
The internship will be hosted within the Scottish Government’s Office of the Chief Economic Adviser (OCEA), specifically in the Directorate for Chief Economist’s OCEA: Business Economic & Sector (BES) team. This team provides economic analysis support to DG Economy, working alongside policy advisers, statisticians, and researchers. The internship will involve providing analytical and data analysis support for the delivery of the Scottish Government’s National Innovation Strategy, with project details tailored to the intern’s skills and the team’s specific needs.
Transform intersectional statistics into meaningful data visualisations in Scottish Government’s Equality Evidence Finder Dashboard
The Equality Evidence Finder (EEF) is a data dashboard for equality evidence built on R Shiny. The Equality Analysis Team’s Statistician is currently undertaking a programme of redevelopment of the EEF to improve accessibility, usability, and automation. The intern taking on this role will take the lead on a specific element of this project which will involve developing the presentation of intersectional equality evidence on the dashboard, thereby improving user experience and filling data gaps. Therefore experience of coding in R packages ggplot2 and tidyverse are essential, while experience of coding in R shiny is desirable.
Development of a national standard on accessibility for disabled passengers in ferry travel
This would be a discrete project within the ICP working with the Mobility and Access Committee Scotland (MACS), ferry and port operators and councils and other user group representatives such as Scottish Tourism Alliance. The objective would be to develop an Accessibility Standard for ferry services that will be in addition to legal requirements for physical and mental accessibility and will act as guidance for island and peninsula ferry services, including vessel and port design, information and customer service.
Trust in government: building an evidence base for Scotland
Scottish Government has access to a range of data sources that provide direct and indirect evidence on levels of trust in government and potential contributing factors. This internship will focus on analysis that draws these together to build up a picture of levels of trust in government – and drivers of this – across different areas, demographics and protected characteristics in Scotland. We are interested in evidence from both quantitative and qualitative data sources, and there may be opportunity to carry out new qualitative work. It is intended that this project will result in a publishable report that provides a literature review of existing evidence on trust and sets out new analysis resulting from the project. Evidence based recommendations for improving Scotland’s evidence base on trust in government will also be welcomed, along with a presentation to relevant Scottish Government staff and stakeholders.
Adult Support and Protection – Data and Evidence Review
The ASP dataset has been revised to provide more robust data to inform improvement both at local and national level. Iriss worked with 5 ASP Learning Partners to review the previous ASP annual data return and develop a revised ASP minimum dataset. This has been approached in 2 phases, with Phase 1 indicators commenced in April 2023 largely mirroring indicators from the previous annual return. Phase 2 indicators were developed and tested by learning partners throughout 2023. The Phase 2 subset of the ASP minimum dataset was rolled out across all local authorities in April 2024.