Empowering Scottish farmers in delivering digital transformation to protect the sustainability of farming and the rural economy

Version 1, a leader in digital transformation, today announced it has been selected as digital support partner for the Digital and Data Division of the Scottish Government ARE Directorate. The new agreement is a key lever in helping ARE continue to deliver reliable and accessible services whilst embracing technology advances, increasing the flexibility and agility of systems to navigate the next generation of policy changes. These changes will require effective use of digital and data technologies to directly support farmers and crofters, to protect and enhance the rural environment, while delivering sustainable economic growth in agriculture and trade. Version 1 was selected for its proven success in understanding, managing and mitigating change risks specifically in this sector, and for clear demonstration of robust and flexible processes and resourcing methods to support significant changes that occur across policy, digital and financial landscapes.

In the agreement, Version 1 will transfer existing services that support, maintain and enhance ARE’s current digital and IT estate, providing innovation and efficiencies through evolving services that will ultimately support farmers and rural communities with a digital first approach. The company has a dedicated practice for customers in the government agriculture space that delivers sustainable growth through digital platforms for many similar national and regional departmental bodies already. Through innovation and continual transformation, ARE’s existing digital capability will be modernised and enhanced to embrace the future.

“We operate in a complex environment that is subject to market pressures, policy changes and the steady introduction of new measures that deliver high quality food production, climate mitigation and adaptation, and nature restoration. These challenges run in parallel with the imperative, in common with all Digital Services organisations, to ensure that technologies remain reliable, up-to-date and cost-effective to operate. To meet these challenges, we embarked upon a procurement process to replace the two longstanding, support and maintenance contract arrangements that we had in place to ensure good value for money for the public purse,” said Nick Downes, Chief Digital and Data Officer, ARE Digital and Data Division. “Farmers, crofters and rural communities are front and centre of our services, and Version 1 clearly showed expertise in understanding the detailed business rules and mechanics needed in delivering solutions that can achieve that. We were impressed by their expertise in their grasp of our environment, and critically, how to bring fresh learnings and digitally enabled approaches for improvements such as data-led policy planning, vitally important for rural land use. Our values are closely aligned, and we look forward to delivering even better, seamless service to our customers going forward.”

“ARE plays an important role in helping Scotland stay at the forefront of innovation and environmental stewardship and we’re very excited to play a part in that journey,” said Roop Singh, Chief Commercial Officer at Version 1. “Working together we’ll be helping to set even higher standards for digital transformation that is not just centred around technology, but also is grounded in people and planet focused priorities.”