The Scottish Government’s Digital Strategy contains the commitment to work with stakeholders, privacy interests and members of the public to develop a robust, secure and trustworthy mechanism by which an individual member of the public can demonstrate their identity online to access public sector digital services.

On our blog, we recently shared our Programme Plan, containing an outline of work towards delivery of this commitment. We will shortly be posting a new blog post capturing activity from over the last two months – https://blogs.gov.scot/digital

A detailed stakeholder plan is being developed as a distinct stakeholder engagement work stream within this programme. The expectation is that this work is conducted in the spirit and practice of open government. As part of this work we aim to set up a national stakeholder group made up of some of the key interests and partners.

We propose that this group will bring together parties from a range of sectors and interests and that members will be actively involved in discussing the programme, setting direction and priorities, and considering options and wider impacts of the work.

The national stakeholder group will be chaired by Roger Halliday, Scottish Government Chief Statistician and Data Officer, and membership is initially proposed to include:

• Service providers, including public bodies and local authorities
• Privacy interests
• Industry experts
• Information Commissioner’s Office Scotland (ICO)
• Third sector, e.g. SCVO
• National Records of Scotland (NRS)
• Improvement Service
• National Entitlement Card partners (e.g. Transport Scotland and Young Scot)
• Scottish Government Ingage Team (for Open Government)

The first meeting of the national stakeholder group is planned for Thursday 8 February, from 1pm till 4pm, at the City of Edinburgh Methodist Church, 25 Nicolson Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9BX. It is intended the group will meet quarterly.

In the spirit and practice of open government, we will make the national stakeholder group meetings as open as possible. In addition to the parties we have invited, members of the public who wish to come and participate or simply observe are welcome to register. We will make the papers and outputs of this and future meetings available online after the meeting as soon as possible.

If you would like to come, please register as space is limited. We look forward to seeing you there.

Best,
Scottish Government