Showcasing Scotland’s New Data Use Programme

Rens Dimmendaal & Johann Siemens / Better Images of AI / Decision Tree reversed / CC-BY 4.0

Blog by Lucille Brown, IEG Chair Policy Support Officer, Unlocking the Value of Public Sector Personal Data (UVOD) programme

Last month saw increased international awareness of and engagement with the new ‘Unlocking the Value of Public Sector Data for Public Benefit’ (UVOD) Programme. Members of the Independent Expert Group participated in the international ‘Data for Policy’ conference. The ambitious academic policy-science bridging event took place in December across three continents (America - Seattle, Europe – Brussels, and Asia – Hong Kong).

With virtual attendance, the Chair of the UVOD Independent Expert Group, Professor Angela Daly, and a member of the Secretariat, Lucille Brown, co-chaired a dedicated session during the Brussels portion of the conference titled ‘Public data for private gain or public benefit? Debating the use of public sector data by private actors’. The session focused on debate and increasing understanding of how to ethically unlock value from public sector held personal data, when used by the private sector to achieve public benefit.

There were four unique contributions, with presenters from Canada, Brazil/USA, India, and Scotland. The latter contribution is a working paper produced by members of the UVOD Independent Expert Group plus Secretariat, which is available to read here.

Involvement with the conference has supported the development of the evidence base informing the UVOD Programme, which has also commissioned three literature reviews on pertinent subjects (to be made publicly available shortly).

Videos from the international conference, with many topics aligned closely to the broader Digital Scotland agenda, are accessible via the official ‘Data for Policy’ YouTube channel.

Following the conference, the linkage has continued between Scottish Government via the UVOD Programme and the India-based Aapti Institute, a prominent think-thank working at the intersection between technology and society to build solutions that enhance societal impact, justice and equity, via the opportunity to influence the development of playbook to foster participation in data stewardship. Taking an ethical and citizen-centred approach to the UVOD programme is a central pillar, so it is excellent to be strengthening international partnerships and the profile of Scotland in this area.