From experimentation to scale: using smart infrastructure to improve places and services

Over the past decade, councils across Scotland have been exploring how sensors, data and connected technologies can help them understand places differently and deliver services more effectively.

For us, the opportunity has never simply been about the technology. It is about using better and more timely information to improve outcomes: targeting resources where they are needed, intervening earlier, reducing risk and improving compliance, while also delivering savings and efficiencies.

Over the years, the Digital Office has worked with councils and partners to help build the capacity to turn that opportunity into practical delivery. Our role has evolved as experience across the sector has grown: shaping understanding of what is possible, sharing experience between councils, shifting good ideas into practical delivery and, increasingly, creating the conditions to scale what works.

Shape: building understanding and confidence

An important part of our early work was helping councils explore what Internet of Things technologies could mean in practice for local public services.

Across three webinar series, we showcased projects from across Scotland, enabling councils to hear directly about emerging approaches and experience elsewhere in the sector. We also brought in expertise from external organisations, including the Information Commissioner’s Office, to help councils consider some of the wider issues associated with adoption.

This helped shift the conversation from what the technology could do to where it could make a meaningful difference to services and outcomes.

Share: turning experience into reusable knowledge

As experience grew, the priority became making sure councils did not have to solve the same problems independently.

Working with local authorities and partners, we captured learning in practical IoT blueprints covering areas including social housing, waste, air quality, water monitoring and winter maintenance.

The principle was simple: where one council had already explored an opportunity, others should be able to benefit from that experience.

The blueprints help councils build on approaches and lessons from elsewhere in the sector, reducing duplication and making it easier to explore adoption without continually starting from scratch.

Shift: moving ideas into practical delivery

We have also helped councils collaborate where emerging technologies offer new ways to understand and respond to service challenges.

Through a collaborative CivTech project with Perth and Kinross Council, Stirling Council and Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park, sensors and AI were used to understand and predict visitor volumes in rural and remote locations.

More recently, our Scottish Government Invest to Save grant-funded project has taken this approach further. Five councils are involved, with smart energy monitoring covering more than 1 million square feet of public building space across Scotland. Sensors and a shared analytics platform are providing energy managers with better visibility of how buildings consume energy, helping them identify waste and build the evidence for targeted interventions and future investment.

These projects demonstrate the wider opportunity from smart infrastructure. The value does not come simply from collecting more data. It comes from using that information to understand what is happening, make better decisions and target interventions more effectively.

That opens up the possibility of services becoming more targeted and preventative, while also improving efficiency, reducing risk and strengthening compliance.

Scale: taking what works further

The next opportunity is to move from successful individual projects towards adoption at greater scale.

Our focus now is on identifying the highest-priority use cases where there is a strong case for wider adoption across councils, and developing the business cases needed to support that.

An important part of this will be exploring opportunities for shared procurement and collective approaches. Where councils have common requirements, bringing demand together could reduce duplicated effort and make it easier for councils to adopt proven approaches.

The aim is not simply to deploy more technology. It is to identify where smart infrastructure can deliver meaningful benefits at scale: improving outcomes through more targeted and preventative services, delivering savings and efficiencies, reducing risk and strengthening compliance.

By combining experience, evidence and potentially demand across councils, we can build a stronger case for investment and make successful solutions easier for the wider sector to adopt.

What next?

Over the past ten years, our work has helped councils shape opportunities, share learning and shift promising ideas into practical delivery.

The next challenge is scale.

That means working with councils to identify the use cases with the greatest potential for wider benefit, developing robust business cases around those opportunities, and exploring shared procurement where doing things collectively makes sense.

Rather than councils having to investigate, test and procure similar solutions independently, we have an opportunity to build on the experience that already exists across Scotland.

Ultimately, this is not a story about sensors or technology. It is about giving councils better information to make better decisions: helping services intervene earlier, target resources more effectively, manage assets and risk better, and deliver improved outcomes for communities.

After a decade of shaping, sharing and shifting innovation, the next opportunity is to scale what works.