The Scottish Government has published a response to a report commissioned from an independent expert group on ‘Unlocking the Value of Data’, focusing on maximising the value of “Scotland’s public sector personal datasets in secure, ethical and transparent ways, to realise public benefit”.
In a Ministerial Foreword, Richard Lochhead, Minister for Business, spoke of Scotland’s aims to “foster creative cross-sector collaboration to determine the best models and methods for the ethical use of data, anchored in public trust”. The programme, he went on, is part of a wider drive toward “making (non-personal) data open where possible, improving data discovery and infrastructure, promoting better use and reuse of data, and encouraging the adoption of common data standards across Scotland’s public sector”.
The report puts forward a total of 19 recommendations under three key aims: engage, enable, and ensure – addressing the aim to make data more accessible for “ethical use by Scotland’s innovators and researchers”.
On the engage theme, the recommendations focus on the need for “ongoing meaningful public and practitioner involvement and review throughout the data lifecycle”; engaging with expert stakeholder groups across the private sector, third sector and academics; and engaging the general public in decision- and policy-making.
Here, the Government notes the aim to support awareness of the data held, highlighting an aim to create a data catalogue. It also details the future introduction of the Scottish AI Register, a web-based tool “designed to share, with the public, high-level information about AI use in the Scottish Government and wider Scottish public sector”.
Under enable, recommendations include enabling: early adoption of guiding principles in “targeted policy areas”; a streamlined approach to data access; shared standards and protocols; existing intermediaries and joining up; collaborative research including the “collation of further evidence on blockages and proof of concept research”; user-centred approaches; and further investigation into technological opportunities.
As part of the strategy ensure theme, the recommendations are to ensure: that action plans, resources, and conditions are in place; “reasonable public benefit rationale provided by those seeking data access”; data protection (DPIAs) and equality impact assessments (EQIAs); “red lines on access for certain purposes”; transparency from the public sector around data access provisions, and from the private sector on their access to data; oversight is “appropriately resourced”; collaboration and “further input around benefit-sharing”; and the public can trust companies accessing data.
Following on from these recommendations, the Scottish Government shares some of the actions in progress or planned, such as the development of an operational framework for public sector access to data for research purposes; the exploration of the feasibility of piloting a benefit-sharing model, “focusing initially on controlled access to NHS Scotland personal data by the private sector”; the Scottish AI Register, which encourages public sector organisations to be “open and transparent about their use of AI”; and the RDS Researcher Access Service, which enables academics and data users to access secure data for public good.
To read the Scottish Government’s response to the Unlocking the Value of Data programme report in full, please click here.
Data use and strategy in Scotland
HTN recently published a digital and data across Scotland feature, examining the landscape of digital healthcare in Scotland now at present and for the future, as well as speaking to representatives from the Scottish Government, NHS National Services Scotland and Scotland’s Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre, to hear their views on projects and priorities.
In December, the Scottish Government’s annual update on progress toward the NHS Recovery Plan was published, highlighting the role of digital innovation in empowering patients, supporting preventative care, managing demand, and addressing inequalities; and noting specifically the progress made around developing a digital front door, enabling remote monitoring, and enhancing scheduling. The government also noted a planned update to the data strategy for health and social care in 2025 and highlighted the ongoing work to develop AI policy and guidance for health settings.
Toward the end of last year, the launch of a new Digital and Data Capability Framework in Scotland was announced, with the aim of supporting digital skills and competencies across the entire health and social care workforce.
