The Evaluation of the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025

1. Background

Adding to the findings from the Interim Review, this report details the final evaluation of the Scottish Government’s Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025, covering the period of March 2023 – December 2025.

The Vision of the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-25 was focused on ‘tackling structural and intersectional inequality of outcomes, by ensuring Scotland's equality evidence base becomes more accessible, wide-ranging and robust. A stronger evidence base will enable the development and delivery of sound, inclusive policies and services and enable the measurement of improvements in the lives of people living in Scotland’.

The overarching Principles of the Strategy and key aims to realise the Vision are:

• More robust and comprehensive data and evidence will be gathered on the intersecting characteristics of people in Scotland across a range of outcomes.
• Equality evidence will be made more easily accessible so users will be able to access what they need, when they need it.
• Good practice will be shared and promoted to support increased confidence and competence in the production and use of robust equality evidence.

The Strategy was overseen by the Equality Data Improvement Programme (EDIP) Project Board. The EDIP Project Board consists of Scottish Government officials and representatives from a range of external public sector bodies with a key interest in mainstreaming equalities data. The EDIP Project Board has representation from Scottish Government policy areas and external organisations since it was formed in 2021.

The 45 actions, underpinning the Principles and overall Vision, were created to improve the publication and use of equality data. These 45 actions were based on information provided from a public consultation, stakeholder engagement, and a data audit carried out in 2021 across all core policy areas in Scottish Government.

The actions chosen to take forward as part of the Strategy covered nine policy areas and focused on:

1. Establishing processes (e.g. with stakeholders) to enable more equality data collection

2. Enhancing equality data collection / collection of new equality data in existing datasets.

3. Enhancing analysis of equality data;

4. Enhancing reporting or publication of equality data collected;

5. Establishing a new dataset;

6. Continuation of specific activities.

The actions submitted to the Equality Evidence Strategy were resourced and delivered by individual analytical teams across Scottish Government. The Equality Analysis team collected information from the action holders and reported these to the EDIP board through highlight reports and quarterly meetings. While the Equality Evidence Strategy provided the support and accountability for actions to be completed, the responsibility of completing the actions lay with the individual analytical teams.

The following report will cover progress against the overall Vision of the Equality Evidence Strategy via insights from the action categories, the Strategy principles, other influencing factors, and reflections from the EDIP Board and external organisations on the Strategy.