How Change Managers can champion culture, collaboration and courageous thinking to unlock the value of data.
Public sector organisations across Scotland are being asked to rethink how they understand, manage and use data. The conversation is no longer limited to technical teams. It now speaks directly to the heart of service design, strategic decision making and the role of every individual who interacts with data in their daily work.
What unfolds here is a rich and very human story of ambition, collaboration and cultural change. Joyce and Shona from the Scottish Government’s Data Division share how they work with partners across sectors to shape a shared vision for public sector data, and why the future of data in Scotland depends on people rather than technology. Their insights hold immense relevance for Change Managers navigating complex organisational landscapes.
Why Data Culture Shapes What Is Possible
There is a growing recognition of how powerful data is in everyday public sector work. Yet in many organisations, data still feels like a discrete activity. Senior leaders may not fully understand its value, and data professionals often struggle to get investment or attention for the changes they know are essential.
This gap creates a tension. Those working directly with data understand the importance of improving systems, processes and governance, but without a compelling narrative they face barriers in making the case for change. Joyce and Shona’s team deliberately focuses on understanding these barriers so they can support people across the public sector to overcome them.
This work is not a top-down mandate. It is an enabling effort that helps organisations speak with one voice and move forward with shared purpose.
Creating a National Vision for Public Sector Data
One of the early challenges they identified was the absence of a national vision for public sector data. Without that bigger picture, individuals struggled to argue for change in their own organisations. A widely shared vision would make it easier to say, “This matters because it is part of something larger.”
The intention was clear. Create a vision that supports people to make progress, while avoiding the perception of a directive from government. It needed to feel collective, open and grounded in diverse voices.
Bringing the Right People Together
A core team formed from Scottish Government, NHS National Services Scotland and The Data Lab. But that was only the beginning. To ensure genuine representation, they brought in external facilitators who offered fresh ways of thinking. They then recruited 30 volunteers from the public, private and third sectors.
Some questioned the inclusion of private sector participants. Yet the team believed that multiple perspectives were essential to shaping something meaningful.
Everyone was invited to three full-day workshops across a three month period. Participants completed short pre-work designed to shift their mindset and prepare them for more speculative thinking.
Thinking Differently About the Future
To help people escape current constraints, each workshop focused on a different future year. 2044 in the first session, 2038 in the second and 2031 in the third. Participants were given “speculative fiction” pieces that presented challenging future scenarios.
The scenarios were deliberately challenging. Flooding, climate migration, identity theft and shifting economies. At first glance they seemed extreme, yet they worked. They helped participants imagine themselves, their families and their communities in future contexts. They encouraged people to think as good ancestors, considering how decisions made today will affect people decades from now.
Although the process felt unfamiliar, participants embraced it. The facilitators created safe spaces for differing opinions. The group leaned into the experience, and enthusiasm grew. The level of engagement surprised even the organisers.
The result was a huge volume of ideas that needed to be distilled. From this, a core vision emerged:
Scotland’s data advances innovation and well-being for people and planet
This vision sat above a set of ambitions, objectives and enabling conditions. All were grounded in participants’ contributions.
A Process of Challenge and Refinement
Rather than calling for public consultation, the team framed the next step as a “challenge phase”. The language mattered. They wanted people to feel comfortable offering strong, honest feedback.
The response was significant. More than expected, and notably more than another major Scottish Government topic running at the same time. Participants shared their thoughts, expanded on ideas and raised questions. This strengthened the work and affirmed the need for a collective approach.
Following this, they invited people to be part of a “realisation group”. This new group has been meeting monthly since February, using service design and agile approaches to explore how the ambitions of the vision might translate into practical action.
The gatherings are collaborative and exploratory. There are no terms of reference. Instead, they use “ways of working”. They avoid the language of delivering and instead focus on realising. They run micropilots rather than tests of change. Small shifts in language help participants adopt a more open mindset.
Deliberately disrupting
What Really Needs to Change
Through months of thematic analysis, mapping and causal layered analysis, three areas emerged where interventions would be most impactful.
- Procurement
Procurement has enormous influence over the future usability of data. Yet many procurement professionals do not know what to look for when purchasing systems. Decisions are made without fully understanding long term data needs, which results in vendor lock-in or systems that cannot provide essential data in the future.
This directly affects the ability to be a good ancestor.
- Holistic Approaches to Data
Public sector organisations work independently, with different funding structures and different levels of data maturity. Senior data leaders often lack a forum to think collectively. The team recognised the need for shared approaches and shared spaces. Without them, each organisation progresses at its own pace, with limited alignment.
- Data Governance
Inconsistent data governance practices make data sharing extremely difficult. Standards vary widely. Without more consistent adoption and application of standards, Scottish public services cannot easily exchange data or combine insights.
These three areas were not the ones participants would have named at the start. They surfaced only through deep exploration.
Moving from Insight to Action
The team is now identifying opportunities for micropilots. Two upcoming gatherings bring data leaders together to explore foundational data sets and practical reasons for making data easier to use and share. Denmark’s basic data initiative serves as inspiration for what might be possible in Scotland.
Meanwhile, the team continues to codify their learning. They are documenting ways of working and the process used to create the realisation group so others can replicate it.
This work is never intended to be a big bang. It is about progressive alignment. Lots of small steps that slowly shift the system. Coherence and consistency across many actions.
Why People Matter More Than Technology
Shona highlights something fundamental. Data challenges are rarely solved by technology alone. Technology supports change, but people make it possible.
Communities of practice are essential. Storytelling is essential. Sharing examples and learning from others accelerates progress across the system.
A powerful illustration is the child poverty work in Glasgow. By mapping poverty geographically, the team identified the ten most affected areas and targeted their efforts. The data gives insight into income patterns, demographics, housing, employment and levels of deprivation. Yet data alone cannot tell the full story. Lived experience must also be included, because numbers never reveal the nuance of real lives.
This integration of data and lived experience is vital for Scotland’s ambition to eradicate child poverty. Data must flow across boundaries. It must be reusable and accessible in ways that support strategic decision making.
The vision aims to help the public sector think more strategically and more holistically, articulating ambitions that guide progress over time.
Cultural Barriers and How They Are Addressed
Several cultural and behavioural barriers continue to appear across organisations:
- Low data literacy
- The perception that data is someone else’s job
- Data seen as an afterthought in digital or service design projects
- Fear of data sharing
- Hoarding behaviour, where individuals feel ownership over datasets
- Anxiety about quality or potential misuse
- Confusion between data literacy and numeracy
The team tackles these challenges through their data maturity programme, communities of practice and ongoing conversations within organisations. They help people see why data matters, not just how to handle it. Bringing the conversation back to purpose is essential. People engage when they understand the outcome it supports.
For frontline staff, listening is crucial. They often collect data without realising it. Helping them see the benefit to their role makes engagement easier.
The Heart of the Work
The work unfolding in Scotland is a powerful example of how data can be a catalyst for cultural change. It shows what can happen when organisations create spaces for speculation, collaboration and brave conversations. It demonstrates the importance of diverse voices and the value of shaping a shared vision.
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