Interim report: A Review of What Good Data Sharing Looks Like in Other Jurisdictions, and Successes in Scotland
This is one of a series of interim reports produced as part of the Information Sharing Project in collaboration with The Promise Scotland. This project has sought to understand the legal, cultural, and technical barriers to data and information sharing as it relates to care experienced children, young people, and their families across public sector agencies and organisations in Scotland.
This report was written by Datavant, with contributions from Urban Foresight and Mydex CIC. The report brings together an overall narrative review of what good data sharing looks like in practice, alongside a set of detailed examples from a number of US and European jurisdictions, including recent successes from within Scotland. Collectively, these examples explore how different systems have approached data sharing in health, care, and children’s services, and what has helped these approaches succeed.
The report includes a series of ‘Data Sharing Stories’. These standalone case studies demonstrate how innovation in data sharing can deliver significant benefits for individuals, organisations, and wider society. The care contexts and technological approaches involved vary widely, and the stories can be read either individually or as a collection, offering practical inspiration rather than prescriptive models.
The findings presented here should be read alongside insights from the other work packages. Together, they contribute to a shared and evolving understanding of how data and information sharing can better support care experienced children and young people in Scotland. As with the other interim reports, the content reflects work in progress, with the full set of final project outputs due to be published in spring 2026.
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This report illustrates that effective data sharing is rarely achieved through technology alone. Instead, successful approaches typically combine clear purpose, trusted relationships, robust governance, and proportionate technical safeguards. Across the international examples reviewed, good data sharing is characterised by a focus on benefits for people, pragmatic legal interpretation, and collaboration across organisational boundaries.
To support reflection and action, the report sets out a series of thinking points to help unlock the opportunity, tailored to different audiences, including legal and compliance teams, collaborating organisations, and those closer to service delivery.