The Home Office says it has started the shift to treating data as a strategic asset to better serve the public.
Speaking at the Think Data for Government virtual event, Christophe Prince, director for data and identity at the Home Office, said it was also important to deliver public value, “focusing on the needs of the public, the customer, the individual recipients of our services”.
However he noted: “One thing I’ve heard is we need to treat data as the most significant asset in the department within the organisation. For us that’s not true. Data is probably our second most important asset – it comes after our people and our staff. It is only by getting the right data and information to the right people at the right time that we can deliver the public services that we want.”
Volume and complexity of data
Prince admitted that the volume of data is a challenge – for example, in policing where the explosion of personal storage and devices means police officers have to work through large volumes of data for single investigations.
However, he noted that compared to the private sector, volume is not the major problem compared to turning the volume of data into meaning.
“Many of the colleagues working certainly in law enforcement are acutely conscious that we have to respect the privacy of the individuals that we are interacting with, no matter where they come from. But…we do nevertheless have to get some information in order to be able to say pursue an investigation. Getting the balance right is a real challenge.”
Additionally he cited the complexity of leveraging data as an organisation.
“Like many organisations, the department and the sector as a whole can often be seen more akin to a conglomerate of small businesses that are grown together over the course of the years. Each of those parts of the business have been really carefully focused on their delivery of a public service that they need to meet and deliver for the public,” he said.
He said the Home Office in the UK was an early adopter of biometric features “that improve security and customer experience.”
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More recently, he said digital-first solutions like the EU Settlement Scheme “have enabled millions of people to demonstrate and establish their status or demonstrate their services using their mobile phones, in what for many people it’s been a really seamless and smooth experience.”
However, the Home Office is facing complexity as its starts to drive improved efficiencies in its services.
For example, Prince said: “automating parts of the workflows we have in the background, we increasingly have to join up data between the different units and groups, some of those often operating off bespoke case working systems. So the complexity that the organisation has overlaid over the different bits of data becomes a barrier for our ability to deliver the effect that we want.”
That, he added, is a challenge when trying to bring together the different data sets to provide insight into customers. “Be that from a visa all the way through to becoming a British citizen, joining data across multiple interactions so that we can understand what that experience might be,” he explained.
He also acknowledged it can “be a real frustration” when data is locked up in legacy or closed systems for case working “that have been often well loved by staff and become intertwined in the various processes we have in place.”
Maximising the value of data
Prince said “a cloud-first approach focus on building APIs in by default and moving towards a much more product-centric approach, which enables us to avoid the boom and bust of investment, is critically important to enabling us to unlock the data so we can drive it faster to the people who need to be making decisions, and we can interrogate it and get your analysis.
“When it comes to maximising the value of the data, the technology is really important, and we’ve got to get it right. But it’s not the only part and the only game in town,” he said, referring to the challenges around data management.
“As an organisation, we’re focusing on the data and the capabilities that we need to shift into treating like a strategic asset. Really importantly, for us, that’s not an end in itself.”
He added that the Home office is building “a more consistent approach to our operating model for the use of data for insight and analysis, bringing datasets alongside each other, and…sharing alongside each other in a more modern platform. So our staff can move to a self-service scenario for management information or business intelligence. And we can preserve the capacity for those who really need to deal with complex stuff to be playing directly with the data where that makes sense.”
