Techscaler Programme 2022-2024: early evaluation - executive summary

Techscaler Programme mobilisation

The mobilisation period has been a key and early success

The early evaluation found that the mobilisation period for the Techscaler Programme, which commenced on 8^th July 2022 and ended when the programme formally commenced on 30^th November 2022, has been a key success. The mobilisation period is a critically important and pivotal phase because it helps to establish a strong and structured foundation and can help ensure that a project or programme is positioned for seamless operations and effective and successful delivery from the outset.

Throughout the early evaluation, the Scottish Government emphasised that CodeBase had:

• a strong understanding of government’s requirements for the programme.
• a deep knowledge of the Scottish tech ecosystem — including staff with direct experience of working in tech businesses or who have been entrepreneurs themselves.
• designed an innovative approach to programme delivery.

The successful mobilisation phase was testament to the efforts of individuals within the Scottish Government and CodeBase involved in the procurement and mobilisation exercises. Most notably, this included CodeBase’s ability to:

• meet a relatively tight deadline in respect to the scale of the programme.
• scaleup employment and to set up the physical regional hubs at pace.
• use its existing networks and connections to bring experienced team members into the programme, including some with startup, scaleup, and private sector backgrounds and experience.
• partner with other existing physical hubs to minimise the rental/lease costs to the Scottish Government — focusing expenditure on the staffing/events.
• design an actionable and deliverable programme that was a strong reflection of the STER recommendations.
• develop a series of online education modules that are now firmly part of the core offer and that require minimal updating going forward — allowing resources to be redirected to other areas and to new services and courses as required.

Lessons learned

In line with Scottish Government requirements, CodeBase had to ‘scaleup’ the organisation to be ready to start delivering the Techscaler Programme in a relatively short period of time. As is to be expected for a programme of this nature and scale, this had a considerable impact on CodeBase’s internal processes, procedures, and systems, as well as its communications. Some of these were not as well developed or advanced at the outset of the programme as they could have been if more time had been made available.