Welcome to the launch of The Foundations of the Digital State.

​It will be both in person at the Bayes Centre in Edinburgh (at 47 Potterrow)) and online.

​Apologies there is a Google Maps bug at the moment

​Gordon Guthrie will give a short presentation on his report and then there will be Q&A chaired by David Farquhar.

​David is a serial entrepreneur and company scaler, most recently with farm manufacturer Intelligent Growth Solutions and is the AI Accelerator Entrepreneur in Residence at the Bayes Centre.

​About the report

​It is the first major attempt to consider the digital state from a constitutional perspective, taking a holistic view of the creation of state digital services across the entire political cycle, from manifestos and think-tanks, through the creation of legislative and administrative programmes, the workings of parliaments and on to the usual technical and design delivery cycles and in-service systems.

​Based on extensive research and practitioner-interviews, The Foundations of the Digital State spans multiple disciplines.

​Major digital programmes involve dozens of pieces of legislation, complex funding programmes and organisational evolution.

​It makes a number of recommendations as to how to complete the transition of Scotland from an analogue to a digital state.

​The report was written under a Research Fellowship at the Scottish Government under the First Minister’s Digital Fellowship Scheme.

​About you

​You are a civil servant working in any government in the world, at any level, or a politician, someone who works in policy or technology.

​You want to better understand the challenges the state faces in changing from the analogue to the digital world, and what we have leernt over the last 25 years so painfully, and what we could do in the future.

​About the author

​Gordon Guthrie was both active in the campaign to win the parliament in the 1990s and had the honour to be a candidate for it in the historic 1999 election. He has had a long career in the UK’s top internet firms as well as major Silicon Valley ones.