Digital

  • Mapping the Future: Scotland’s LiDAR Revolution

    3rd October 2025 by

    Guest blog by Mathew Williams, Scottish Government Chief Scientific Adviser for Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture. My name is Mathew Williams, and I have the privilege of serving as the Scottish Government Chief Scientific Adviser for Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture. In this role, I help shape policy around our natural world by bringing scientific...

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

    26th August 2025 by

    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...

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  • Reflections on the Warm Scottish Welcome programme

    15th May 2025 by

    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...

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  • Statistics.gov.scot Improvement Project – Discovery

    23rd January 2025 by

    Blog by Auren Clarke, Senior Product Manager in the Digital Directorate’s Open Data Team, Data Division. I work in the Scottish Government’s Open Data team, and we are responsible for maintaining Scotland’s Official Statistics platform statistics.gov.scot. Last year, we gave an update on the work of the open data team – we are focused on...

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  • Unlocking the Value of Scotland’s Data – Response to report published.

    16th January 2025 by

    Blog by Chris Bergin, Strategic Data Policy Adviser, Digital Citizen Unit. The Scottish Government has published its response to the report by the Independent Expert Group for the Unlocking the Value of Data programme. The programme is exploring how the public sector can responsibly unlock the value of the personal datasets they hold – securely,...

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  • A shared destiny for public sector data

    18th October 2024 by

    Blog post by Shona Nicol, Head of Technical Data Policy, Data Division, Digital Directorate. As a data professional, it can sometime feel hard to get others interested in data. Perhaps like many in this profession, I can often express the importance and value of data for good in an overly technical way. However when our...

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  • Exploring public sector challenges through the lens of data: The 2024 Data Science Accelerator

    11th September 2024 by

    Blog by Joyce Dalgleish, Data Innovation and Change Lead, Scottish Government. The Scottish Data Science Accelerator offers an annual development opportunity for public sector staff to build data science skills through the exploration of a real-life public sector data challenge with the support of a mentor.  On 4 September, our year 7 cohort came together to...

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  • Next-Generation Metadata Catalogue: Revolutionising Data Discovery in the Scottish Public Sector

    3rd September 2024 by

    Blog by Masood Alam, Chief Data Architect, and Catherine Ojo, Lead Data Scientist, from the Scottish Government’s Data Division. In a time when data drives decision-making, the Scottish public sector is making a significant move with the prospective development of a state-of-the-art Federated Data Catalogue and Metadata Repository, using machine learning & graph analytics. This...

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  • Open Data in Scotland : A Blueprint for Unlocking Innovation, Collaboration and Impact

    29th August 2024 by

    This blog has been written by Martin Macfie, Head of Open Data in the Digital Directorate’s Data Division to announce the publication of an independent report on open data for the Scottish Government. Publication of report In May 2024, I wrote a blog which outlined Scottish Government commissioned research to better understand the benefits, challenges...

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  • Data Science Accelerator – It’s about the journey not the destination

    26th August 2024 by

    Guest blog post by Lilly Herridge, Senior Assistant Statistician, National Records of Scotland. Next week sees the launch of the 2024 Data Science Accelerator, a public sector programme that supports innovation in the use and analysis of data. I’m now part of the judging panel that selects projects for this programme but back in 2018,...

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