The Digital Directorate of the Scottish Government has indicated that it plans to produce a new version of the national digital strategy next year.
It has published a progress report on the strategy published in 2021, saying this is part of a pattern that reflects the need to respond to new challenges and opportunities every three to four years.
It also reflects the tightening financial constraints on the country’s public services.
“As we look ahead, we know digital is a critical enabler of public service reform, with digital thinking and reform thinking closely aligned and we are committed to taking those opportunities to support efficiency, simplification, streamlining and accessibility,” the document says.
“Public service reform aims to transform services to ensure services are efficient, high quality and effective for all and, where people are at risk of poor outcomes, services can identify this early, build relationships with citizens to understand their needs and work together to meet those needs.”
Common platforms
Its section on digital government and services highlights work on three common platforms, for digital identities, payments and cloud operations.
Among the key achievements have been that: 11 public sector organisations are now using the cloud platform service; a minimum viable service has been delivered for payments and is on track to go live 2025; the local government myacccount service is now used by 40 organisations with 2.4 million registrations; and ScotAccount is now a live service with Disclosure Scotland.
The document also points to projects including the development of a new Digital Scotland Service Manaus aligned to the Digital Scotland Service Standards, a refresh of the Digital Support Hub and workstreams on public sector architecture, managing capability via a shared model, user centred design, data and commercial.
In addition, there are plans to introduce digital portfolio management for the prioritisation of digital spending by the end of the current Scottish Parliament.
