PROGRAMME 8

DEVELOP PUBLIC SECTOR CAPACITY FOR AI ADOPTION

Strategy Actions

3.2 Expand on our AI CivTech Challenge on ethical and explainable AI in the public sector

3.7 Reach agreement on the development of a public sector AI Charter (including a mechanism for feedback from the public)

2.16 As part of the Digital Strategy, accelerate the use of common digital and data standards across the public sector 

3.9 Create a register of trusted algorithms used in the Scottish public sector, learning from best practice around the world 

3.10 Improve the capacity of the public sector to adopt AI through innovative procurement, support of CivTech and technology pilots 

Year 2 Progress

The Scottish AI Register

In 2021 the Scottish Government launched a CivTech challenge entitled “How do we give the citizens of Scotland trust and agency over how AI and algorithms are used in the public sector?”.  

 The aims of this project were: 

• To ensure children and the public in Scotland have understanding and agency over how AI is used to help make decisions about them 

• To enable the Scottish Government and its partners to develop the public's trust, enabling the use of AI to benefit our society, economy and public services 

• To allow constructive dialogue between the citizens of Scotland and policymakers, developers and users of AI systems in the public sector to contribute to improved design and implementation of AI systems and processes 

After a competitive and creative exploration phase, Finnish start-up Saidot were selected to design and implement an AI governance and transparency platform – the Scottish AI Register, which was launched in March 2023. 

The Register includes a public-facing website providing detailed information about AI systems being used or developed in the public sector. This includes information related to the use of data (including personal data when applicable), how the system works, accountability, impact assessment, risk management and human oversight. The Register aims to track the entire life cycle of AI systems, from conception and development to use and retirement. 

The Register enables the public to ask questions and provide feedback. We want to encourage a meaningful and constructive dialogue with the public including on sensitive and challenging use cases of AI. This creates a vehicle for the public sector to take action in response to any issues raised by the public and therefore develop and deploy improved AI systems over time. The Register also functions as a platform to share AI best practice across the public sector and the wider economy. 

The Register’s back-end is designed to help public sector organisations starting out on their AI journey by providing them with structure and guidance to adopt a consistent, ethical and open approach to developing and using AI. This is essential to earning the public’s trust, and it will help fill an important gap in knowledge and experience related to the development and deployment of AI systems in the public sector, which is not limited to Scotland. 

The Register went live with two use cases of AI systems.  

The first is being developed by the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration to investigate the possible use of AI to help keep children safe from harm. 

The second is a collaboration between the Scottish Government, NHS24 and the company Insights Driven to use AI to improve access to public services for disabled people.  

For more information on these exciting projects, please visit the Scottish AI Register website and Connecting You Now website.  

While this is a modest number of AI systems, we expect that the launch will help surface a number of other use cases in early development or consideration within the public sector. The Scottish Government will continue to engage with public sector colleagues to add those systems and make the Register the norm when developing AI in Scotland. This will also support compliance with future AI regulations and standards at the national and international levels. This is why the Dutch government recently launched their own national public sector AI register, whose use will become mandatory from 2025.  

The Scottish Government is at an early stage of its AI journey, and the launch of the Register demonstrates that we are committed to getting AI right from the start – by working in the open and listening. We want to set a high bar and share our best practice with businesses and civil society so they can innovate efficiently and responsibly to deliver the full benefits of AI across Scotland. 

Standards and data transformation

A Data Transformation Framework is being developed by the Scottish Government to support public sector organisations in understanding where they are currently in terms of data maturity, and how they can improve, realising more value from their data – setting out what “good data” looks like. The Framework is now taking forward a number of projects which have been generated as a result of feedback from public sector organisations. 

The Framework is concentrating on the foundations of data maturity at this stage, and developing a number of products to help organisations with their data improvement. A second data maturity cohort is currently running until the end of March 2023. Ten organisations are taking part including four Local Authorities, six agencies and other bodies. The cohort projects are proving effective at supporting organisations in their data journeys and providing important insights into both the current status of data maturity and the priorities that needs to be addressed. 

As a result of the data maturity programme activities, we are now developing a data maturity package which will offer a self-supporting approach to data maturity, assessment and action planning. The package will be tested towards summer 2023 and trialled with organisations in autumn.  

Other areas of work include: 

• Development of principles and strategic guidance on the use of four foundations to data improvement will be developed in 2023, these are: Leadership, Governance, Strategy and Discoverability. The Framework will link to pathways to help organisations implement changes in these areas. 

• The first two pathway products for the Framework are in development: Data Governance and Data Strategy. These have been identified by public sector organisations as being essential to support data improvement. Data Standards pathways are also being researched. 

• Personas have been produced to support the development of the new data transformation wiki site. These “data transformers” are the advocates and leaders who will help develop the Framework and will be referenced against the production of pathways and products.