Reimagining Scotland’s Digital Strategy: Why Inclusion Must Be a Legal Obligation, Not a Policy Option

Guest blog post by Jasmine Hasmatali, University of Edinburgh. 

This post is part of a series of guest blog posts written by PhD researchers and SHRC’s LLM Human Rights Dissertation Placement Student who took part in our Human Rights Research Knowledge Exchange Showcase last year. 

Humanity is currently experiencing a digital transformation which is rapidly reshaping how people live, work, and access services. With technologies like artificial intelligence becoming embedded into public and private systems, the importance of digital access can no longer be understated. It is a necessity for full participation in modern society and States play a critical role in determining the extent of this participation.

If you are reading this blog, you are most likely digitally connected and use technology to your benefit, but what happens when access to these technologies isn’t universal? For Scotland’s most marginalised communities, digital exclusion compounds existing social and economic inequalities. If digital strategies are to be truly inclusive and effective, they must be grounded in human rights.

The Digital Divide: More Than a Connectivity Gap

In Scotland today, access to digital technologies like computers, smartphones, and broadband can open doors to employment, education, and healthcare. Yet a lack of access, or skills to engage with digital platforms, leaves many at risk of deeper exclusion.

While Scotland has a moral duty to prevent exclusion, it also holds a legal obligation under International Human Rights Law. Through signing the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Scotland committed to progressively realising rights such as the right to healthcare, education and an adequate standard of living. Meaning, they must continuously work to improve people’s living conditions and ensure at least minimum essential levels of each right are met. Importantly, the Committee of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) has acknowledged that the enjoyment of the right to work, an adequate standard of living, housing, food, health and education, have a direct and immediate bearing on the eradication of poverty.

The digital divide, which explains the gap between those who have access to digital technologies and ICT and those who do not, can be influenced by geographical elements, such as urban and rural differences. Additionally, social dimensions, including political and economic factors also impact accessibility and have consequences on already vulnerable and marginalised groups.

The connection between access to digital technologies and poverty is clear: those who are more socially excluded and already experiencing poverty are less likely to benefit from digital technologies, reproducing digital inequalities and widening the digital divide.

Beyond Connectivity

While 90% of households across Scotland have home internet access, about a third of homes in rural Scotland do not. But this issue goes beyond solely connectivity, it’s about digital literacy, affordability, and social infrastructure. Those experiencing poverty, especially in rural areas, are disproportionately affected, and risk being further marginalised.

With an increased dependency on the internet for communication, and gaining access to information, comes an increased risk of the potential for human rights to be violated. For example, the digitisation of social welfare systems has potential to worsen the digital divide two-fold; due to a lack of access to technology for those living in poverty and a lack of digital literacy skills to partake in the processes. When digital strategies overlook these dynamics, they risk entrenching inequality rather than solving it.

Reframing Digital Strategies Through a Human Rights Lens

My research explores how Scotland’s national digital strategy— “A Changing Nation: How Scotland Will Thrive in a Digital World”—could better alleviate poverty by embedding a Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA). The goal of a digital strategy is to best craft government policies to maximise the potential benefits of technologies for the economy and society while minimising the potential costs.

While the strategy highlights inclusion and accessibility emphasising the need to leave no one behind, it stops short of explicitly referencing human rights, which I claim as a missed opportunity. The United Nations Human Rights Council has called on states to centre digital strategies around human rights principles. Doing so strengthens accountability and ensures policies serve the people most in need.

The PANEL principles, Participation, Accountability, Non-discrimination, Empowerment, and Legality, used by the Scottish Human Rights Commission, provide a tangible framework for reviewing the strategy. These principles offer a means to ensure that those affected by digital exclusion are not only considered, but actively prioritised through the consideration of different factors.

In practice, this could look like widening participation in decision making processes to uniquely consider those experiencing poverty in rural areas and understand how specifically this group can use and benefit from technologies to ensure they are active partaking in society.

