In his first Programme for Government, first minister John Swinney laid out his plans to invigorate the Scottish economy with investments in deep tech, diversifying enterprise investment, and strengthening the effects of government startup support programmes.

In what Swinney labelled as a “critical” milestone in attracting investment, Swinney announced intentions to “maximise the impact” of Techscaler, the national startup support network, by working with Scottish Enterprise, the National Manufacturing Institute for Scotland, and the National Robotarium.

As of June, Techscaler supported over 700 businesses, according to the government, and introduced education courses helping people on their startup and scaleup journey.

This, Swinney said, would “create new opportunities for our most promising ‘deep tech’ companies to support promising businesses with prototypes and manufacturing.”

He also affirmed support for Scottish universities and business clusters for research and development, and to give Scotland a competitive advantage in areas like data, digital, AI, health, manufacturing, and the energy transition.

The Scottish government intends to invest more than £315 million over the 2024-25 academic year to help develop early career researchers.

Swinney promised to tackle the critical skills shortage plaguing the Scottish workforce, saying that the government will “lead a new, national approach to skills planning,” including working on regional approaches.

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The plan aims to reform the education and skills funding system as well as making efforts to diversify the business landscape by taking recommendations made in the Pathways report authored by Ana Stewart and Mark Logan.

However, no specific plans to address this skills shortage was made, nor did he address specific actions the government intends to take to ensure more women are empowered to start businesses.

Other economic promises that can strengthen the tech ecosystem is the intention to connect more than 20,000 premises to gigabit capable broadband, which can help improve the digital divide.

The government also intends to introduce digital technologies to modernise services, including the first version of personalised digital health and social care service.