An appreciative review of the ‘refreshed’ Digital Strategy for Scotland

Scottish Government and Scottish Local Government (represented by COSLA and the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government) have published a ‘refreshed’ ‘Digital Strategy for Scotland’, and a delivery plan for one of the strands of the strategy ‘Sustainable Digital Public Services’ covering the period 2025–2028.

It’s great to finally see these documents; there are lots of good and interesting things set out in them. I know a lot of serious thinking and hard work went into them, and I appreciate that the intent is to regularly review them based on feedback.

Bold timing and vision

It‘s a curious time to be publishing the Vision and the Delivery Plan this close to the Scottish Parliament elections. It will be interesting to see how much of what comes up in the campaigning, ensuing debate, and eventual mandate validates or challenges what is set out in this iteration of the 2025–2028 strategy.

The Vision is both bold and generic. Much of the Vision could probably be that of any similiarly-sized nation — why digital and to what end. That’s not a problem unique to Scotland’s digital strategy. Government digital strategies the world over tend to be a bit same-same.

The boldest bit in this one is the delivery partnership between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Local Government. Putting that front and centre is innovative and exciting — a genuine point of difference.

This provides a platform to explore how the experience of people and organisations in Scotland is one where you have to navigate across central and local government systems. The more consistent and joined-up that experience can be, the better it is in terms of transactional experiences and outcomes.

More joined-up

Following that logic, it will be important to see in any future iterations to the strategy and plan how what’s being proposed corresponds to the provision of public services through digital by the UK Government.

There are a few oblique references to common components used by the ‘wider UK public sector’ and a direct reference to the ‘HMG Cyber Assessment Framework,’ but beyond these, there is a lack of accurate, well-rounded articulation of how the Scottish digital public services experience complements or differs from that of users with the UK digital public services.

Of course, the reality is a very interdependent and squiggly experience across the jurisdictions. If we are going to talk more openly about how national and local experiences cross over, we also have to bring in the countrywide context into it too.

The actions around ‘cyber resilient services’ and data describe clear and compelling interaction and collaboration between Scottish central and local governments. Some of the other areas come across a bit more ‘adjacent’ — things that are related will happen in central and local government toward similar ends but not necessarily in an orchestrated way.

More could and should be said about why this central and local partnership is needed. What issues in the current provision of public services are being addressed? What progress is being consolidated? What emerging opportunities does it take advantage of? Understanding this might help us to see why some of the division and join-up of responsibilities have been described and designated as they are in the Vision and Plan.

Clearly more emphasis is going to be placed on community-based digital services, and helping local government to be better prepared to deliver and sustain this. The digital maturity reports for local councils sound fascinating, and done right year-on-year, could be really purposeful new assets for comparing, contrasting, encouraging collaboration and supporting prioritisation. It would be good to see Scottish central government directorates, agencies, and their services also subject to similar digital maturity assessments, so that we can get the full, connected picture.

Clear accountability

The accountability in the delivery plan looks pretty clear and is helpful. It would be good to understand the difference (in this context) between a ‘Sponsor’ and a ‘Senior Responsible Owner’, but the fact that people are nonetheless named is useful in understanding who is doing what and where in the organisations involved.

That said, it looks like Martyn Wallace is the most important and busiest person in Scottish digital, picking up sponsorship or responsibility for 13 of the 33 action areas. The spread of leadership in Scottish central government ranges, reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of what is required, whereas in local government (with a couple of exceptions) it’s all on Martyn (good luck, sir!).

Better language

Of late, especially under the influence of AI, there has been more emphasis on efficiency at the cost of diluting experience. Based on the documents, there is a strong emphasis on achieving both efficiency and quality of experience simultaneously, rather than prioritising one over the other. The two concepts are often presented as interdependent and necessary for success. Common platforms, better data integration, and maturing digital skills all contribute to that dynamic of efficient digital services leading to the delivery of user-centred services.

A lot of the language in the Vision and the Delivery Plan is really good, but there are some inconsistencies and tensions that need to be ironed out.

In the Ambition for digital public services, the Plan mentions: ‘Digital innovation transforms Scotland’s public services, making them smarter, faster, and fairer.’ Section 5, Advanced Technology and Innovation, phrases it as: ‘Digital innovation makes our public services better, faster and fairer.’ Is smarter better than better or the same?

The Delivery Plan Introduction explains ‘Public service reform in Scotland aims to create services that are efficient, person-centred, preventative, and delivered locally. This means that services are designed for people and communities, and not according to the way organisations are structured.’ This is great because most often the people don’t have a choice about whether they use these services or not. But later in the document there are 8 references to customers rather than service users. There’s a handy glossary in the Delivery Plan; it would be good to see how the Scottish governments are defining and being intentional about the use of these terms. When is a person a service user and when are they a customer, and is there any material difference in what they should expect in terms of experience and outcomes?

