Mygov.scot site goes live

A formal public release of the new Mygov.scot site is planned for later this autumn.

An alpha version – alpha.mygov.scot – is live at the moment and a “more formal public release” is anticipated in November.

The site will bring Scottish Government and public services together in “one simple and easy to use place, available 24/7 via the device of your choice whether that’s your tablet, mobile phone, laptop, games console or desktop computer.”

Mygovscot is being developed by Online Services, a division of the Scottish Government Digital Directorate which is also supporting a wider programme of service transformation.

“For Beta, we’re now drawing up and agreeing our objectives of which there is an abundance,” said Peter Smith, product owner for the alpa and beta phases. “It’s going to be a case of prioritising them to deliver the most benefit quickly.”

In a blog post this month, he added: “Top of our list will be to deliver a minimal viable version of a publishing platform, so we can separate content production from site development and releases.

“The publishing platform will allow our content designers to begin to work outside of our development team so we can focus on features and new content independently. In Alpha we had one product backlog, but in Beta we’ll have a product backlog and a content backlog.

“The challenge with Beta will be how we deliver breadth as well as depth of content to users.”

Smith’s team has begun working with service providers to get their content on mygov.scot, with Care Information Scotland and Scottish Enterprise among the first and others to follow.