From digital access to digital impact: Why Scotland’s next leap in public service depends on proactivity

Scotland has made significant strides in digital government over the past decade, from the expansion of cloud services to the National Digital Strategy’s vision for inclusive digital transformation. But for many digital and data leaders, a critical question remains: What does transformation really mean in 2025 and beyond?

It’s no longer enough to digitise forms or launch new portals. As citizen expectations shift and budgets tighten, the next phase of digital government must deliver something more meaningful.

According to Re-Imagining Public Services: 7 Practices for Proactive Governments, a new resource from Salesforce, the most effective public sector leaders are not just digitising services, they’re rethinking how those services are designed, delivered and joined up across departments.

Whether accessing GP records, applying for housing support, or managing council tax, citizens expect public services to work with the same ease and personalisation as the apps and platforms they use daily. However, for many services, the underlying processes – and the data that support them – remain fragmented, manual and challenging to scale.

The report warns of a growing gap between public and private sector service standards, which result in frustration for citizens, operational inefficiencies for staff, and missed opportunities to use data more intelligently. 

The alternative is what Salesforce calls proactive government: services that are personalised, timely, and even predictive, built around the citizen, not just delivered to them.

What proactive government looks like

Imagine a citizen who moves house. Rather than updating their details separately with the local authority, NHS, DWP and more, they do it once, and the change cascades automatically. Or think of a new parent who receives a prompt about immunisation appointments before they even need to ask. That’s the potential of proactive, joined-up services.

The Salesforce resource offers practical steps toward this future, including:

• Creating a complete view of each citizen by linking data across systems, so services can be more targeted and responsive
• Connecting policy and delivery through a ‘digital thread’ that helps turn intent into impact
• Automating routine tasks to reduce manual effort, speed up decisions and cut costs
• Designing for life stages so services feel coherent and supportive from birth to retirement

These principles align well with Scotland’s national ambitions, particularly the Scottish Government’s Digital Strategy, which calls for a more collaborative, data-driven approach across the public sector.

One of the most pointed insights in the report is a warning against “digital veneers” – surface-level improvements that modernise the front end without simplifying the systems underneath. A form may be online, but if it still requires paper back-office processing, real transformation hasn’t happened.

Instead, the paper champions a shift to “government-as-a-platform” thinking where core capabilities like case management, data sharing and citizen engagement are standardised and shared across services.

This is particularly relevant in Scotland, where the drive for better integration – across health and social care, justice, education and local services – requires systems that can talk to each other, and staff who can act on consistent information.

Of course, none of this happens overnight. The report is refreshingly clear that transformation should be incremental and data-driven, not overwhelming. Salesforce’s platform approach, already utilised by agencies across the UK, provides a single model for building these capabilities at scale, with the flexibility to adapt to local needs.

Download Re-Imagining Public Services: 7 Practices for Proactive Governments and learn practical ways to improve service delivery with insight, structure and inspiration grounded in real outcomes.