The challenge
The Scottish Government’s R100 programme commits to extend superfast broadband to all premises in Scotland. This programme is delivered by Digital Connectivity Division, within Scottish Government.
With a wide range of stakeholders, including telecommunications suppliers, businesses, politicians, local authorities, government agencies, community groups and members of the public, the R100 programme needed to be able to provide quick and easy access to a vast amount of data. This was required to enable communication of a detailed picture of the R100 programme impact for every individual address in Scotland, tailored as appropriate to stakeholder requirements.
The solution
The Scottish Government’s Digital Connectivity Data team turned to thinkWhere for support in three ways:
- Using thinkWhere’s cloud-based GIS enabled connectivity information relating to each property to be visualised and shared across the R100 teams, and also with local authorities throughout Scotland.
- Working with the Digital Connectivity Data team, thinkWhere also developed an interactive data portal enabling broadband suppliers to access details on premises eligible for the Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (SBVS). Suppliers can visualise, query and download the data to underpin decision making on infrastructure investment.
- Data managed by the Digital Connectivity Data Team is also served by APIs to underpin the public facing R100 address checker, informing the public about the context of individual addresses in relation the R100 programme. The underpinning data infrastructure makes extensive use of thinkWhere’s spatial data platform, theMapCloud.
The rollout
Supported by thinkWhere’s SaaS GIS product, theMapCloud data platform and APIs, the Digital Connectivity Data Team have ensured that data on premises in relation to the R100 programme is readily available from a single consistent source to multiple varied stakeholders.
Access to the information that matters
Thanks to its partnership with thinkWhere, the Scottish Government has been able to provide easy, intuitive and quick access to data for its stakeholders throughout the country regarding the R100 programme.
“Working with thinkWhere, we have developed mechanisms to share a single source of data with our stakeholders in a manner that suits their requirements, through a variety of applications. In this situation, geospatial mapping lets us provide context and integrate different types of data in a way that’s easy for users to interpret. The technology thinkWhere put in place has worked effectively for our needs.”
Colin Morrison
Head of Data, Digital Connectivity
Scottish Government
“Digital connectivity is a vital element of modern life. We’re pleased that thinkWhere could support the R100 programme and provide the cloud GIS infrastructure, data portal and web services needed to allow Scottish Government, stakeholders and the wider public, to monitor progress of the scheme.”
Alan Moore
Geospatial Product Director
thinkWhere
