Blog: Open Government - how we are supporting co-production principles
In this co-production week blog, Finlay McCartney from the Scottish Government’s Open Government team discusses how the Open Government Partnership can support co-production.
Scotland is a member of the Open Government Partnership. This means that we work to ensure the people of Scotland can see, understand, and be involved in the decisions that affect them. We are committed to building trust with the public in this way.
To do this, in summer 2021 we co-designed a four year national Open Government Action Plan with civil society and members of the public across Scotland. This resulted in 5 commitments on issues which members of the public and civil society have told us matter to them:
Fiscal transparency
Open data
Health and Social Care
Climate change
Participation
These commitments are spread across government and support each other to work in open, accountable and accessible ways. For example:
Open data is working to record the development and / or use of any Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems by Scottish Government teams and agencies. These are being logged on the Scottish AI Register. The Register supports the public sector to adopt a consistent, ethical, structured and open approach to developing and using AI
Fiscal transparency is developing a fiscal transparency portal. The aim is to help the public track the spend of government money. SG intend to make this a public service.
Underpinning all of this is involving the public and civil society in the work of Scottish Government. Our vision for public participation is that people can be involved in the decisions that affect them, making Scotland a more inclusive, sustainable and successful place.
We recognise this will be difficult to achieve, and in such a large organisation as Scottish Government it takes time. We are on our journey to embedding co-production principles across our organisation. We are continually improving our Participation handbook, which will now be supported by the co-production guide. Our internal public participation and engagement network is still growing with plans to introduce formal training for members in the works. This is all to ensure that we are investing time and resource into public participation.
This video interview with Amy Watson from our team give some examples of good practice going on inside government.
We are coming to the end of our current Action Plan and, as we reflect on the progress made, we need to share our findings and collaborate with civil society and members of the public in order to develop our next Action Plan.
If you are interested in shaping our next Open Government Action Plan, driving forward innovative and open policy making in the service of the people of Scotland, then join the Scotland Open Government Network of active citizens and civil society organisations.