Why Accountability is the Missing Link

Emphasising the individuality of digital exclusion can be detrimental to realising the broader collective responsibility in tackling the issue. Thus, as Holmes and Burgess (2022) argue, it is essential that digital exclusion is framed as a structural inequality problem to emphasise the State’s responsibility and obligation in addressing the issue.

While Scotland’s digital strategy references the National Performance Framework (NPF), which aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, it lacks concrete mechanisms to link digital progress with poverty reduction or human rights compliance. This vagueness limits the ability to hold decision-makers accountable.

A stronger approach would be to formally incorporate existing legal duties, like the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) under the Equality Act 2010, into the digital strategy. This duty requires public bodies to consider how their policies can eliminate discrimination and promote equality.

Incorporating these duties would signal a real commitment to using digital transformation as a tool for empowerment, not exclusion, and a clear statement that Scotland is committed to upholding their International Human Rights Law obligations.

Inclusion by Design: Not by Default

Conversations around digital rights often centre on reactivity to risks, like surveillance or algorithmic bias. These concerns are valid, but they shouldn’t be the only drivers of change. Policies should be proactive, not reactive.

Scotland’s challenge isn’t whether to go digital, it’s how to do so justly. A rights-based strategy can help ensure that digital progress lifts everyone, not just the already connected. By embedding human rights at the heart of digital policy, Scotland has a chance to lead the way in showing that inclusion is not just a principle—but a practice.

Implementing already existing principles, such as the PANEL principles, or committing to existing legal obligations, both nationally through the Equalities Act and Human Rights Act, and internationally through International Human Rights Law, would be the easiest way for these changes to be made. When Scotland next updates their digital strategy, they would greatly benefit from implementing a HRBA as it adds specific legal accountability mechanisms and will help create intentional policies that can lead to the realisation of human rights.

This blog post is written as a summary of the authors final dissertation titled “A Human Rights-Based Approach to Digital Strategies: Investigating Poverty Alleviation in Scotland” which was submitted to The University of Edinburgh LLM Human Rights Programme and was written under the supervision of Luis Felipe-Yanes from the Commission.

References

Booth R, ‘AI use widened to assess universal credit applications and tackle fraud’ (11 July 2023) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/11/use-of-artificial-intelligence-widened-to- assess-universal-credit-applications-and-tackle

CESCR, Substantive Issues arising in the implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Poverty and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, E/C.12/2001/10 (10 May 2001)

Connecting Scotland, ‘Connecting Scotland: A Year in View’ (2021) 

ENNHRI, ‘Applying a Human Rights-Based Approach to Poverty Reduction and Measurement: A Guide for National Human Rights Institutions’ (2019)

Equality Act 2010

Holmes H and Burgess G, ‘Digital exclusion and poverty in the UK: How structural inequality shapes experiences of getting online’, 3 Digital Geography and Society (2022)

HRC, Possible impacts, opportunities and challenges of new and emerging digital technologies with regard to the promotion and protection of human rights, A/HRC/47/52 (19 May 2021)

HRC, Question of the realization of economic, social and cultural rights in all countries: the role of new technologies for the realization of economic, social and cultural rights, A/HRC/43/29 (4 March 2020)

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (adopted 16 December 1966, entered into force 3 January 1976) through GA. Resolution 2200A (XXI)

McGregor L et al, ‘International Human Rights Law as a framework for algorithmic accountability’, 68 International & Comparative Law Quarterly (2019) 309

Sanders C and Scanlon E, ‘The Digital Divide Is a Human Rights Issue: Advancing Social Inclusion Through Social Work Advocacy’ 6 J Hum Rights Soc Work (2021) 130

Scottish Government, ‘A changing nation: how Scotland will thrive in a digital world Progress report 2021 – 2024’ (2024)

Scottish Government, ‘Rural Scotland Key Facts 2021: Highlights’ (2021)

SHRC, ‘Submission to Scottish Government on Consultation on the Digital Strategy for Scotland’ (23 December 2020)

SHRC, The Panel Principles (n.d) Scottish Human Rights Commission