This month will be my final blog post of 2020, and what a strange year it has been on the policy landscape across the UK. At ScotlandIS, we have endeavoured to keep our members’ interests at the forefront of our conversations with both UK Government and Scottish Government.
December saw the launch of our IT Managed Services Directory, the first of its kind in Scotland. This directory will help make SMEs and Corporates across Scotland more resilient and brings together a wealth of expertise in one place. The directory covers everything from security testing and risk management to cloud services and database management. The new directory will reassure companies that Scotland’s IT service companies are truly cyber secure and can tap into expertise wherever they are based. You can view the directory here.
In the last week of November, I chaired the ScotlandIS Brexit series of events on Trade and Immigration. ScotlandIS members met with Kevin Foster MP, Minister of Immigration, UK Government. This was the Minister’s first engagement with the digital and tech sector in Scotland in the year of 2020. We remain in discussions with the Home Office about having the Minister attending more ScotlandIS events in person moving forward, to engage with our members on a range of policy issues.
ScotlandIS were delighted to help shape the latest Skills Development Scotland Climate Skills Action Plan. We believe our sector has a critical role to play in helping Scotland meet our Net-Zero targets. We highlighted the great work all of our members are already doing in this space and we look forward to driving forward this agenda alongside our membership.
ScotlandIS now have a 2 page ambition statement on digital infrastructure and its future in Scotland moving forward. We look forward to sharing this with our members in the New Year and we would invite feedback from all of you when we circulate this.
Today, we will be releasing our Annual Scottish Technology Survey. This survey is our healthcheck of the sector for 2020 and I look forward to your input.
Finally, ScotlandIS are responding to the upcoming Scottish Government digital ambition consultation and we are still open for views from our members. Please get in touch with marc.strathie@sanmingzhi.net before COB on Monday 21 December if you would like to feed into our response.