Equality evidence strategy 2023-2025: interim review
The report contains an interim review of the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025. It outlines progress and learnings to date, as well as identifying key next steps to take forward for the final year of the Strategy.
6. Conclusion
This interim report has provided an update on the progress of the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 to date.
Generally, good progress is seen across the Strategy in its three Principles and Action categories. Progress is slightly slower in relation to actions that fall under ‘Enhancing equality data collection / collection of new equality data in existing datasets’, however delays are largely related to changes in methodology and lead analysts are considering alternative ways to address this. The Equality Analysis Team will continue to support analysts in improving the availability of equality data and thus, completing their actions by the final year of the Strategy. Suggested next steps to support work are outlined in Table 1 below.
As mentioned previously, in September 2024, of the 45 actions, 14 were already ‘complete’ and 23 were ‘on course’, demonstrating strong commitment to advancing equality evidence across many policy areas. However, improvements could be made based on the learnings from lead analysts outlined throughout this review. These learning are also filtered in to Table 1.
| Lesson Learned | Next Steps |
|---|---|
| Due to staff changes, new action leads and EDIP members may be less confident about their respective roles of progressing their actions and offering guidance/critique of the Strategy. | Maintain regular communication and develop a handover note for any new members to the EDIP board and analysts taking over actions to ensure better understanding of the Strategy and EDIP. |
| Lead analysts expressed a need to improve buy-in from policy colleagues and data providers for the final year of the Strategy to progress individual actions. This was also linked to feedback about improving action’s wider purpose and impact beyond producing new or improved data. | Offer individual meetings with action leads to identify which programmes of work require more support and how this can be done. Think about how to encourage and support action leads increasing policy engagement with their actions to extend wider impact over the course of the Strategy’s final year. |
| Context, for some actions, has changed since the original data audit carried out in 2021 and require updates to wording or methodological approach. | Actions that require amendments or course corrections will be included in the highlight updates in the final year of the Strategy (2025). |
| Due to changes in survey methods and delivery, some actions are no longer possible to complete. | Actions that are ‘no longer feasible’ will be marked as such in the highlight updates from January 2025. We plan to revisit these actions in the evaluation of the Equality Evidence Strategy at the end of 2025. |
| Lead analysts fed back that collaboration with, and guidance from, colleagues across the analytical professions was invaluable in applying good practice to work related to their action. | An analytical Community of Practice for Equality Variables has been set up for peer support and collaboration. This will be open to both the Strategy’s action leads and other analytical colleagues across Government to broaden the shared learning potential. |
| Progress to produce and analyse intersectional data is slow. This may be due to small sample sizes, but also a lack of guidance around how to produce meaningful intersectional breakdowns that provides insights for policymaking. | The Equality Analysis team will disseminate learnings from upcoming intersectional publications and offer webinars about analysing and producing intersectional data. |
The Scottish Government is committed to ongoing engagement and collaboration with EDIP board members, external organisations and public bodies to enhance the equality evidence base. Over the course of the final year of the current Strategy, the Scottish Government will utilise existing and new relationships to promote the work of the Strategy and EDIP, and facilitate opportunities to be guided by external organisations to understand priorities for development of future Strategies.
We will also continue to refer to the lessons learned from this interim review for wider evaluation at the end of this current Strategy and in the development of future strategies.
For further information, please see the Equality Evidence Strategy in full and the Equality Data Improvement Programme project board webpage for highlight reports and meeting minutes.
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