Scottish Government to launch public services website

The Scottish Government will launch its mygov.scot website  this autumn in a bid to improve access to public services. 

The mygov.scot team is working with more than 160 organisations to deliver services online.

The Scottish Business Portal and Care Information Scotland were the first services to move content to the domain and the decommissioning of the Scottish Business Portal content takes place today (14 September 2015).

The site will include all public services, whether they are local, Scottish or reserved and the website will be accessible on all devices, including games consoles, smartphones and tablets.

Rachel Dowle, head of content at mygov.scot, said in a blog post that the Scottish Business Portal was designed to bring business service and support information into one place, “pulling content via an API from partner websites like Business Gateway, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands & Islands Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland and Gov.uk”.

Dowle said the site will deliver a “clearer journey for users”.

It will offer a range of interactive tools, such as a business rates calculator. The calculator has now been optimised for tablet and mobile use and allows for search results to be emailed to smartphones.

The team is also working with the Government Digital Service (GDS) to “improve the journey between devolved and reserved services”.

The move is part of Scottish Government’s digital public services strategy published in 2012 which set out how digital tools, technology and better use of data “can both drive and support improvements in public services”.

It echoes the UK government’s launch of Gov.uk, a single domain for online public services to replace hundreds of departmental sites, which went live in 2012.