The devolved administration’s CivTech programme has been in operation for almost a decade, and has provided £150m of funding to hundreds of firms proposing tech solutions to public service challenges

A group of 13 companies will have access to multi-million-pound funding to prepare their products for public sector challenges in Scotland, following the conclusion of a record-breaking round of the Scottish Government’s CivTech programme.  

Teachers, firefighters, and researchers are among those set to benefit from the new offerings, which are aiming to deliver significant cost-savings and environmental protections.  Having delivered successful pitches at the end of the year-long programme, the companies have now entered the pre-commercialisation stage and will have access to up to £7m of funding to deliver their products. 

CivTech10, which received a record-number of applicants, addressed 11 public sector challenges, of which two focused for the first-time on the power of artificial intelligence to deliver change.  

Since launching in 2016, CivTech has backed around 100 businesses with around £150m of funding. 

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Technologies sponsored by the challenge this time out include a device with the potential to detect avian pests, a platform that provides users with insights to help address skills shortages, and an AI suite of tools that automates documentation processing for teachers.    

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, which sponsored two of the CivTech10 challenges, will work with two companies – Rowden and PharmaResearch – in developing software to improve real-time risk monitoring of incidents, and manage firefighter exposure to contaminants, respectively. 

Business minister Richard Lochhead said: “I want Scotland to be a global digital technology leader. Properly harnessed, we have an opportunity to unlock unprecedented benefits that will have a profound, positive impact on our society and our economy. CivTech is recognised internationally as the world’s first successful public sector-focused innovation Accelerator, and as a leader in the rapidly expanding GovTech sector – set to be a trillion-dollar worldwide market. Through CivTech we are not only driving economic growth and stimulating the high-growth start-up community, but unlocking solutions that are already delivering benefits and millions of pounds of savings across Scotland’s public sector.”