Martyn Wallace named Digital Leader of the Year at the Holyrood Connect awards

Holyrood Connect Awards 2018 programme - Image credit: Liz McGettigan

Local government chief digital officer Martyn Wallace has been named Connect Digital Leader of the Year at the annual Holyrood Connect awards.

He was recognised for his role in preparing councils across Scotland for GDPR, for his work with senior management teams in eight public sector organisations on digital maturity leadership and for work on digital telecare among other projects.

He was appointed to head up the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government in 2016 and has since grown the body to a team of seven.

Wallace said he was “honoured and humbled” to be presented with the award.

Also shortlisted in the leadership category were Peter Tolland of North Lanarkshire Council and Iain Ross of NHS Highland.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service followed their two wins in the 2017 awards with the Connect Innovate Award this year for their community asset register, which is used to co-ordinate community and voluntary resources such as vehicles, equipment or skills.

The Connect Mobile Award went to Glasgow City Council for its bulk waste collection app, which has shortened waiting times for collections and contributed to a reduction in complaints.

The Scottish Government’s CivTech team took the Connect ICT Team Award, while the Connect ICT Citizen Award went to East Renfrewshire Council for its person-centred approach to scam prevention.

Stirling Council won the Connect Project Delivery Award for its work to become Scotland’s fourth ‘gigabit city’, with full-fibre infrastructure now connecting council buildings and the majority of the city’s businesses.

Meanwhile, the Connect Data Insight Award went to Glasgow City Council for its One Glasgow Reducing Offending Partnership, which involves a multi-disciplinary team of police and council staff.

Albyn Housing Society, NHS Highland, Robert Gordon University and The Data Lab jointly took away the Connect Digital Health and Care Award for FIT Home, a fall prediction system.

A new category this year was the Connect Rising Star Award for someone below senior management level who is expected to be a digital leader of the future.

The inaugural award went to Hazel Lynch at Aberdeen City Council for her work with accessibility tools in education at the Technological Assessment and Support Service for Children and the Curriculum.

In response to the win, Lynch tweeted that “children are the rising stars not me”.