Scottish AI Playbook - Where are we now?

Our vision

Scotland’s AI Strategy  has outlined a vision for Scotland to become a leader in the development and use of trustworthy, ethical and inclusive AI. And to help realise this vision, it committed to the development of the Scottish AI Playbook, an open and practical guide to how we do AI in Scotland. 

But what does this mean in practical terms? What do we mean by open and practical? What is a Playbook? Do the people of Scotland want one? What would be in it? Why would someone use it? Who would use it?  

All very valid questions of course and so we set out on a journey to find some answers! 

Stakeholder engagement

Our mantra with the development process, and now with the delivery of the strategy, was, and is, to be open, transparent and collaborative. We started off with some initial stakeholder engagement at the beginning of the summer where we asked people what they thought of the idea and what they think should be in it. Then we worked on developing some user personas to work out who would use it. And then following on from that, we recently commissioned a user requirements mapping exercise involving a series of small group engagements to find out what the specific users want

The user groups we identified were: Researchers, Educators, Third Sector, Public Sector, Entrepreneurs/Start Ups and Business Users. This is not an exhaustive list of course but through our engagement work, we identified these groups as potentially the most prominent users of the Playbook and we will focus on them for the first iteration.  

This exercise took place over late September and throughout October and with the outcome report delivered in early November. A big thank you to everyone who gave up their time to participate in these workshops. During the workshops, participants were asked various questions about the Playbook concept and what would make them use it, and what elements should be included that they needed and wanted (noting a subtle difference between the two). They were also asked about pain points on their AI journey and were presented with ideas of assets to be potentially included in the Playbook to feed back on. These assets were suggested in previous stakeholder engagements and were presented to the participants without context to gauge interest.  

These workshops provided us with a fantastic insight into what these user groups need/want from the Playbook and perhaps from the wider AI support ecosystem. The summary report synthesised the rich input from the participants into potential user journeys and has given us an outline user requirements map as a foundation to proceed with the next step of the development of the Playbook.  

What’s next?

And what are these next steps I hear you ask! 

Well, firstly we’re still digesting the content of the reports from our facilitators. There is a lot to unpack and we want to make sure we fully understand the core themes that emerged. We also realise that we will need to do a significant amount of expectation management.  

It is impossible for the Playbook to be everything to everyone, especially in its first iteration that we intend to launch at the inaugural Scottish AI Summit on 30 March 2022. With the Playbook, we aim to provide a set of resources that will help and guide people on their AI journey but not do it for them. As one of my colleagues astutely said, it is to be a handrail and not an escalator.  

We also don’t want to reinvent the wheel. If there is a useful resource that already exists, we will signpost to it. We want the Playbook to be the one stop shop you go to for information and guidance for people planning to embark on their AI journey.  

There are also considerations around accessibility that we need to consider. We need to make sure that the Playbook is easy to access and navigate for all of its potential users.  

And we also need to ensure we have a robust maintenance plan for the final product. The Playbook won’t be a useful resource if its content is static, it needs to be dynamically updated.  

So, we have a lot to be thinking about and getting on with. Watch this space for more opportunities to get involved in the development of Scotland’s AI Playbook!