Scotland’s public sector is still catching up with the age of apps

What is it with Scotland’s public sector and apps? It is not as if the technology is new. I have been using banking apps, surely the most difficult to design and secure on my phone for a decade.

My phone has a plethora of them, from supermarket to airlines. And now that I need to lose weight, I use one to track what I eat and drink. Yes, every glass of red wine is dutifully logged, and the app tells me exactly how many calories I have consumed in any 24-hour period. It also counts how many steps I take, which I find slightly spooky but interesting.

Back to public sector apps. Scotland’s NHS app, My Care.Scot is years behind its English counterpart. In fact, so pointless is it that I haven’t opened it since uploading it several weeks ago. All it contains is my repeat prescriptions and I know them off by heart.

But I was looking forward to using the new ScotRail app which launched last Thursday. As luck would have it, I had to go to Glasgow for work, so I logged on to buy a return ticket.

It took me rather longer than I had anticipated but eventually I got what I wanted. Only to discover on my journey home that, despite buying a day return and having an outbound ticket that said just that, I couldn’t access the barcode for my return trip.

Cheery staff at Glasgow’s Queen Street station did their best to help, but they had not been shown the app before it went live, so it was as new to them as it was to me. The train guard laughed and told me not to worry, and staff at Haymarket opened the exit gate for me with a smile. It turned out I was not alone - thousands of weary travellers had problems with the new app.

ScotRail – which is of course now owned by the Scottish Government - has been forced to apologise for the shambles, but the question remains. Why does Scotland’s public sector find it so difficult to get to grips with the digital world?

Answers to the Scottish Government, via carrier pigeon please.