To data-driven success
Smith says the work that is being done across Scotland to stimulate entrepreneurial activities has certainly catalysed the emergence of data science.
He points to the development of Scottish Enterprise’s investment arm, the Scottish Investment Bank (SIB) as well as the support provided around tech through incubators and funding programmes.
Scotland is the birthplace of startups like Skyscanner and Fanduel which have become household names and attracted considerable overseas investment – and to some extent they are the trendsetters which opened the eyes of other tech entrepreneurs looking to develop their own creative data-based solutions.
“We have started to see a real upsurge in the number of digitalbased businesses and a number of businesses have grown focusing on data and extracting value from data or on building platforms to manipulate data,” says Smith.
Collaboration between business, universities and Scottish Government partnerships has been crucial in fuelling Scotland’s dynamic data sector.
Aridhia, which has a cloud-based data analysis platform, for example, works with leading academic institutions including Glasgow and Aberdeen universities, drawing on Scotland’s knowledge and expertise in relation to health and the application of data around records that are held in the health service.
Using patient data in this way provides insight into the root cause of some chronic conditions, showing the value of data science for doing good.
“Scotland has developed a range of what I would call very significant assets,” says Smith.
“We have identified at least 150 companies now in Scotland that are wholly data based and we have a strong set of science and innovation assets.”
In the capital alone there is Edinburgh University’s School of Informatics, the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre which is the largest supercomputing centre in the UK, the Roslin Institute and Edinburgh University’s Higgs Centre for Innovation.
Work is ongoing in Aberdeen around how the oil and gas sector can make even better use of digital technology, data and data science to extract even more value – that’s a big focus at the Oil & Gas Technology Centre which was founded in the Granite City last year.
Dundee’s strength lies in the games and digital media sector where companies are using insights from data to deepen customer engagement, optimise user experience and drive revenue from advertising. Those businesses have access to specialist knowledge, research and expertise generated at Abertay University.
Across the country, over 1,500 data enthusiasts attend “meetups” run by the Data Lab Innovation Centre which are an opportunity to network in a more informal and dynamic setting.
It’s an exciting time to be working in the sector and indeed an exciting time to consider a career in it.
The Scottish Government’s Skills Investment Plan for Scotland’s ICT and digital technologies sector recognises the importance of keeping pace with the level of demand in the data sector and aims to encourage more people to move into it, both from the school system and as a career change later in life.
“We have supported initiatives like Codeclan which is very much recognised as a way for employers to engage with and support the upskilling of people around programming skills which is key,” says Smith.
“We also have a large number of the UK’S MSC programmes here in Scotland – 24 of 105 data science masters programmes in the UK are in Scotland.”
He says that by shaping a skilled – and, crucially, affordable – workforce, Scotland becomes an attractive proposition both for home-grown companies and for potential inward investors, particularly in light of the predicted global shortage of skilled people with formal qualifications.
In a Data Lab-funded programme, St Andrews University is also partnering with businesses to provide a doctorate level research degree, driven by the research needs of the partner business.
Groundbreaking technologies aren’t developed in isolation and it was Edinburgh University’s cuttingedge work in data science which brought global giant Intel’s chip architecture team to Scotland last year.
The team is working with the university on a fundamental research programme which focuses on high-performance computing and data analytics, alongside an ethical research stream.
Both are part of the Alan Turing Institute announced and supported in part by UK government and established in 2015.
As Scotland’s strengths in data science and technology continue to emerge, it is clear there is still plenty of scope for growth, from which the economy as a whole will reap the rewards.
“We estimate that over the next five years there is potential to get anywhere within the region of £15-20 billion of benefits for the economy from the use of data across different sectors,” says Smith.
“As well as the companies that provide solutions or build their entire business on data platforms – like Aridhia and Skyscanner – there is a much bigger prize for the Scottish economy in encouraging better use of data across the different industries and sectors.
“We have had a number of new inward investors in this space in the last year and that’s evidence of the fact that it’s not just what I believe but that companies, and particularly international companies, buy into the value proposition that Scotland offers and they want to invest.” n