National innovation strategy: equality impact assessment

Stage 1: Framing

The Equality Act 2010 places a duty (known as the Public Sector Equality Duty, or PSED) on public authorities to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation; advance equality of opportunity; and promote good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 (Regulation 5) require public authorities to assess and review policies and practices against these three needs of the PSED.

The EQIA for the National Innovation Strategy has sought to utilise both existing and emerging information, evidence and analysis of stakeholder engagements as part of the wider policy development process for the Strategy, and will continue to do so as the Innovation Strategy's delivery plans are developed.

In addition to mitigating any potential negative impacts, this EQIA will also seek opportunities to promote equality through the National Innovation Strategy's actions and delivery. Specifically, the EQIA will consider impacts on protected characteristics groups based on three elements:

• Eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation;
• Advance equality of opportunity, and;
• Foster good relations.

Consultation and engagement

During the development of the National Innovation Strategy, the Scottish Government has engaged with a wide variety of stakeholders on the themes of inclusive innovation and promoting the positive impacts of innovative activity for all of Scotland's citizens.

A core consideration in development of the Strategy was to ensure a wide engagement and consultation process, ensuring that a diverse range of opinions and insights were captured in a number of ways. Steps were taken to reach out to those actors in Scotland's innovation ecosystem who may not regularly engage with the Scottish Government and Scottish Government strategy processes such as youth programmes linked to Scotland's colleges, organisations with service design functions such as the V&A and Service Design Academy and community innovation organisations such as the Glasgow Centre for Civic Innovation.

Work was also undertaken to diversify and widen inclusivity in the National Innovation Strategy process' wider governance structures, to ensure that the senior level Innovation Strategy Steering Group and working groups obtained an appropriate gender balance and represented a broad range of actors within Scotland's innovation ecosystem.

Call for evidence

A call for evidence exercise ran in June 2022, receiving over 60 responses from across industry, the public sector and academia. The responses were analysed to consider specific suggestions relating to equality and people with protected characteristics.

Respondents raised a number of considerations on how to inclusively measure innovation activity and impact, including how to measure social mobility and impact as part of the National Innovation Strategy's monitoring processes, and implementing ethics processes to innovation projects to ensure delivery on societal ambitions and their alignment with project values.

Also referenced were the benefits of acknowledging and prioritising innovation to help solve broad societal challenges relating to, for example, regional health inequalities or decarbonisation and net zero ambitions, and the significant importance of place-based innovation ecosystems such as Innovation Districts to foster a shared purpose in tackling regional challenges.

The importance of involving communities and citizens in setting and co-creating innovative solutions to deliver social and socially responsible innovation, as well as the importance of social and community innovation as an important part of the wider innovation ecosystem, was highlighted as beneficial in achieving societal and economic ambitions. Social innovation was highlighted as particularly important in rural areas of Scotland, as was the role of colleges in widening access to participation in innovation activity.

Workshops and roundtable events

During the Strategy's development process, a number of workshops were held with actors from across Scotland's innovation ecosystem, to augment input from businesses of all sizes and locations across Scotland and representatives from the higher education and public sectors:

• A Rural Innovation Workshop, incorporating project leads from the OECD Rural Innovation Project (of which Scotland is a test site)
• A stakeholder event co-delivered with the Royal Society of Edinburgh
• A roundtable event for members of the investment community
• An Infrastructure Workshop with key representatives from across Scotland's innovation infrastructure system
• A Metrics Workshop run by Scottish Government economists, involving experts from higher education and innovation research organisations
• Workshops held by workstream sponsors from the Innovation Strategy's Senior Steering Group, consisting of key stakeholders from industry, academia and the public sector
• Three themed business roundtables focussing on early stage, established corporate and rural businesses, co-delivered with our enterprise agencies and with over 70 businesses represented
• A roundtable event on Foreign Direct Investment into University Research and Development, involving Scottish Government and Innovate UK partners, academic experts from across the UK, the Scottish National Investment Bank, innovation experts and the Scottish Funding Council.

Stakeholder engagement

In addition to formal roundtables and workshops, a number of stakeholders were consulted individually as part of the National Innovation Strategy development process, further contributing to findings of the EQIA. Widespread engagement from across the country included with businesses from a range of different sectors and sizes, Industry Leadership Groups, our universities and colleges, our innovation centres, and our enterprise and skills agencies.

The Scottish Government engaged with stakeholders who have expertise in social innovation and in widening access and co-developed innovation activity in Scotland. Those consulted specifically on equality of opportunity in Scotland's innovation ecosystem were:

• Glasgow City of Science and Innovation
• Forth Valley College
• University of Strathclyde
• University of Glasgow
• Centre for Civic Innovation
• Glasgow Caledonian University
• Innovation Strategy Steering Group members
• V&A
• Service Design Academy
• Highlands and Islands Enterprise
• South of Scotland Enterprise
• Universities Scotland
• Colleges Scotland
• Energy Skills Partnership
• Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre
• Ross Tuffee, Founder.Scot

Policy alignment

The National Innovation Strategy makes several references to its co-ordination with other plans and policy initiatives. Through the Strategy's development process, other Scottish Government departments and agencies were consulted on aligning work on equalities issues, including departments responsible for:

• The Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review
• Pathways: A New Approach for Women in Entrepreneurship (The Stewart Review)
• Women in Business and Enterprise
• Rural Economy Unit
• Community Wealth Building
• Equalities Unit
• Highlands and Islands Enterprise
• South of Scotland Enterprise

Extent/level of EQIA required

The Scottish Government has obligations under the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012. Public authorities must carry out an EQIA under Section 5 of the Equality Act, as well as there being a duty for those same public authorities to by extension promote equality by eliminating unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation; advancing equality of opportunity; and fostering good relations between persons who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

To deliver this obligation, the Scottish Government promotes a mainstreaming approach to equality to ensure that the impact of its policies, programmes and legislation on groups of people who share a protected characteristic are assessed by all areas and at all levels.

The Scottish Government must consider how the decisions we make meet the three needs of the Public Sector Equality Duty. Where any negative impacts are identified we will seek to address and mitigate them, and we will seek to advance equality through the National Innovation Strategy's programmes by ensuring that any new or changing policy is informed and shaped by an EQIA.

Specifically, this EQIA assesses any impacts of applying a proposed new or revised policy or practice against the needs relevant to a public authority's duty to meet the Public Sector Equality Duty. The needs are to:

• Eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation;
• Advance equality of opportunity; and
• Foster good relations.

Limitations to the EQIA include a lack of available evidence, particularly on intersectionality of certain protected characteristics, in order to comprehensively assess impact. The National Innovation Strategy commits to filling some of these evidence gaps through dedicated data gathering over the life cycle of the strategy. As part of the Innovation Scorecard, we will develop suitable metrics to capture and assess participation and impact in the innovation ecosystem, including data on equalities, diversity and inclusion.

Further, as the plan is a high level strategic document, the detail of delivery of the Strategy's actions has yet to be finalised and so the impact cannot be measured at present. Further evidence and data gathering should be undertaken to assess how the plan's policies impact on groups within the protected characteristics in order to support future policy development and implementation.

Based on the limitations above, the National Innovation Strategy should be considered alongside other policy initiatives and commitments to promote equality across the Scottish Government. These include, but are not limited to:

• The National Strategy for Economic Transformation^[6]
• The Inward Investment Plan^[7]
• The Global Capital Investment Plan^[8]
• The Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review^[9]
• Pathways: A New Approach for Women in Entrepreneurship (The Stewart Review)^[10]
• Sectoral Strategies including the Campbell Report^[11], the Draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan^[12], Hydrogen Action Plan^[13] and others.