Scotland needs a long-term digital plan or risks being left behind

Jamie Greene MSP, Shadow Minister for Technology Connectivity, Digital Economy & Broadcast, believes a lot more can be done

In the Scottish Parliament we often debate the future of Scotland's digital economy in terms of national targets for connectivity and digital infrastructure, like broadband rollout or 4G mobile coverage, but we have to remember that the rollout of high-speed internet is not the same as achieving access to it.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh pointed out in its 2014 digital participation report that, while investment has been forthcoming and rollout targets are all well and good, they "leave the door open for existing inequalities to go unaddressed", such as a lack of affordable internet, a lack of household devices to make use of it, or a lack of basic digital skills to use either.

For the fifth of Scots who went to school without a specialist IT teacher, your digital participation is already restricted, regardless of whether broadband is available in your area or not. The inability to integrate into the digital society will increasingly leave you excluded as everyday life continues to become IT-centric in every aspect.

Healthcare is one area where such digital inequalities are most prevalent. Whereas an individual might be able to make appointments, access their medical records and order repeat prescriptions from their GP online, for somebody else the story will be quite different. It's a phone call, a two week wait and the need to physically collect a piece of paper.

In Scotland, in many cases your postcode, where you grew up or which school you went to determines whether you get your prescription by post or by email.

NHS Education for Scotland's director of digital transformation, Christopher Wroath, recently pointed out that our health services also face challenges, in part, down to the lack of ICT skills within the healthcare system itself. This skills shortage is being felt in just about every sector. Three quarters of Scottish firms say that digital technologies are essential or important to their plans for growth , yet 30 per cent of the Scottish population lack basic digital skills.

What has proved problematic is the lack of a digital vision to encompass the shift into the technological realm. While it is true that little emphasis was placed on broadband facilitating infrastructure in the last decade - cables were not laid and few new phone masts were built in Scotland (after seven years in government the SNP had only rolled broadband out to 8 per cent of Scottish rural areas) - it is not solely infrastructure where the issue lies.

What is truly lacking is a long-term digital plan that facilitates the learning of basic, intermediate and advanced digital skills both through our education system and moreover, in private and public organisations. Too many children leave school underequipped and few adults are picking up new skills in their working life.

The next generation should be walking into a fully digitalised workplace but it is up for our generation to lay the groundwork; if our current workforce doesn't understand innovative IT systems then we can't expect them to go about implementing them into their organisations, public or private. As a result, we don't modernise our services in the way countries like Taiwan, Belgium and Estonia have.

According to projections by Deloitte, Scotland is set to lose £9bn in potential gains over the next 15 years if we don't adopt a visionary digital action plan.

Technological progress has come so much faster than any of us anticipated and the exciting thing is that we still have the best part of 21st century history to write. For Scotland to remain a leader in a sector that evolves so rapidly, we have to think beyond numerical targets and consider the long-term social, environmental and economic impacts we hope to gain from digital policy.

Infrastructure is important, there is no denying that.

Virgin Media's superfast broadband investment plan north of the boarder is a welcome private sector initiative and we should do more to encourage it. But if this investment is not performed in tandem with a far-reaching digital skills programme then Scotland risks finding itself stuck in an analogue rut.

The Scottish Government should be setting out a clear plan to encourage private investment to lay the foundations for the digital economy, but at the same time ensuring a wide-reaching digital education programme is underway.

Jamie Gillan Greene MSP is the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Member of the Scottish Parliament for the West Scotland region