Madeleine Fleming
Written 8 posts
Openness, Transparency, and Covid-19
29th May 2020
Covid-19 has had a huge impact on how the Scottish Government is working. The vast majority of Civil Servants now working from home, and the whole focus of the organisation has shifted. Staff have moved to work on high priority areas, with whole new teams being created almost overnight. Non-critical work has been put on…
Open Contracting and Procurement
5th March 2020
The Working Group for Commitment 1 of the Open Government Programme (OGP) Action Plan, made up of Scottish Government and Civil Society representatives, met again in January. Colleagues from Scottish Procurement who formed part of the Open Contracting Project team joined us to discuss progress against the Scottish Government Procurement milestone. The Open Contracting project…
New Year, New Us?
17th January 2020
Although this isn’t our first post of the new year, we didn’t say it last time – so Happy New Year! As is traditional, we’re taking stock of where we are as we move into 2020. As part of this, we’ve created new working group to take a close look at how we share news…
Financial Transparency – Scottish National Investment Bank
10th January 2020
Scottish Government and civil society representatives came together in December to discuss the Scottish National Investment Bank plans, and the milestones in our open government action plan. We aim to ensure the new institution is genuinely open and establishes transparent and engaging practice from the outset. This will set a new standard and model for…
Transparency in the midst of fog: The Scottish Government’s open government commitment on Brexit
16th December 2019
Brexit is complex and constantly changing, and understanding what is happening is a big challenge for everyone. The Institute for Government for example reports that even those civil servants whose jobs relate to Brexit have described it as working through the “fog of the fortnight ahead”. They felt they could only predict what was going…
Action Plan Progress Report
21st October 2019
As work continues to advance on our National Action Plan commitments, it’s important that we review our progress and are open about where we are doing well, and where we could do better. As well as that, it’s a requirement of our membership of the Open Government Partnership that we publish a formal self assessment…
Understanding Scotland’s public finances – the young people’s perspective
3rd October 2019
Kate Cottle, Eva Dallas and Alexandra Paterson from Balfron High School took part in Young Scot and the Scottish Government’s research on young people’s understanding of Scotland’s public finances. They tell us about their experience here. ❝We began by having our first meeting in our school, Balfron High School. This meeting introduced us to the…
Understanding Scotland’s public finances with Young Scot
1st October 2019
Nastassja Beaton, from the Public Spending Team in the Scottish Exchequer, blogs on the research the Scottish Government commissioned from Young Scot on young people’s understanding of Scotland’s public finances. What does public finance mean to young people in Scotland? How can we improve the way we share information about Scotland’s public finances? How…