PROGRAMME 2

SCOTTISH AI PLAYBOOK

Capability Directory 
The Scottish AI Alliance connected with ScotlandIS regarding their existing Data Capabilities Directory back during the First 100 Days. The Directory was recently refreshed. Another update took place in Autumn and the Support Circle team worked with the ScotlandIS team to ensure that AI capabilities are incorporated sufficiently into the directory. The Directory was also actively promoted by the Scottish AI Alliance to the AI community across Scotland and has been added to the Scotland’s AI Strategy website as a resource. Investigations of future format of the directory have started and there is potential for it to be incorporated in a larger piece of work in collaboration with the Scottish Tech Ecosystem Review (STER) and Digital Strategy teams at Scottish Government. 

Scottish AI Playbook  

As a result of extensive public, industry, public sector during the develop of Scotland’s AI Strategy, a key commitment outlined in the Strategy was the development of the Scottish AI Playbook. The Playbook is envisaged to be an open and practical guide to how we do AI in Scotland and will incorporate the Strategy’s vision and principles and practices required to realise this vision. 

The developmental process in the design of the Playbook has been underpinned by the key elements of open, transparent and collaborative processes. In this, we have sought engagement from stakeholders throughout the Playbook development process.  

In May and June 2021 we held three engagement sessions with three key stakeholder groups to elicit their input on the Scottish AI Playbook. These engagement sessions, facilitated by Snook, found that trust, transparency and understanding were the most common themes for our stakeholders. This was coupled with the need to make the Playbook clear and accessible to all without buzzwords or jargon. Finally, our stakeholders noted that accessibility was incredibly important, as well as involvement across public and private sectors with an emphasis on citizen engagement. We incorporated these findings into all subsequent Playbook development work.  

An open invitation for participants to join a personas development workshop held in September 2021 was issued and this helped to consolidate thinking around key user groups for the Playbook.  

We then commissioned a user requirements mapping exercise involving six key user groups: Researchers, Educators, Third Sector, Public Sector, Entrepreneurs/Start Ups and Business Users. While we note that this is no way an exhaustive list of potential users, we identified these groups as potentially the most engaged and active users of the Playbook and that first iterations of the Playbook would focus on these user groups.  

The user requirements gathering workshops took place over September and October 2021, with the outcome report delivered in November 2021. Throughout the course of these small group workshops with representatives from each of the identified user groups, 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 gave the team better awareness of what those user groups wanted and needed from the Playbook, as well as providing valuable insights into what was required from the wider AI ecosystem. The exercise yielded perspectives into potential user journeys and requirements and a period of reflection on the findings followed.   

The Alliance acknowledged that in order to accommodate the needs of all our chosen user groups, a novel approach to the Playbook concept was needed. From this, we decided that hosting the Playbook in a fully collaborative, publicly accessible wiki format would allow our users to generate (or indeed request) the Playbook content relevant to them. This beta Playbook wiki will remain in operation for approximately 12 months and will allow Scotland’s AI community fully participate in its the creation and development.  

With a fresh perspective on the Playbook format, we issued an invitation to quote for web developers to create the Playbook wiki. A web development agency was awarded the contract and work commenced on the Playbook launch site in February 2022 with it being fully operational for 30 March 2022. This launch site counts down to our full launch of the wiki site in June 2022 and offers the opportunity for the public to submit content and links for the inclusion of the first iteration of the Playbook wiki. Post launch, we will enter into a phase of iterative improvements with mtc to develop a wiki site that reflects the needs of the Scottish public which providing a valuable resource for Scotland’s AI community.