The Scottish Digital Academy and the Future of DDaT

“The Scottish Digital Academy is the centre of excellence for digital capability and the supporting function for the DDaT profession within the Scottish Government.”

It’s been a few months since the turn of the year and I last provided an update in January 2023 – Reflecting back and looking forward – Scottish Digital Academy. The last few months have been extremely busy and also very exciting. As we continue to deliver on the ambition set out within the Digital Strategy, our team and our portfolio continues to grow.

The Scottish Digital Academy and the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Profession Team have now merged. Both have a strong history of working together through shared responsibilities to build digital capability. As we look to the future and take into consideration the emerging Digital Programme – essentially how we do digital across the public sector – the time is right to bring both teams together and to refocus our effort so that we can deliver on a single vision and set of actions.

We published a two year Strategic Business Plan in 2021 which set out a series of objectives to include:

• Leadership
• Professional Learning
• Innovation
• Partnership
• Community

In October 2022, we took a retrospective look at our work to date and subsequently published our first Monitoring Report. As we begin to see traction across the public and third sector through the positive impact of our interventions on digital capability, skills and talent, the recent re-focus on the DDaT Profession brings with it an exciting opportunity to conclude our original set of objectives and to imagine a new set of strategic and thematic priorities for the next two years.

We aim to publish our new Strategic Business Plan 2023 to 2025 by the Summer, and to set out how we’ll support the development of capability and skills through quality and standards, professional learning, talent and careers. As our work progresses, I’ll publish a series of supporting articles on our website. In the meantime, do watch out for subtle (and not so subtle) changes in what and how we work.