Open Government Partnership

  • Openness, Transparency, and Covid-19

    29th May 2020 by

    Covid-19 has had a huge impact on how the Scottish Government is working. The vast majority of Civil Servants are 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...

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  • Open Contracting and Procurement

    5th March 2020 by

    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...

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  • New Year, New Us?

    17th January 2020 by

    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...

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  • Financial Transparency – Scottish National Investment Bank

    10th January 2020 by

    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...

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  • Transparency in the midst of fog: The Scottish Government’s open government commitment on Brexit

    16th December 2019 by

    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...

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  • Action Plan Progress Report

    21st October 2019 by

    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...

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  • Understanding Scotland’s public finances – the young people’s perspective

    3rd October 2019 by

    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...

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  • Understanding Scotland’s public finances with Young Scot

    1st October 2019 by

    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 do...

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  • Guest blog: Protecting and promoting information rights: a fine balance

    12th July 2019 by

    Why 2018 was the year of awakening, why the Cambridge Analytica story really matters and why we should care that Google controls our history: a guest blog from Suzanne Legault, LLB, BCL, Former Information Commissioner of Canada (2009-2018). We heard Suzanne speaking and thought she posed significant questions and challenges to the open government community,...

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  • Roundtable on open data and data literacy

    19th June 2019 by

    A short update from the team leading on open data in the open government action plan. They recently held a Roundtable meeting on Open Data and Data Literacy. See the notes from the meeting attached below.  The Scottish Government chaired a roundtable meeting on Improving Open Data and Data Literacy in Edinburgh, 26 April 2019...

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