Across government, the question is no longer whether AI will affect public services, but how to harness its potential safely, responsibly and at scale.
The Scottish Government’s AI Strategy 2026–2031 provides a welcome framework for answering that question. While the strategy spans the whole Scottish economy, its implications for public services are very significant. In particular, the strategy rightly places transparency, fairness and public trust at the heart of adoption. Public services rely on citizen confidence, so any use of AI that cannot be trusted or governed will not succeed.
However, trust cannot be established through principles alone. It must be built into the services themselves through modern, dependable technology, accessible, well-governed, fit-for-purpose data, and controls that make the use of AI secure, transparent, and accountable.
Scotland’s ability to turn its AI ambitions into better public services will depend on how effectively it builds trust into those services.
A strong starting point
Scotland already has many of the ingredients needed for success, with a long track record of digital innovation in public services. Programmes such as ScotAccount and ScotPayments, on which Scott Logic was the technology and implementation partner, demonstrate how the Scottish Government can modernise services through shared platforms and common standards. The country’s universities continue to produce world-class research, while organisations across central and local government have invested heavily in digital and data capabilities over the last decade.
That said, there is also an acknowledgement in the strategy that “Data is critical, but Scotland’s public sector data is often fragmented and difficult to access. Improving data sharing and governance is essential, not to drive unchecked innovation but to support safer, more effective services and research which will ultimately make a difference to people’s lives.”
We agree with that assessment. At Scott Logic, we put it this way: AI governance is built on data governance, and data governance is built on solid technology foundations. Fragmented data held in siloed legacy systems cannot provide those foundations.
Laying new foundations
For many public services, harnessing AI effectively will require modernising the underlying technology. AI can help organisations tackle legacy challenges that once seemed insurmountable, as my colleague Suzanne Angell explains in this video. Our engineers at Scott Logic are already using AI-assisted approaches to modernise systems for clients in both the public and private sectors, including Yuki and Scopevisio.
Crucially, modernisation provides an opportunity to rethink not just the technology but the end-to-end service. This is where trust stops being an aspiration and becomes tangible, because it can be built into processes, controls and technology from the outset. The aim should be to identify where humans and AI each create the most value, then design the process around those strengths. The level of risk associated with the outcome should also be addressed up front; the higher the risk, the less the process should rely on non-deterministic AI decision-making.
In this way, modernisation adds cornerstones of trust to public services and enables solid data foundations to be laid.
Consolidating and governing data
When it comes to data, our experience at Scott Logic mirrors the Scottish Government’s assessment. Organisations we work with regularly discover that before they can scale AI safely and effectively, they first need to address longstanding challenges around data quality, accessibility and governance. Again, this presents an opportunity to build trust into public services, ensuring they have access to the right information, for the right purpose, with the right controls in place.
AI systems generate outputs from the data and context available to them. Controlling that context therefore helps to shape the quality, security and appropriateness of the output. Poor, insecure or inappropriate context will produce unreliable results. That is why we help organisations establish strong data foundations by understanding what information exists, who can access it, how its quality is assured, and how it can be connected safely across organisational boundaries.
This is where data foundations and AI governance overlap. Good governance is not something you introduce at the end of an AI project; it is the product of strong data foundations. By controlling what information AI systems can access, understanding where that information comes from, and maintaining clear oversight of how it is used, you create the conditions for transparency, auditability and accountability. Put another way, the same foundations that make AI effective are also the foundations that make it trustworthy.
Delivering trusted public services
The Scottish Government’s AI Strategy sets out the right goals for public services that are more responsive, more personalised and more effective. Citizens could experience faster access to services and better-informed decisions. Civil servants could spend less time on manual processes and devote more time to work that requires human judgement, empathy and expertise.
It’s particularly encouraging that the Scottish Government understands this will not be achieved simply by introducing AI into existing services. Scottish citizens must trust their public services, and you cannot simply declare that an AI-enabled service is trusted. As explained, you must design and build trust into the service from the start.
Scotland’s AI Strategy provides a clear direction of travel for its public services. Turning that direction into public value will require sustained investment in modern technology, trusted data and robust governance. If Scotland gets those foundations right, it has the opportunity to become a leading government in the responsible use of AI.
