About the Scottish Parliament

4. The Strategy’s overarching aims are to:

• promote the Scottish Parliament, its practices and processes as an open, accessible and participative legislature amongst other parliaments and international organisations;
• develop the Parliament’s reputation, skills, knowledge and abilities, through this work and its relations with other legislatures and organisations, to represent the people of Scotland in holding the Scottish Government and public bodies to account;
• provide opportunities for the continuous professional development of MSPs and officials through meetings and discussions with elected Members and officials in other legislatures and organisations;
• showcase and develop the policy, procedural and corporate knowledge of MSPs and officials through international collaboration and engagement;
• set a direction and purpose to the Parliament’s international work and the outcomes it is aiming for and identify the parameters around what can and cannot, be supported; and
• identify, plan and programme activities with key organisations and other parliaments, countries/regions and illustrate why these are strategically important to the Parliament and to Scotland.

5. The Strategy outlines how international work will link to and support the Parliament’s Strategic and Delivery Plans. The Strategic Plan sets out the Parliament’s overarching purpose and objectives while, sitting below this, the Delivery Plan identifies more specific pieces of work. Both essentially show the Parliament’s key priorities at that time. Linking this Strategy to both Plans will point the international work in a relevant and useful direction. 

6. The aims above will be achieved through a mixture of meeting parliamentarians and officials from other legislatures and organisations in person (who visit the Scottish Parliament); MSP involvement with organisations of which the Parliament is a member or with which it works; in person outward visits (when the Parliament visits other legislatures etc); and through virtual discussions. Broadly, this Strategy relates more to outward work (where the Parliament has proactively initiated engagement) as opposed to inward work (when it has reacted to requests to engage).