GovCamp Scotland came back with a bang

Post by Ross Ferguson

GovCamp Scotland took place on 19th June 2025 - the first event of its kind since, we think, 2015!

The organisers of this rendition were a loose collective of volunteers from NHS Scotland, the National Library of Scotland, Research Data Scotland, and Public Digital. Volunteering time was hard to come by, which is precisely the reason why this post has taken so long to produce.

There are too few events of this kind with a focus on public services in Scotland. We were inspired to do something about that. Ultimately, it was a fantastic event, and for that we want to say a huge thanks to all those who participated in what had to be an attendee-led day. This is a post about how it played out and to raise the prospect of doing it all again and better.

An event for and by participants

Our goal was to bring together practitioners working in the Scottish public sector on the design, delivery, and running of public services to talk about how to improve or even transform those services. We wanted those practitioners to be multidisciplinary, not just digital folk. We wanted people to feel they were able to tell authentic stories, exchange ideas, and build new connections with peers that could lead to new possibilities beyond the event.

To achieve those aims we decided the event had to be something other than the usual format of conferences in Scotland, where there are designated speakers doing prepared talks with sponsors and a major sales stand element. For that reason, we chose an ‘unconference’ and aligned ourselves with the GovCamps run in the UK and Welsh context, which seemed to match the energy and focus we wanted.

Risks and rewards

We held the event at the wonderful Edinburgh Futures Institute, which was a perfect venue in many respects: open, contemporary in its styling, but with deep public service roots. We are also very grateful to the venue for giving us the opportunity to run this event for free. 

We asked people to come with an idea - but not a polished speech or deck - and to pitch that idea on the day as a topic, challenge, or question for other people to join them for an hour to discuss and develop it. That meant there was quite a lot of jeopardy built-in. Would anyone come willing to pitch? Would everyone want to pitch and run their own session? Would anyone come at all?

Thankfully, people did come. Over 100 registered, and we had about 70 on the day. For about a minute when the pitching opened, it seemed that no one was going to step forward, but then a trickle turned into quite the flow. We had 16 hour-long slots to fill, and the participants managed it. In fact, we ended up with session topics than slots, but thankfully the people pitching were willing to ‘pitch in’ together, which led to exactly the kind of interesting collaborations we were aiming for.

What we talked about

Here’s what was discussed by our unique community of interests:

• Conways Law at national scale

• Stress, anxiety and trauma: why they matter, how we address them

• If AI replaces jobs, what do we do next?

• How do we share research across governments?

• The skills gap - how we build the skills in Scotland

• Design for trust in public services

• What if we replaced AI with artists and imagination?

• Making the case for open data & AI for the public sector

• Reducing reliance on big tech

• Safety, integration and impact on vulnerable people

• What if we let go? Rethinking heritage without the straight jacket

• Easy secure chat for government: combining all the forms, notifications etc.

• Making a success of failure: things go wrong, how can we deal with it well?

• How can we promote innovation at a grass roots level?

• How we ensure the value of design is understood in the public sector

• Cross party digital group at Holyrood?

You can find links to notes from some of the sessions at https://www.govcamp.scot/sessions. 

Practically all sessions centred on how services are built, who they are for, and how they are experienced by the public. AI and data were very evident; there's a clear interest in both the opportunities and the anxieties around the new technologies. A significant cluster of topics focused on the human side of the public sector - the people, their wellbeing, their skills, and the environment needed for success. And there were ‘big picture’ challenges about how the layers of the public sector fit together, and what blocks or encourages connections.

Each session felt different - some were like group therapy sessions, some were ideation workshops, some were fireside chats. There was like-mindedness but also challenges, critiques, and disagreements. 

Most importantly, these sessions forged new connections.People from health met people from education. People from central met people from local government. Data folk chatted with policy peers. For the organisers, looking around the rooms - and reading through the social media reaction afterwards - seeing and hearing those new connections and how stimulating they were for participants was extremely gratifying.

Let’s do it all again

A question in our minds at the start was: could we pull off an event like this and make it decent enough that people would want to see it run again? It seems from the feedback that we and the participants achieved that. The positivity around a follow-on event was resounding.

So, this write-up is also a call-out to those who want to be involved in another GovCamp Scotland and can bring something new to the party. Is that you? Please get in touch.

Photography courtesy of Andy Catlin