Participation

Meet the Open Government team

October 2, 2024 by Digital Engagement Team No Comments | Category open government, Our work

We are the Open Government team at Scottish Government. We’re a small team of 4 and we work with teams across Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament, public bodies, third sector, academia and civil society to make government more open, transparent and accountable.

What we do

The Open Government team has responsibility for coordination of Scotland’s Open Government Action Plan 2021 – 2025. We also deliver on the Participation Commitment within Scotland’s Action Plan.

This commitment works to embed high-quality and meaningful participation across the work of government. It also supports other commitments to deliver in a participatory way.

This is connected to broader areas of work that we are active in, such as:

• lived experience and public engagement
• transparency and Freedom of Information
• ethics and trust in government

How the work we do impacts the public

Open Government seeks to change the way those who hold power design and deliver policies and services. It is a primary way to strengthen democracy and build trust.

We do Open Government by signing up to work in partnership with civil society. Together we develop and deliver action plans which promote the Open Government values of transparency, integrity, accountability and participation.

Open Government Action Plans typically focus on ‘the how’ of government by setting out actions and milestones that will create improvements to the way government works. These actions make it more accessible, accountable and transparent to the people they serve.

Examples of ways the public have been impacted:

• Participation: We have developed the Participation Handbook and guidance on paying participants. These will support teams making decisions about public participation, raising standards across the organisation. We are currently developing a Participation Framework Agreement, which will facilitate the commissioning of high-quality public participation work.
• Data and digital: data.gov.scot improvements and data cohort programme have made it easier for the public to use and access data. See Louise Meikleham’s  blog that outlines data’s role in Scotland’s current Open Government Action Plan 2021 to 2025.
• Fiscal transparency: To support increasing public awareness of tax in Scotland, an animated video created in collaboration with external stakeholders called ‘Raised in Scotland, Spent in Scotland’ was published in 2022. The video aims to communicate in an accessible way about topics such as reserved taxes, the Block Grant, devolved taxes, local taxes, and what the money raised is spent on. From 2022, our open government fiscal transparency commitment has improved information to aid scrutiny of the Scottish Budget and its associated spending by producing information that is understandable and accessible for a wider audience.
• Health and Social Care: The National Care Service Lived Experience Experts Panel (LEEP) and Getting It Right for Everyone (GIRFE) have established routes for stakeholder organisations and those with lived experience to contribute to decision making and service design. This work supports the involvement of those with direct experience of health and social care, and creates resources for learning and good practice to be shared across government. All material and learning will be consolidated into central guidance to be re-used in future programmes of work. This will be made available, along with the first iteration of the national GIRFE toolkit, when the current cohort of pathfinders have completed the full co-design process.

Interesting work we’ve been involved in recently

• The Participation Framework Agreement has the potential to significantly improve the way government commissions public participation work, making it more effective and efficient. We know that a lot of teams want to take a participatory approach but may be uncertain about how to proceed in a way that ensures high-quality and meaningful engagement and outputs. The Participation Framework Agreement will be a central mechanism in a set of resources that can help with this. We are expecting to go to tender in the next few months. If you know any organisations that you think would be interested in bidding please encourage them to register their interest on PCS, as this is the only way they will be able to access to this opportunity.
• We are also looking forward to the development of our next Open Government Action Plan. Work on this will commence next year and will be supported by a new open government strategy.

We have a link tree signposting to key platforms where you can keep up to date with our work.

You can also follow us on social media and over on our blog.

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