Foundations of the Digital State: An independent report for Scottish Government

The Foundations of the Digital State is an independent report written for the Scottish Government.

It was a practioner-led, holistic review of how the state creates services built on digital foundations.

The review covered the entire political cycle: from think-tanks and manifestos, through policy development, programmes of proposed legislation, bills and bill packs, parliamentary process and onto the traditional disciplines of design, technology, data, delivery and ending in-service management.

It identified structural and institutional lacunae in state structures arising from the transition from an analogue to digital world and makes a series of recommendations to address them. The recommendations are underpinned with proposed legislation.

The issues are:

• The government needs a single organisation with the mechanism to make decisions about how digital systems should work, and parliament needs a single structure to oversee those decisions.
• Decisions about what digital systems should do are made sub-optimally by parliament using ad-hoc repurposed mechanisms.
• The state lacks a research capability for digital systems.

The recommendations fall into 3 themes to address the points:

• unitary specification of services and systems
• better iteration in service development
• developing a research capability

The first puts infrastructure and joined-up government on a par with the delivery of siloed solutions. The second address speed and course correction, bringing public sector practices in line with major tech companies. The third prepares the state to use the new capabilities built by the first two.

The detailed recommendations are supported by details technical discussion in the 2 volumes of working papers.

About the author

Gordon Guthrie has a unique blend of experience, combinging a lifetime career on the internet as a software engineer for some of the UK and the worlds biggest tech companies, as well as front line political and policy experience.