executive, Research Data Scotland (RDS), on how RDS is developing a framework to support faster, secure access to Scotland’s public sector data by industry partners, on behalf of the Scottish Government. This guest blog is part of a series on the Unlocking the Value of Data programme. At…
Creating the service patterns cards
22nd December 2025
Blog post by Kirsty Sinclair, User-Centred Design, Lead Service Designer, and Anusree Raju, Senior Interaction Designer. This is blog post three of three. Read the previous blogs in the series. Service pattern design work is supporting the adoption of common digital solutions and promoting reuse across services, aligning with the refreshed Digital Strategy for Scotland…
Practical application of reusable service patterns on a real service use case
19th December 2025
Blog post by Kirsty Sinclair, User-Centred Design, Lead Service Designer, and Anusree Raju, Senior Interaction Designer. This is blog two of a three blog series. Read blog post one. Service pattern design work is supporting the adoption of common digital solutions and promoting reuse across services, aligning with the refreshed Digital Strategy for Scotland vision…
Reusable service patterns in Scottish public sector services
18th December 2025
Blog post by Kirsty Sinclair, User-Centred Design, Lead Service Designer, and Anusree Raju, Senior Interaction Designer. Service pattern design work is supporting the adoption of common digital solutions and promoting reuse across services, aligning with the refreshed Digital Strategy for Scotland vision statement: Sustainable Digital Public Services. Reusable service patterns is a term for design…
ScotAccount is finalist in Delivering for Citizens Award – transforming access to public services in Scotland
11th December 2025
Blog post by Trudy Nicolson, ScotAccount Programme Director, the Scottish Government. We’re delighted to share that ScotAccount was a finalist in the Delivering for Citizens Award at the 2025 Civil Service Awards, a recognition of teams that put people first and deliver measurable improvements to public services. As the only submission from the Scottish Government to be shortlisted from a total…
ScotPayments: Confirmation of Payee – Driving Efficiency and Fraud Prevention
8th December 2025
Blog by ScotPayments’ Raven Green, Senior Digital Portfolio Manager and Megan Abbott, Lead Business Relationship Manager. Last year, we wrote about the launch of Confirmation of Payee (CoP), a simple but powerful feature that checks names and bank details before payments are made. At the time, we knew CoP had the potential to reduce misdirected…
Shaping the Future of Statistics.gov.scot: From Discovery to Alpha
2nd December 2025
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…
Refreshing Scotland’s Digital Strategy: Part 6 –Recommitting to our collaborative plan
18th November 2025
Blog post by Becca Fairless, Head of Digital Strategy and Policy, Scottish Government. Welcome to the sixth edition of our blog-along on our refresh of the Digital Strategy for Scotland. My colleague Martyn Wallace from Digital Office for Scottish Local Government provided the most recent update – in it he gave you a wee sneak…