Connecting Scotland - evaluation: qualitative research - implementation and early impact

Executive summary

Connecting Scotland is the Scottish Government's crisis-response, delivered by SCVO, offering those who are digitally excluded an essential lifeline. The programme's aim is to enable people to stay connected with friends, family, information, and essential services. Organisations taking part in the programme can apply to provide their service users with a device (an iPad or Chromebook), internet connectivity, and support to set up and use these.

Blake Stevenson Ltd was commissioned by Scottish Government to conduct an external evaluation of Connecting Scotland, looking at whether the programme is reaching the right number and range of stakeholders, the outcomes and impact of the programme, lessons learned from the work so far and how it can be improved going forward.

The methodology applied to this evaluation involved an approach which combined a web-based survey of all delivery partners, deep-dive interviews with a smaller sample of 52 organisations and desk research to review evaluation documents submitted by participating organisations. In addition, SCVO staff involved in steering and implementing the Connecting Scotland programme were interviewed.