Valuing outcomes over outputs

The ‘What does delivery mean for people in Scotland?’ section in each of the six action areas are really punchy and important, but these outcomes are a bit lost at the end of each section. It would be good to see these outcomes brought up earlier and given greater prominence and emphasis.

If there’s a particular risk to all the good intentions in the Vision and Delivery Plan, it is that there is too much emphasis on brands and solutions — the MyThis and the ScotThat. The urge for dependable, predictable, marketable solutions is understandable, but it is in tension with the complex, messy, and non-technical realities of human-centred delivery. People’s needs and the technology they use to meet these needs change erratically. It’s best to avoid inflexible brands and big-bang, all-in solutions.

Spread around in these documents, there are some good principles that are about adaptability, resilience, and skills. More could be done to bring these out and articulate them as a governing framework that can stand the test of the time-period covered by these documents and beyond.

New ways of working

Of course, how things are going to be done is as important as what’s being done. The methods of delivery are overall a bit vague. There is a mix of some very specific actions (eg. licenses, consents, visitor levies) and some very general actions (eg. components, personalisation, AI); it’s not always clear why some things are specific and others are generalised.

There’s quite a lot of references to old-school techniques involving pilots, feasibility studies, and proofs of concepts in a domain where the thinking and practices have moved on over the years to continuous improvement by enduring multidisciplinary teams using test-and-learn practices informed by engagement with users and performance data. User-centred design techniques are quite conspicuous by their absence. There are several very welcome points of emphasis on the importance of using performance data about how users interact with digital government, but this is deferred to when the ‘Public Services app’ is available.

When that ‘public services app’ is available is likely to be quite a ways off and isn’t going to come in a neat and uniform way. People typically use apps for very quick transactions, not to study detailed information and performance data; those are more website functions.

It makes you wonder what user research took place to inform the decision to commit to an app and what the scope of that app would be, especially as there are no references to the Scottish central and local government’s extensive and baggy website estate and domains. What happens to them matters as much if not more than an app, that will all told likely be heavily dependent on the content and data structures of the existing sites.

Acting with urgency

Procurement is a bit chucked in at the end of a section on ‘Public sector workforce and capability: beyond 2028.’ Extending choice of suppliers, getting better value for money, and reducing onerous processes and duplication can’t wait to ‘beyond 2028;’ those are now things in a time where economic growth and public finances are so crucial.

There are some good things said about sorting out data and thinking carefully about ethics to support more use of AI, but there needs to be more on use cases for AI. The plan and vision are at risk of lumping all AI into one class of ‘AI technology’. There needs to be more engagement with the range of AI technologies and their different applications and uses. It’s a bit surprising to see a framing of figuring this out in the years ahead, rather than acting on what’s already known. We’re too deep into AI to frame it as something coming up; it’s here.

And how much effort and treasure has been frittered away on performative rather than purposeful innovation? Ultimately, I’d suggest that ‘Advanced Technology and Innovation’ are not a thing; they certainly aren’t a separate, stand-alone section. Having a special section like this at worst suggests that the other stuff in ‘Common approaches’ is legacy tech. It would be better to spread the intent and practices throughout all the action areas, rather than othering them.

Related to this I’ve been a fan of CivTech over the many years. It’s been a great way of getting the Scottish public sector to admit to its perennially tricky problems, and coming up with possible solutions using creative, iterative methods. CivTech has undoubtedly been great at starting things up, but it’s not clear that it’s been great for scaling and embedding things. It would be great to see what more can be done to take its learnings and embed its practices in everyday, mainstream service settings.

Capability over capacity

What is good are the references to improving capability in the civil service and not just capacity. The focus is not just about technical skills, but maturity, confidence, and application of digital tooling and ways of working generally across the workforce. Shared approaches, targeted support, and leadership as well as delivery capabilities will all benefit the holistic approach that is needed.

For any of the things in the Vision and the Plan to be realised, and for those outcomes to continue to have an impact beyond 2028, the priority has to be the abilities of the people doing the production rather than the specific, transitory outputs they produce.

Looking ahead

They are pretty well-written documents all in. But there’s a lot there. It would be good to see a roadmap for each action area, setting out the outcomes to be achieved and how the steps toward achieving those outcomes will be taken over time.

These have all been early, even ‘hot’ takes on documents just released. I’m sure we’ll see roadmaps and other improvements come in the months ahead. The team behind the strategy have blogged about the process of developing the strategy; they’ve been great. I hope that this represents a ‘refresh’ of Scottish governments working in the open and showing their thinking and delivery in progress.

It’s wonderful to get this refresh to Scotland’s digital strategy. I look forward to seeing — and experiencing — the progress made. Let’s do hard work to make things simple!