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Policy

Digital

From
Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic, +1 more … Minister for Business
Directorate
Digital Directorate, +1 more … Internal Audit and Assurance Directorate
Topic
Business, industry and innovation, Economy, Public sector
Policy actions  3 of 6

Digital ethics and inclusion

Digital inclusion

Our vision is to create digital opportunity for everyone in Scotland. 

We’ll achieve this by: 

  • empowering people to thrive and improve their wellbeing through digital access  
  • enabling organisations to work together and improve digital inclusion services 
  • engaging with users to ensure what we do meets their needs and no-one is left behind 

Funding opportunities

In 2025-2026, two separate funding opportunities are being managed by the Scottish Government to support digital inclusion, deploying around £764,000 from the UK Government’s Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund.

The CivTech Challenge is open for applications from 1 to 29 October 2025. It aims to address barriers to accessing key online services and has £321,692 of UK Government funding, with additional Scottish Government support bringing the total available to up to £1 million.

The Connecting Scotland Digital Inclusion Fund is open for applications from 2 to 30 October 2025. It will distribute £442,327 of UK Government funding to support a range of digital inclusion interventions.

Programmes

Connecting Scotland

Connecting Scotland is a Scottish Government digital inclusion programme, providing internet-enabled devices, connectivity and digital skills support to people in need.

Connecting Scotland started in May 2020, issuing over 61,000 devices to people in need during the pandemic and beyond. The programme was delivered in partnership with the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO). Since we published the full business case in 2023, the programme has continued to evolve from an emergency response to a sustainable initiative, shifting its focus towards supporting people long-term.   

Connecting Scotland has an evaluation programme, including welcome and impact questionnaires, detailed interviews with recipients and independent research into the operational effectiveness of the programme. Find out more from the reports below:

Digital Inclusion Alliance

The Digital Inclusion Alliance (DIA) aims to coordinate activity, support cross-sectoral collaborations, and remove barriers to furthering digital inclusion across Scotland.

We are bringing organisations together to share thoughts on how a national alliance could convene, compel, and inspire collaboration across sectors and support activity at regional, local, and hyper-local level. 

Digital ethics

We are committed to using digital technologies and citizen data in an ethical, responsible and trustworthy manner across Scotland’s public services and data-led activities.

As part of this, we have adopted a holistic approach to ethics which draws together digital, AI and data ethics expertise in the Scottish Government.

This will:

  • support open, transparent and ethical decision-making in the Scottish public sector
  • streamline existing ethics guidance
  • promote public participation in co-designing digital government and services

This work includes:

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