ScotAccount: equality impact assessment

1.3 Key findings

This EQIA concludes that ScotAccount has an overall positive impact on equality.

A positive impact of the policy is in its commitment to providing secure digital pathways to access public services, advancing equality of opportunity by enabling individuals to engage without the need for physical visits to offices. This approach offers several potential benefits: it helps overcome accessibility barriers, reduces stress for those who find face-to-face interactions challenging, and lowers the risk for individuals who may feel unsafe or vulnerable in public settings and who prefer digital engagement.

ScotAccount also reduces people’s time and effort in having to repeat identity checks across different services or send personal information by post, which can go missing, and which also requires the receiver to have security management in place for paper documents.

The ScotAccount attribute store enables users to securely share verified personal information with public services, reducing the need for individuals to repeatedly provide and validate sensitive details. ScotAccount does not collect or share unnecessary personal data. Users have control over the data they save and share, enhancing their privacy and security.

The ScotAccount approach to data minimisation means that users are only asked to share information that is required to access a public service, reducing the risk of unnecessary information being shared and the opportunity for bias.

The provision of a secure, verified, and trusted digital identity for the public to reuse will also support public services to focus on their core offerings and enhance interoperability between services, potentially saving time and costs in the delivery of public services.

One of the main challenges identified in this EQIA is the impact of digital exclusion, either due to lack of internet, devices or digital skills, which disproportionately affect older people, disabled people and low-income households.

Digital exclusion can affect people who are more reliant on public services and who already face disadvantage. Socioeconomic disadvantage can also compound impacts across multiple protected characteristics.

The Scottish Government continues to tackle digital exclusion through a range of national initiatives. Connecting Scotland has supported over 61,000 people with devices, connectivity and digital skills since 2020 and continues to fund local projects that promote digital inclusion. Work is also underway to establish a Digital Inclusion Alliance to coordinate cross-sector action to tackle the root causes of digital exclusion. In addition, the Scottish Government has commissioned and published research on a Minimum Digital Living Standard for Scotland,^[6] which will inform future digital inclusion policy.

Digital connectivity is the foundation of these wider inclusion initiatives. The Scottish Government’s £600+ million Reaching 100% (R100) programme is delivering faster broadband to some of the hardest-to-reach parts of Scotland. As of October 2025, nearly 90,000 R100 contract premises had been delivered.^[7]

The Scottish Government is also playing a key role in delivering the UK Government’s Project Gigabit programme, which is targeting over 200,000 eligible premises and deploying an anticipated £200 million of UK Government funding.^[8]

Regarding the potential challenges of ScotAccount, barriers to identity verification through reliance on passports, driving licences and financial transaction history could disadvantage young people, older people, disabled people and those who lack a sufficient digital footprint in the real world, largely achieved through financial transactions. To mitigate this, ScotAccount has expanded the range of biometric proofs and introduced knowledge-based verification. ScotAccount is also actively pursuing alternative ways people can verify their identity, exploring the potential use of reliable public sector data and vouching solutions.

Trust concerns, especially amongst older people and those with low digital confidence, may also present challenges for people using ScotAccount. ScotAccount adopts UK Government Good Practice guidelines (GPG 44 and GPG 45)^[9] for identity verification and a robust Scottish Government security framework to provide assurances. Clear Privacy Statements are published and reviewed with users.

User-centred design has been a key principle of designing and building ScotAccount with an integrated user-centred design team conducting over forty-five rounds of user research involving over one thousand people, including specific testing with users who have accessibility needs and protected characteristics. The ScotAccount approach to continuous improvement includes surveys of people with lived experience of ScotAccount, and the development of monitoring and reporting frameworks.

Not everyone will be able to use or choose to use ScotAccount, and services adopting ScotAccount are encouraged to align with Scottish Government Digital Scotland Service Standard and maintain offline routes to services.