End of Commitment Report – Supporting Government openness, transparency and empowerment through open data

Name of Evaluator

Andy McDevitt

Email

[email protected]

Member Name

Scotland, United Kingdom

Action PlanAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen... Title

Action plan – Scotland, United Kingdom, 2021 – 2025

CommitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action...

Supporting Government openness, transparencyAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, transparency occurs when “government-held information (including on activities and decisions) is open, comprehensive, timely, freely available to the pub... More, and empowerment through open dataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici...

Title

Supporting Government openness, transparency, and empowerment through open data

Action

Over the four years of the plan, we’ll apply an enabling methodology to develop open data infrastructure and share examples of the value generated from use cases across a series of thematic areas to support plan commitments, including: Discovery: learn from best practice User needs: understand user needs Identify and share use cases Commit to continuous improvement Data needs: support connection between data users and producers to improve data usabilityWe will:1 – open up data relevant to other open government themes, such as key climate change datasets used by government for modelling and reporting, data on public transport and public sector expenditure2 – run a CivTech challenge to evaluate if technology can make public sector data easy to find, assess outcomes and set out the way forward3 – set up the Data Transformation Framework (DTF) stating what ‘good data’ looks like and the process by which organisations can improve – this focuses on opportunity for organisations to improve data maturity, data literacy and adoption of standards, through collaboration and engagement with local government and other public sector bodies, to be useful for civil society4 – review the front end of our official statistics open data publishing platform5 – increase the amount of Scottish public sector open data being published, through collaborations such as the Data Standards and Open Data Community of Practice6 – develop a public register of AI algorithms

Problem

Scotland’s Digital Strategy sets our ambition to be a data-driven nation. We value the transformational role that data can play in increasing transparency, empowering communities, transforming products and services, fuelling innovation, and improving outcomes. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of data in saving time, money, and lives. Publishing and internal sharing of open data enables efficiency gains, cost savings, and service improvement. We want to make more of our data available openly and make public sector data easy to find. People, businesses, and developers can use open data to create products for decision-making at a variety of levels. The data we publish must be accessible and meet users’ needs, provide insight, and support decision-making. Different audiences have different needs. Our approach must be informed by an understanding of these needs and directed towards supporting outcomes, lessening the burden of data use and reuse. We need to find a way of connecting with users who are not engaged with data by considering their equalities and skills. We recognise the value of supporting other open government themes through data, e.g., people being empowered to use data to understand and make decisions to reduce their impact on global warming. The way public services make decisions using data is as important as the data they publish. This includes the use of trustworthy, ethical, and inclusive Artificial Intelligence, as outlined in Scotland’s AI Strategy.

1.1 What was the overall level of progress in the commitment implementation at the time of this assessment?

Substantial

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

Although progress on supporting other commitments (such as fiscal transparency) was ultimately limited, the commitment made significant advances elsewhere: collaborating with the University of Edinburgh on open data value, publishing grant data via 360Giving, and launching the Find. Data. Gov. Scot search engine, which grew to over 25,000 datasets. A CivTech challenge explored scalable public participationGiving citizens opportunities to provide input into government decision-making leads to more effective governance, improved public service delivery, and more equitable outcomes. Technical specificatio..., with the Comhairle platform entering a commercial phase. Half of local authorities were trained on the Data Transformation Framework, with 93% having a data improvement programme in place. A review of statistics.gov.scot led to prototype development, with procurement for a refreshed service underway. An independent open data report was published in 2024, informing a draft vision for public sector data. The Scottish AI Register was launched, with governance tools being developed to support wider rollout. (See Final Report for further details and references)

1.2 Describe the main external or internal factors that impacted implementation of this commitment and how they were addressed (or not).

This commitment has benefited from the fact that it builds on work carried out under previous action plans. As noted in the mid-term report, the commitment team has developed a stronger understanding of the challenges associated with data provision and use as they relate to the external environment (leadership, commitment, purpose, etc.). This has continued into the second half of the action plan, with further roll-out of the Data Transformation Programme and initial efforts to incorporate external recommendations on open data into ongoing work.
Notwithstanding these positive steps, the commitment has still remained largely internally facing. Civil society members noted that to build on progress, this stream of work needs to be owned at a more strategic level of government to avoid the risk that it remains centered on a dedicated but small data team. In a similar vein, they noted how the next big challenge (as evidenced from lessons learned on commitment 1) is to ensure much better interoperability of different datasets (particularly financial data, taxPlacing transparency, accountability, and participation at the center of tax policy can ensure that burdens are distributed equitably across society. Technical specifications: Commitments related to c... data, spending data, etc.)
The data team responsible for this commitment agreed that interoperability of data has been and remains a key challenge. This challenge is exacerbated by the fact that the government only has ownership of central government data and can’t make decisions on other public sector data. The scope of influence in such cases is therefore limited to working on foundational support. This was an important lesson from commitment 1, namely that maturity levels were not advanced enough, and that different people holding different data were a much bigger challenge than had been anticipated. (See Final Report for further details and references)

1.3 Was the commitment implemented as originally planned?

Most of the commitment milestones were implemented as planned

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

Commitments were largely implemented as planned. 2 milestones were fully completed, and 4 were substantially completed. (See Final Report for further details and references)

2.1.1. – Did the government disclose more information; improve the quality of the information (new or existing); improve the value of the information; improve the channels to disclose or request information or improve accessibility to information?

Yes

Degree of result:

Major

Explanation: In narrative form, what has been the impact on people or practice.

This commitment has made significant strides compared to previous iterations under Scotland’s earlier open government action plans. Whereas previous plans were focused primarily on publishing more data, the current commitment has shifted the focus to building both the culture and infrastructure required for more meaningful data sharing by embedding open government approaches into ongoing work, strengthening data maturity within public sector organisations, and building the skills among data producers to engage with senior leadership around data. Rather than just publishing more open data, the data team took a step back and thought about the fundamentals needed to achieve change. (See Final Report for further details and references)

2.1.2. – Did the government create new opportunities to seek feedback from citizens/enable participation inform or influence decisions; improve existing channels or spaces to seek feedback from citizens/enable participation/ inform or influence decisions; create or improve capabilities in the government or the public aimed to improve how the government seeks feedback from citizens/enables participation/ or allows for the public to inform or influence decisions?

Not Applicable

2.1.3 Did the government create or improve channels, opportunities or capabilities to hold officials answerable to their actions?

Not Applicable

2.1.4 Other Results

Not Applicable

2.2 Did the commitment address the public policy problem that it intended to address as described in the action plan?

Yes

3. Provide at least one lesson or reflection relating to the implementation of this commitment. It can be the identification of key barriers to implementation, an unexpected help/hindrance, recommendations for future commitments, or if the commitment should be taken forward to the next action plan.

The ethical use of data and technology is likely to form an important strand of the next action plan. Lessons from the current action plan suggest that the new draft vision for open data should form the basis of future work in this area, with open data considered within the bigger context of data sharing. A second area of focus could be on working towards better interoperability of data. The planned new data.gov.scot platform will be an important element of this work. Ensuring greater interoperability is critical to ensuring that external stakeholders can build up a fuller and more meaningful picture of government activity. Interviewed civil society stakeholders suggested that a more strategic approach to open data should underpin the next action plan, by focusing on a few key areas in which data access can be particularly useful. Considering the lessons from the current plan, it would seem that fiscal and financial data could be one such area to focus on, to enable the public to “follow the money” as a core ambition . In the longer term, a greater focus on external engagement will be important to build resilience and sustainability for the future and ensure the commitment achieves its full potential. (See Final Report for further details and references)