DigiTay

Expanding digital opportunity for everyone across the Tay Cities region

DigiTay is committed to delivering inclusive regional growth by widening access to digital skills opportunities across the Tay Cities region. We ensure that individuals from all backgrounds—including those facing the greatest barriers—can access training, develop skills, and progress into high‑value digital careers.

Working in partnership with colleges, universities, employers and the third sector, DigiTay supports activity that is accessible, responsive to local need, and aligned to real employment opportunities. We collaborate with education providers to ensure curriculum development reflects current and future industry demand, creating clear pathways into the digital workforce.

DigiTay also works closely with employers—particularly SMEs—to support upskilling, digital adoption, and the embedding of new technologies within their organisations. Through this, we help businesses address skills gaps, improve productivity, and build inclusive workplaces, contributing to a diverse and sustainable digital talent pipeline.

Through this collaborative, evidence‑led approach, DigiTay strengthens the regional economy while ensuring that opportunities are inclusive, equitable and deliver meaningful, sustainable benefits for individuals, businesses and communities across the Tay Cities region.

DigiTay’s Mission

DigiTay exists to make digital and data skills more accessible, for individuals looking to upskill, and for organisations working to meet evolving digital demands.

DigiTay aims to:

Understand and meet the digital and data needs of businesses.
Identify and plug digital skills gaps across the region.
Embed digital and data capabilities to drive innovation, adaptability, and competitiveness.
Expand access to specialist roles across the technology sector.
Build an unrivalled talent pool to grow the future economy.

What Digitay Offers

Whether your an individual or a business, DigiTay is here to help you. Through our regional partnerships with colleges, universities, employers, and third-sector organisations, we offer:

Fully funded digital skills courses
Business support and collaboration opportunities
Events, workshops, and training programmes

Join us in shaping a digitally confident and competitive Tay Cities Region.

Inclusion

The Tay Cities Region Deal has a commitment to delivering inclusive economic growth across the region. DigiTay is part of the Regional Skills and Employability Programme [Include link to page] a £20 million investment into skills and employability in order address inequalities across the region. DigiTay has a focus on closing the digital skills gap, to do this it is essential we support underrepresented groups access skills training in order to address the existing skills gap and ensure we’re supporting inclusive growth by creating opportunities for all. DigiTay has made a commitment to:

Ensure 50% of beneficiaries of funding are women
Ensure 10% of beneficiaries of funding are people with disabilities
Ensure 4% of beneficiaries of funding are people from black, minority or ethnic backgrounds

For more information on our available courses please visit our courses page.

DigiTay: Frequently Asked Questions

Here are the most commonly asked questions about the Tay Cities Region Deal Skills Project. If your question is not answered here then please do contact us and our team will be glad to help.

FAQs

What is the Tay Cities Region Deal?

The Tay Cities Region Deal is a partnership between local, Scottish and UK governments and the private, academic and voluntary sectors which seeks to create a smarter and fairer Angus, Dundee, Fife and Perth & Kinross under the headings Inclusive Tay; Innovative Tay; International Tay; Connected Tay and An Empowered Tay.

In total, the 26 projects submitted require investment of £700 million of which £300 million over 10 years is being put in by the UK Government and Scottish Government, subject to final approval of robust business cases.

If every project and programme set out in the submission is funded and delivered, up to 6,000 job opportunities could be created across the tourism, food and drink, creative industries, eco innovation, digital, decommissioning, engineering, biomedical and health and care sectors.

Full and further information on the progress the Deal has made to date on securing investment and jobs, can be found within the Annual Performance Report located on the Tay Cities Region Deal website – https://www.taycities.co.uk

What geographic areas does the Tay Cities Region cover?

The Tay Cities Region Deal area covers the geographical boundary areas of Angus, Dundee, North East Fife and Perth & Kinross with over 490,000 people, or about 10% of the country’s population, live in the area.

Why does the Tay Cities Digital Project fund courses specifically for - women, people with a disability and people from BME communities?

The Tay Cities Deal Digital Skills project funding is designed to address the digital skills gap in the Tay Cities Region. As part of the Tay Cities Deal commitment to support inclusive growth, the Digital Skills Project aims to support women, people with disabilities (including neurodiversity), and people from black, minority and ethnic (BME) communities’ access skills and training. This is due to the significant underrepresentation and disadvantage these groups face in accessing digital and data related training and roles.

The UK’s Equality Act (2010) permits the use of positive action in certain circumstances. Positive Action is when an organisation, employer or learning provider takes a voluntary action to address any imbalance of opportunity or disadvantage that an individual or group of individuals with one or more protected characteristics, could face. Section 159 of the Act allows organisations to take action that is proportionate to address underrepresentation, provided it is done without unduly disadvantaging others. On this occasion positive action aligns with the principle of equality by providing targeted support to underrepresented groups in technology. This legal framework enables the Tay Cities Deal Digital Skills Project to fund short term upskilling and reskilling courses for individuals with characteristics protected under the Equalities Act (2010) in order to achieve the Tay Cities Deal’ wider diversity and inclusion goals.’

The protected characteristics as outlined under the Equalities Act (2010) are:

Age
Disability
Gender reassignment
Marriage and civil partnership
Pregnancy and maternity
Race (including ethnic or national origins, colour and nationality)
Religion or belief (including lack of belief)
Sex
Sexual orientation