Equality evidence strategy 2023-2025: interim review

1. Background

This interim report provides an update on the progress to date towards the aims of the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025. It covers the period of March 2023 – October 2024.

1.1 The Equality Evidence Strategy

The Vision of the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-25 focuses on tackling structural and intersectional inequality of outcomes, by ensuring Scotland's equality evidence base becomes more accessible, wide-ranging and robust. A stronger evidence base will enable the development and delivery of sound, inclusive policies and services and enable the measurement of improvements in the lives of people living in Scotland.

The overall Vision is informed by three guiding principles:

Principle 1: More robust and comprehensive data and evidence will be gathered on the intersecting characteristics of people in Scotland across a range of outcomes.

Principle 2: Equality evidence will be made more easily accessible so users will be able to access what they need, when they need it.

Principle 3: Good practice will be shared and promoted to support increased confidence and competence in the production and use of robust equality evidence.

These guiding principles feed into the 45 Actions outlined in the Equality Evidence Strategy. These actions were created based on information provided from a public consultation, stakeholder engagement, and a data audit carried out in 2021 across all core policy areas in Scottish Government. The Actions categories are:

1. Establishing processes (e.g. with stakeholders) to enable more equality data collection

2. Enhancing equality data collection / collection of new equality data in existing datasets.

3. Enhancing analysis of equality data;

4. Enhancing reporting or publication of equality data collected.

At the halfway point of the current Equality Evidence Strategy, good progress is seen across the three Principles and the Action categories. Further updates and examples of progress are provided in the following chapters.

1.2 Governance and Accountability

The Strategy is overseen by the Equality Data Improvement Programme (EDIP) Project Board. The EDIP project board consists of Scottish Government officials and representatives from a range of external public sector bodies with a key interest in mainstreaming equalities data. The EDIP Project Board has representation from all original Scottish Government areas and external organisations since it was formed in 2021.