Concept for digital transformation

What are we trying to achieve?
This is the concept page for digital transformation within the environment sector.

It describes our ambitions, the definitions we use, and the general principles and approach we are taking.

We want Scottish environment organisations to be more resilient and ready to move quickly and collaboratively on tackling the climate and nature crisis. This is essential for Scotland's contribution to progressing the Sustainable Development Goals, as articulated in Scotland by its National Performance Framework.

Our approach:


 * To encourage shared learning and innovation that will enable us to scale up our efforts to reverse the loss of biodiversity
 * To improve how we engage people and organisations in environmental issues, including through citizen science
 * To increase understanding of the ways in which digital solutions can add value to the environment sector,

Our guiding principles:


 * Working through existing brands and initiatives where possible
 * Focus on collaboration and engagement
 * Gender and diversity balance at events
 * Securing voice of young people
 * Minimising techie jargon
 * Innovative and interactive models for engagement
 * Open government approach to design - accountability, participation and transparency
 * Facilitating remote participation where possible to maximise inclusion

What do we mean by digital transformation?
Digital transformation is a slightly jargony term, and can mean different things to different people. So it's important to define clearly what we mean for this initiative.

We are approaching digital transformation from three angles; improved science, slicker operations and better engagement

What might this look like and entail?
There are already a number of real-world examples of where collaboration could help and what would result from that. For example:


 * Community hubs online that use automated workflows to get survey information faster and involve more people (citizen scientists) directly in counting species, harvesting the images and producing interactive maps.
 * Collective funding to help smaller organisations to move over to cloud-based platforms for example by providing expert advice.
 * A space for people to share lessons learned from delivering big infrastructure projects.
 * Collaboration on machine learning projects such as habitat recognition through remote sensing images.
 * Ways in which organisations might be able to reach the public more effectively by supporting them to map their positive memories and emotions with their experience of nature.

Check out the new digital resource knowledge bank for a list of existing initiatives.