Blog: A Decade of Digital: What We Can Achieve When We Work Together

In October 2016, Scotland's local authorities came together around a simple but ambitious idea: that by working collectively, sharing expertise and addressing common challenges together, local government could accelerate digital transformation and deliver better outcomes for communities.
 
Ten years later, that belief remains at the heart of everything we do.
 
As the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government marks its tenth anniversary, we are reflecting on a decade of partnership, innovation and progress. More importantly, we are celebrating the people, partners and relationships that have made that progress possible.

Built by Local Government, for Local Government
 
The Digital Office was created to help Scotland's councils harness the power of collaboration and accelerate digital transformation. In April 2021, SOLACE reaffirmed this purpose, agreeing that the role of the Digital Office is to "ensure that the infrastructure and capabilities are in place to help councils increase the pace of digital transformation and to deliver on the ambitions of the National Digital Strategy for Scotland."
 
Over the past decade, that mission has remained constant: bringing councils together to share learning, build capability and develop collective solutions that benefit communities across Scotland. Since then, that collaborative model has demonstrated its value time and again.
 
We have shown that when we work together, we can achieve far more than any one organisation could alone. By sharing expertise, developing common standards and pooling resources, local government has strengthened its collective capability and delivered change at a national scale.

A Decade of Shared Achievement
 
The last ten years have seen significant technological, economic and societal change. Through it all, councils have continued to adapt, innovate and support the communities they serve.
 
Working alongside local authorities, national partners and professional networks, the Digital Office has helped create the conditions for collaboration to flourish. Collectively, we have developed shared approaches to digital transformation, influenced national policy, strengthened cyber resilience, built digital skills capabilities and explored new opportunities in data, artificial intelligence and emerging technologies.
  
These efforts have helped local authorities respond to changing citizen expectations, improve services, strengthen resilience and make better use of technology, data and digital capabilities.
 
These achievements belong to the sector as a whole. They demonstrate what can be achieved when knowledge, experience and leadership are shared openly across local authority boundaries.
 
The Digital Office's story is ultimately one of partnership.
 
Partnership between councils.
Partnership between local and national government.
Partnership between practitioners, leaders and communities.
 
Over the last decade, individuals from across Scottish local authorities have contributed their time, expertise and energy to collaborative programmes, communities of practice, steering groups and national initiatives. 
 
Their willingness to learn from one another, challenge one another and support one another has helped create a culture of collaboration that continues to deliver value across the country. This spirit of collective leadership remains one of local government's greatest strengths. Many of the successes celebrated today were made possible because councils chose to work together on issues that affect every community in Scotland. Whether improving digital skills, strengthening cyber resilience, shaping national policy or exploring emerging technologies, collaboration has consistently been the foundation of progress.

Looking Ahead
 
While this anniversary provides an opportunity to celebrate the progress of the last ten years, it is equally an opportunity to consider what comes next.
Public services continue to face significant challenges, alongside new opportunities presented by digital technology, data and artificial intelligence. The need for collaboration has never been greater.
 
The lessons of the past ten years are clear. The most effective solutions are often those developed together. Building shared capabilities, common approaches and collective leadership has created strong foundations for collaboration. The challenge for the next decade is to build on those foundations by delivering digitally enabled service reform programmes that address the financial, demographic and service pressures facing local government.

We are already seeing what this looks like through programmes such as Shared ARC and collaborative approaches to telecare, where councils are investing collectively in solutions to shared challenges. As public service reform accelerates and technologies such as AI continue to reshape what is possible, the opportunity is not simply to build capability, but to deliver more collaborative programmes that no single organisation could achieve alone.

The Digital Office will continue to support local authorities to collaborate, build capability, embrace innovation and shape the future of local government together. Because ten years on, one lesson stands above all others: when we work together, we can achieve more for communities than any of us can achieve alone. 

This blog is the first in our "A Decade of Digital" series, where we will celebrate a decade of collaboration, shared leadership and digital innovation across Scotland's local authorities.