Open Government Partnership

What a year as Co-chair of the Open Government Steering Group

May 13, 2025 by Open Government Team No Comments | Category Uncategorized

It’s been roughly a year since I took on the role of Minister for Parliamentary Business. With that has come my role as Co-Chair of the Open Government Steering Group in Scotland.  

Jamie Hepburn MSP, Minister for Parliamentary Business

When I think about the past year as part of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), I’m really impressed by the innovative ideas, ambition, and real-world impact that can be achieved when Scottish Government and civil society work together. I’m grateful for the opportunities this offers to build trusted relationships with members of civil society, colleagues in the Scottish Government, and around the world with people sharing similar goals and challenges. 

We’ve achieved so much 

So much has been achieved in the past year through the Open Government Action Plan. We’ve seen progress on the development of a new procurement system that will help Scottish Government colleagues with procuring high quality participatory work. The intention is that this will also provide a way to improve co-ordination and to standardise monitoring and evaluation of participation work across the Scottish Government. I think this has the potential to significantly improve how we plan and deliver public participation work across government. 

Reflecting on the scale of the participatory work on the National Care Service (NCS), it is impressive. As of February 2025, 2097 people have participated in co-design activities. This has been through national and regional forums, 1 to 1 interviews, seldom heard voices group sessions, and co-design events. 

Through our lessons learned exercise from the 2024-25 Budget and through the Scottish Human Rights Commission Open Budget Survey, we identified improvements to be implemented for the 2025-26 Scottish Budget and longer-term. We want to ensure information about the budget and how it is decided is transparent and easy to understand. 

In Open Data, we’ve delivered a public Artificial Intelligence register. Through the register, you can access general descriptions of Scottish AI systems, designed to help you get a better understanding of how AI works and is being used in the Scottish public sector.  

We’ve also been working with the University of Edinburgh on a short project led by MSc students to create a framework for case studies to showcase the value and impact of open data. The team caught up with the students recently to get their experience of working on the project which I’m looking forward to read. 

What’s next 

If you want to know more about what has been achieved and the work still to be done in Scotland read Scotland’s Open Government Journey 2016-2025. This was conducted by Andy McDevitt, an independent researcher with a wealth of experience supporting governance reform around the globe. He highlights some key successes, as well as setting out important points to improve on. 

My trusted partnerships 

All of this would not be possible without strong and trusted relationships. From internal collaboration across policy areas, to external relationships with individuals, organisations, academia, and wider with global researchers and other countries involved in OGP. These trusted partnerships are essential for us to deliver meaningful, ambitious, and innovative policies that produce better outcomes for people. 

In my role as Co-Chair of the Open Government Steering Group I’ve been working with a range of valued stakeholders, in particular my Co-Chair Juliet Swann (Transparency International UK), and Cllr Steven Heddle (COSLA). Through our Steering Group meetings we get to share our thinking about the strategic direction of Open Government in Scotland. With input from COSLA, a range of representatives from civil society, Scottish Government and myself, our recent conversations have focused on developing the idea of a trust and transparency strategy. With feedback from wider civil society and examples internationally, we have been examining whether our language is accessible to others and reflecting on how we open the conversation up to include the right voices in this work. These conversations are direct and honest. They reflect the trust that has been built over time between the members of the group. You can read Innes Morgan’s experience of joining the Open Government Committee to see how this feels from a civil society perspective. 

Our internal partnerships 

Our internal relationships are also essential to this work. Our current Open Government Action Plan contains five commitments, each in different areas of government. The teams leading internally on these commitments work together, sharing ideas and practice. For example, we are currently running a CivTech challenge that looks to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support public participation in Scotland. This project is a collaborative project between a number of areas of SG including our Open Data and Participation commitments. Both bring specific skill sets that complement the work in different and powerful ways. Take a look at what it’s like to be on the inside coordinating one of our commitments on the Open Government blog. 

My learning 

What I’ve learned from Open Government this year is that we’re not alone. Governments and civil society around the world are struggling with the same issues of trust, participation, mis- and dis-information. The Open Government Partnership helps us learn from each other. For example, last year Scotland hosted the Nordic+ group of Open Government countries to come to Scotland an

Nordic+ event in Edinburgh. 2024_

d discuss our shared goals and challenges around fiscal transparency. The group come together several times a year virtually or in-person to share ideas and learn from one another on shared issues. The group are meeting again in person in Vilnius very soon, where the group will be discussing public participation. 

When we trust each other, we can do great things. That is why I am committed to ensuring the people of Scotland can see, understand, and have a say in the matters that affect them. 

Join our community that we’re building to support exciting future looking policy for Scotland. Take the first step by signing up to our community bulletin, stay in touch and get involved in the trust and transparency movement. 

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