The Evaluation of the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025

7. Supporting factors

Although the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 has improved a range of equality evidence across a number of areas, activities that have happened outwith the Strategy must also be considered. Some of the activities mentioned below are updates from the 2024 interim review, while others are examples of new work. This is not intended to be a comprehensive audit of all supporting factors in this space.

7.1 Strategic Improvements

Strategic improvements have been taking place over the last three years, alongside, and aligning to, the overall Vision of the Equality Evidence Strategy.

• The Equality and Human Rights Mainstreaming Strategy2025-2030 sets out the Scottish Government’s approach to embedding equality and human rights into everything it does across government and the wider public sector. The Strategy has identified six key drivers to successful mainstreaming of equality and human rights, one of which is utilising evidence and experience. This driver is primarily focused on addressing resource and capability gaps and enhancing opportunities for meaningful engagement with those who have lived experience of particular issues with a view to drive effective collection, analysis and use of equality and human rights data to understand and tackle differential experiences. The Equality Outcomes 2025-2029 report outlines three overarching outcomes for the Scottish Government to deliver on, it focuses on equality evidence improvement as a key commitment to support the above Mainstreaming approach. This commitment focuses on strengthening the use of equality and intersectional evidence across the Scottish Government and Public Bodies. The current Strategy and activities undertaken by action holders, and future Equality Evidence Strategy, have been mentioned as a key driver to success for this particular outcome.
• The Scottish Government is moving to a new modern data platform in the cloud, also known as the MOVE2 programme, which will be taking place across 2026. This change aims to improve data management activities, data processing for analysis, and support greater efficiency in our work and innovation. The move to the cloud will include improved metadata across datasets, including metadata on equality characteristics. It will also introduce opportunities for greater data sharing between Scottish Government analysts. The combination of improved metadata, data analysis efficiency, and data sharing will help to support analysts to improve equality analysis. The work to complete this move has so far included: setting strategic priorities, rolling out open-source software, running Fit for the Future leadership training, and building community groups.
• Scottish Government continues to be involved in discussions around data guidance and harmonisation, with a view to updating our own guidance as and when necessary. To date, the Equality Analysis team have been involved in harmonisation and equality data discussions for ethnicity, disability, sex and gender identity, as well as contributing to Scotland’s Census Consultation.
• The reform of the National Performance Framework is being designed as a compelling and aspirational vision of sustainable and long-term wellbeing for the people of Scotland. It encompasses social, economic and environmental needs, and is intended to provide a clear vision for a future in which we all want to live. The framework is for all of Scotland and anyone working for the public good should use the framework to support their decision making. National progress will be measured through the streamlined national outcome indicator set. Considering how measures of distribution – fairness, equality, income and wealth, geography, inter-generational, future impact, and our place in the world – apply to all the outcomes and allow us to understand progress for all. For individual-level indicators, this would include the ability to disaggregate by key equality characteristics and geography.

7.2 New Activities

New actions and activities related to improving collection and use of equality evidence outside the Strategy have been outlined below, ranging from improvement for specific equality group data, policy strategies and understanding barriers to response rates.

• Social Security Scotland has now published their Mainstreaming Equality Report 2025. This report commits the organisation and wider system to improve the whole client journey experience for all existing and potential clients from diverse backgrounds. Part of this work has also explored and identified the strategic and operational complexities, including limitations regarding equalities data collection and analysis. Social Security Scotland continues its work to address these challenges to find practical data improvement solutions that will enable them to take better, targeted action in support of Scotland’s diverse communities.
• The process to support the 2026-27 Budget, the Scottish Spending Review and the Infrastructure Delivery Pipeline trialled a new approach to assessing and better understanding the equality, fairness and other impacts of the Scottish Government’s key tax and spending decisions at strategic fiscal events. Instead of separate assessments, the Strategic Integrated Impact Assessment (SIIA) brings together equality, socio-economic, children’s rights, consumer and islands considerations in a single process and publication, providing a more complete picture of the combined impacts of budget decisions on people in Scotland. This integrated assessment approach also aims to ensure that impact evidence informs the Scottish Government’s budget choices earlier and more effectively in the decision-making process, while maintaining compliance with our statutory duties. It also presents new and emerging findings from enhanced distributional analysis and pilot study activity on budget tagging and intersectional analysis which used minority ethnic women as an example group. The above activity was a continuation of work on gender budgeting developed in collaboration with the OECD and published alongside the 2025-26 Budget. The team intend to evaluate the SIIA approach and publish the results by the end of 2026.
• The Agricultural Household Survey has been designed to improve understanding of child poverty, protected characteristics and gendered attitudes and behaviours in the agricultural sector in Scotland. It should be noted that this work is partially linked to Action 42 in the Equality Evidence Strategy with survey results published in March 2026.
• The Understanding Survey Non-response Behaviours research was published in November 2025. This research has systematically mapped potential barriers to taking part in surveys, drawn together the evidence for each, and developed practical potential solutions including increasing participation among underrepresented groups, enhancing accessibility, and addressing multiple barriers via solutions. This research aims to contribute to extending and deepening understandings of nonresponse, while recognising that it remains a complex issue and that there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. This research was developed in collaboration with the main Scottish Government surveys, who are now considering the findings to improve future response rates.
• An Ethnic and Racialised Inequalities in Cancer Services Evidence Review relating to cancer was published in November 2025. There is quantitative evidence of inequalities experienced by people from minority ethnic groups in relation to cancer screening, diagnosis, treatment and patient experience. People from minority ethnic groups experience a range of barriers to access to cancer care, reflecting inadequate attention within the healthcare system to the specific needs of people from minority ethnic groups. Structural, institutional and interpersonal drivers of racism also hinder people from accessing healthcare, including cancer services. This evidence could be drawn on to develop interventions which would address these inequalities. This evidence will inform development of the second Cancer Action Plan, to be published in 2026, by contributing analysis of what actions could be taken to provide support along the cancer care pathway for groups known to be affected by health inequalities.

Other workstreams, not mentioned above, that EDIP members felt contributed to the progress of the Strategy’s overall Vision and Principles included:

• The need for Equality Impact Assessments and Equality and Diversity toolkits being developed by Scottish Government
• The UK Statistics Authority Inclusive Data Taskforce
• The development of the Human Rights Bill
• Increasing recognition of the importance of intersectional data