{"id":5919,"date":"2026-07-15T09:54:51","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T09:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/?p=5919"},"modified":"2026-07-15T09:54:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T09:54:51","slug":"care-inspectorates-stage-2-digital-transformation-project-using-assurance-proactively","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/2026\/07\/15\/care-inspectorates-stage-2-digital-transformation-project-using-assurance-proactively\/","title":{"rendered":"Care Inspectorate&#8217;s Stage 2 Digital Transformation project &#8211; using assurance proactively"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Blog by Niamh Duncan, Independent Assurance Stakeholder Communications Manager, Scottish Government, Digital Assurance Office.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Care Inspectorate is a scrutiny body which supports improvement, looking at the quality of care in Scotland to ensure it meets high standards. Over 600 staff work across Scotland, specialising in health and social care, early learning and childcare, social work, children\u2019s services, and community justice.<\/p>\n<p>The Care Inspectorate have been undertaking the second stage of an ambitious digital transformation project since May 2020. Stage 2 of the project builds on the replacement of end of life legacy systems and aims to continue the replacement of applications and simplify their data landscape. The project has taken a user focused approach to ensure frontline staff will be able to access and use the information they need easily.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Context<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Stage 2 project has received assurance under the Technology Assurance Framework (TAF), observing the mandatory major digital project reviews as well as requesting bespoke health checks.<\/p>\n<p>The reviews have recognised the project team as being exemplary in their proactive approach to using independent assurance. The Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) chose to embed independent assurance throughout delivery, rather than relying on mandatory assurance gates.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Activities <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The project team:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>invested time and resource into planning and preparing for health checks beyond the mandatory required reviews under TAF<\/li>\n<li>timed the health checks deliberately at points of uncertainty or transition, rather than waiting for fixed stages<\/li>\n<li>framed assurance as anchor points for the project, and used each review as an opportunity to pause, reflect and sense\u2011check, not as a pass\/fail exercise<\/li>\n<li>acted on recommendations promptly and visibly, in line with their exemplary governance that was recognised by the review team<\/li>\n<li>appointed a trusted critical friend early in the project to provide ongoing challenge between formal reviews, this acted on a review recommendation that noted the value of retaining skilled members of the project team who had supported the business case development<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Reflections<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The project team found that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>proactive assurance helped unblock issues earlier and reduced the risk of compounding problems, with such a large scale, high profile project the outside perspective was valuable to give the project team confidence that they were taking the right actions at the right time<\/li>\n<li>having continuity of reviewers across several reviews benefited them as it helped ensure reviewers had a detailed understanding of the project\u2019s context, history and constraints<\/li>\n<li>at the outset of the project assurance was seen as a burden, but quickly saw the recommendations as invaluable to their progress<\/li>\n<li>reviews required time and effort, although they ultimately saved time: the team used independent assurance when they hit blockers and were able to tackle issues at a better pace afterwards<\/li>\n<li>external challenge from the reviewers increased confidence for senior leaders and governance groups<\/li>\n<li>assurance worked best when embraced rather than treated defensively: the team found being open to reviews helped them get the most out of the process<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Find out more<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For more information about this case study contact: <span data-teams=\"true\"><a id=\"menurvm7\" class=\"fui-Link ___1q1shib f2hkw1w f3rmtva f1ewtqcl fyind8e f1k6fduh f1w7gpdv fk6fouc fjoy568 figsok6 f1s184ao f1mk8lai fnbmjn9 f1o700av f13mvf36 f1cmlufx f9n3di6 f1ids18y f1tx3yz7 f1deo86v f1eh06m1 f1iescvh fhgqx19 f1olyrje f1p93eir f1nev41a f1h8hb77 f1lqvz6u f10aw75t fsle3fq f17ae5zn\" title=\"mailto:digitalassurance@gov.scot\" href=\"mailto:digitalassurance@gov.scot\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Link digitalassurance@gov.scot\">digitalassurance@gov.scot<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Technology Assurance Framework (TAF) is designed to help prevent digital projects from failing for common reasons, improve delivery and ensure that the lessons learned from previous experience are reflected and embedded in future practice. The Digital Assurance Office are working with organisations to share information which might help others deliver digital projects and we have been publishing our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/tag\/digital-assurance-office\/\">insights and case studies<\/a>\u00a0on our digital blog. If you want to get involved contact us at\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:DigitalAssurance@gov.scot\">DigitalAssurance@gov.scot<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Other case studies focusing on the value of assurance include:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/2025\/04\/30\/digital-support-service-procurement-sro-reflections-on-the-value-of-independent-assurance\/\">Digital Support Service Procurement- SRO reflections on the value of independent assurance <\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/2025\/04\/23\/digital-support-service-procurement-sro-reflections-on-embedding-assurance\/\">Digital Support Service Procurement- SRO reflections on embedding assurance <\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/2025\/02\/05\/the-social-security-programme-approach-to-integrated-assurance\/\">Digital The Social Security Programme \u2013 approach to integrated assurance <\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/2024\/11\/13\/moveable-transactions-project-senior-responsible-officer-sro-reflections\/\">Digital Moveable Transactions Project &#8211; Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) reflections &#8211; Digital<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For further information and signposting to advice and support on project and project management contact the\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:ppm-coe@gov.scot\">Project and Project Management Centre for Expertise<\/a>. The Scottish Government\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.scot\/publications\/scottish-governments-principles-programme-project-management\/\">project and project management principles<\/a>\u00a0are available and apply to any project of any size.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/digitalacademy.gov.scot\/\">Scottish Digital Academy<\/a>\u00a0is the public sector centre of expertise for digital capability and can provide information, advice and guidance on developing digital, data and technology skills to support transformation.<\/p>\n<p>For expert guidance on delivering a digital project visit\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/digitalsupporthub.service.gov.scot\/s\/people\">the Digital Scotland Service Manual<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blog by Niamh Duncan, Independent Assurance Stakeholder Communications Manager, Scottish Government, Digital Assurance Office. Introduction The Care Inspectorate is a scrutiny body which supports improvement, looking at the quality of care in Scotland to ensure it meets high standards. Over 600 staff work across Scotland, specialising in health and social care, early learning and childcare,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[403,6],"tags":[482,22,533],"class_list":["post-5919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-assurance-office","category-digital-scotland","tag-care-inspectorate","tag-digital-transformation","tag-technology-assurance-framework-taf"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Care Inspectorate&#039;s Stage 2 Digital Transformation project - using assurance proactively - Digital<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/2026\/07\/15\/care-inspectorates-stage-2-digital-transformation-project-using-assurance-proactively\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Care Inspectorate&#039;s Stage 2 Digital Transformation project - using assurance proactively - Digital\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Blog by Niamh Duncan, Independent Assurance Stakeholder Communications Manager, Scottish Government, Digital Assurance Office. 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