Scottish Digital Alliance
Background
In October 2005 the Scottish Executive began a consultation exercise as part of the review of its Digital Inclusion Strategy "Connecting Scotland's People" that had been published in 2001. The initiatives that were implemented as part of this strategy had come to and end and evaluation confirmed that significant progress had been made but that more could be done to bridge the digital divide among the previously identified target groups which include; older people, disabled people, ethnic minorities, those with literacy problems, the unemployed, those on low incomes and those living in rural areas.
During the consultation views were sought from a wide range of organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors and one of the key findings was the need for a practitioner network that could provide a central information point in Scotland that offered advice and expertise on Digital Inclusion best practice, technologies and resources.
The Scottish Executive took this forward in partnership with a number of public and private sector organisations and set up the Scottish Digital Alliance in December 2005. The group is chaired by the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations and has a wide range of representatives from the public, private and voluntary sectors. The remit is set out below.
Remit
- To promote consistency and standards for the delivery of digital inclusion projects (e.g. in the delivery of ICT training and the provision of assistive technologies).
- To contribute to a shared knowledge bank by ensuring projects in which we are involved are appropriately evaluated and the results contributed to capture a clearer picture of national activity.
- To design partnership working across the voluntary, private and public sectors to address digital inclusion issues across Scotland, and to contribute towards delivering real outcomes.
- To ensure that currently excluded groups benefit, and are positively advantaged as a result of our activities.
- To contribute towards the development of the Scottish Executive's digital inclusion strategy, and to help deliver its associated action plan.
The Scottish Digital Alliance as a representative group are ideally placed to co-ordinate and contribute to a range of activities. Collectively the group can work across sectors to develop responsive solutions, promote best practice and increase the impact of any activity while reducing the duplication of effort that can arise as a result of lack of information sharing.
Meeting Minutes
Secretariat
The Scottish Executive e-Government Team provides a secretariat function for the Scottish Digital Alliance. The group can be contacted through the secretariat by e-mailing digital@scotland.gsi.gov.uk