Scotland's Digital Future: Data Hosting and Data Centre Strategy for the Scottish Public Sector

Relationships with other Scottish Digital Futures initiatives

To enable a geographically neutral data centre approach to be a success a reliable and effective infrastructure needs to be in place. The Scottish Government has already recognised this and is in the process of delivering a world class digital network that will enable the public sector, businesses and the individual through a number of projects to deliver and use effective digital services that will allow them to participate in a digital world.

The projects that will deliver this are

As a first step on our journey to world-class digital connectivity; this project will extend and improve our core national network so that it reaches as far as possible, as fast as possible. It will deliver future proofed and sustainable technologies, such as fibre, that will be capable of coping with significant increases in demand for access and speed in the future.

This will deliver availability of next generation broadband to all by 2020. The action plan outlines a commitment to a future-proofed infrastructure that will deliver world-class digital connectivity across the whole of Scotland by 2020. This underpins an ambition for Scotland to become a world-class digital nation and requires that people living, working and visiting Scotland can communicate and connect instantly using any device, anywhere, anytime.

The Scottish Wide Area Network ( SWAN) Programme is designed to deliver a single public services network for the use of any and eventually all public service providers in Scotland; with aggregated demand delivering both cost and performance advantages. With its high capacity, resilient core infrastructure and its reach out to many public service organisations, SWAN will provide fast, secure and cost effective connectivity between data centres and cloud applications and the users, whether they are within an organisation or a consumer of the service gaining access via the Internet.