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Scottish Government Payments Service reaches key milestone with support from Scott Logic

8 July 2022

Scott Logic is proud to be the technical delivery partner for the Scottish Government Payments Service. Last month, the delivery programme reached a key milestone as the payments service officially moved into private beta. This is a phase in which the delivery team will work with a limited number of early adopters to test and iterate the new service before making it available to the broader public sector in Scotland.

We’ve been working in close collaboration with the Scottish Government team to develop and implement the payments service since February 2019. In December 2021, we reached an important milestone with a successful test batch of payments to citizens. Since then, the team’s focus has been on launching a minimum viable service, which last month’s release achieves.

The team’s beta partner is Independent Living Fund Scotland which provides financial support to over 3,000 disabled people in Scotland and Northern Ireland to help them live independently. Given the critical importance of this funding, it was vital to get the beta release right first time. Scott Logic’s consultants are truly motivated towards our shared goals with the Scottish Government and have been passionate about ensuring the success of this first of many weekly Bacs payments to ILF Scotland recipients.

As Scott Logic’s Delivery Principal Kash Alam explains, “Since I joined the project, I’ve been impressed by how the Scott Logic and ScotGov Payments team demonstrate a ‘one team’ ethos and spirit, navigating through multiple challenges to launch the Private Beta with Independent Living Fund Scotland. The common payments platform provides a reliable, secure, and scalable platform to support future beta partner onboarding.”

The user is at the heart of all design decisions made by the agile, multi-disciplinary team. As such, accessibility, seamless onboarding and effective support are just as important to the service as its robust cybersecurity standards.

“The Scottish Government's Digital Strategy is transforming government by building a suite of common digital platforms for the public sector in Scotland,” said Stuart Grey, Head of Consultancy (Edinburgh and Glasgow). “We’re hugely proud at Scott Logic to be the technical delivery partner for two pillars of this strategy – the Payments Service and Digital Identity Scotland – which will make a positive difference to the lives of millions of Scottish citizens.”

Following this first successful beta release, the team will release new service features monthly, collaborating closely with our stakeholders to prioritise the backlog and deliver ongoing value to the Scottish Government and Scottish citizens. We’ll improve the service based on feedback from ILF Scotland and progress to onboarding the next beta partner, Student Awards Agency Scotland.