Our push for action

The SCVO team has been working in the background with civil servants and stakeholders across the public, private and voluntary sectors to build on the success of the original Connecting Scotland programme and use the momentum to deliver a longer-term impact.

However, as the Audit Scotland report highlighted, very little progress has been made in the past few years. More than one year on, there has been no meaningful response to Audit Scotland’s recommendations.

In the past six months, we’ve taken steps to escalate our concerns:

• We’ve outlined our concerns to civil servants about the lack of meaningful response to the Audit Scotland report.

• We’ve outlined our concerns to civil servants around current proposals to establish a Digital Inclusion Alliance.

• We’ve returned around £4m from the original Connecting Scotland programme, as proposals to deliver additional activity were rejected.

• We’ve ended our decade-long partnership with the Digital Directorate on tackling digital exclusion, turning down funding for 2025/26 because we fundamentally disagree with the direction of travel.

More recently we have written to Ministers to outline our concerns. Our concerns and request for a meeting have been dismissed.

The Minister’s response acknowledges that Scottish Government’s “progress has not met the expectations of the SCVO and we are taking steps to address this at pace.” 

However, we know our concerns are shared by others in the public, private and voluntary sectors. Some criticism and concern is public, but many organisations fear speaking out (rightly or wrongly) as they are worried about the consequences.Given it’s taken more than a year to respond to the Audit Scotland report, and more than two months to respond to our letter, we could be forgiven for being sceptical that anything is happening “at pace” on digital inclusion within the Scottish Government.