Civic society, the developer community, academia and industry in Scotland have been porrly served by the Scottish Government, local authorities and other public bodies in the provision of open data in recent years. A national strategy has failed to deliver on its promises, projects have been short-lived and not sustained. There has been little or no engagement with citizens in how open data could positively impact on their lives. Academia does not regularly use open data in curricular development and delivery. 

This has stifled innovation, and has inhibited the delivery of social and economic benefits that such provision should provide. 

Our aims are to

• grow a grassroots movement,
• engage with government to help them to understand demand and to target provision,
• demand better, and more, open data,
• demonstrate through doing how open data can be used for innovation,
• work with academia to build open data into the curriculum at all levels,
• provide educational opportunities to citizens in how to use tools and data to better understand their local, inform policy, form pressure groups, 

A national open data programme that is well planned and well executed will have signifcant benefits for citizens of all ages and backgrounds. 

It will educate people to better understand and use data. 

It will use open data in schools, for example, to engage children in understanding their local environment. It will help them to use software and tools to manipulate data, visualise it and understand how their local area is similar or different to another - using demographic, climate, environmental, spending, transport and other data.

It will use open data in further and higher education: not only in Data Science courses, but in business, journalism, health and the arts. It will ground teaching on real-world, local or regional data that has meaning for participants. 

It will foster innovation and entrepreneurship, feeding in to local programmes and support initiatives - encouraging participants to use the data in original ways to solve social problems, drive effieicency, and be creative. 

It will will enable better use of scarce resources - helping organisations to develop policy, formutate strategy and target how their operations can be better based on data-driven understanding.