Representatives from local councils at different stages of data maturity gathered at the recent Think Data for Government event to share their data sharing experiences and discuss the art of the possible.
Liam Cahill, founder & digital advisor, Together Digital noted that in light of the fragmentation and the challenges faced in local services, local areas are increasingly having to depend on local partners, including housing agencies, tenants, NHS organisations, benefits social care, suppliers, voluntary community, faith and social enterprises. As such, the use of data requires a number of different channels.
“The reality is, is that everything that is digital that we’re engaging with is data, everything that we are using in our interactions. And it’s really important that we have secure, robust datasets that we’re using, but actually in engaging with complex individuals in a society, we also need to make sure that our data flow is working really well and that we are following the principles of having it versatile so we can empower people in local areas, making sure it’s safe and secure, and making sure that the individuals in services are able to deal with the need of those in front of them.”
Free School Meals programme
Mia Polovina, insight and delivery lead at Lewisham Council detailed the roll out of the authority’s Free School Meals (FSM) programme.
She explained there were thousands of children in Lewisham not receiving the benefits of free school meals, due different reasons including the stigma attached to it, or a lack of awareness of the scheme. As a result, Lewisham Council looked to auto enrol pupils in its FSM programme.
“We got the task quite late in the summer. The census date is October 5 [and] we had to collect the data match the data, send the letters to parents and then wait for the opt out period to expire and then do the eligibility checking. Also, that meant working with a lot of different teams across the Council. And some of the teams are not used to working in a data driven way.”
When it came to collecting data, Polovina’s team used the Low Income Family Tracker (LIFT) Dashboard which identifies families supported by benefits. The data was matched with school census data and Splink, open source data matching software developed by the Ministry of Justice. Data was also run through the DfE’s eligibility checking system, which saw Lewisham with 390 new pupils enroled into the FSM scheme.
“It was a great example of collaboration with different teams across the council,” said Polovina. “And it was also beneficial for the families and for the schools. We estimated that every family will benefit with around £1400 with new children receiving FSM, and the schools get a premium for each child. Our estimated additional funding is about £1.2 million, which also includes additional benefits that children will receive such as access to holiday activity programs, school uniforms or some other benefits.”
The challenges to unblock access to data
Natalie Preston, programme lead – data & platforms at Southwark Council, outlined how the council embarked on a data discovery programme across key resident facing services to see how it could become more data-driven, starting with Children’s Services.
“We had a particular use case that we focused on so the supporting families programme, from a data perspective. As part of this programme, we do a yearly assessment [and] one of the things that they measure you on is your data maturity. We needed to improve how we were matching data to identify vulnerable children. Our funding could potentially be at risk if we couldn’t show we were getting more mature in how we did that,” explained Preston.
One of the biggest challenges proved to be unblocking access to data. Southwark worked with the supporting families team in the Children’s Service to scope out what data was needed from different line of business systems and departments.
“We’ve built a data model using our social care system data, which is a direct API, said Preston. “We’ve matched that with our housing data alongside other data sources like education data, school census data, Adult Learning Centre data, so participation across different areas, also some Universal Credit data, but we’re still working on getting full access to that data.”
Preston described the experience as “a journey.” She said: “When we started, we were told, ‘we’ve got all that access to this data’, but that wasn’t quite the truth. So, a lot of the work I’ve done with the team is unblocking some of that across departments.
“There have also been examples where data sharing agreements have been written in such a way that … although it sounds like we can only use that data for that particular purpose, actually, we need to rethink what does that mean and work out? Is it as prescriptive as it sounds? Some of that has been going back to our colleagues in central government to understand the wording and data sharing agreements … to unblock some of that.”
Eighteen months into that journey, Southwark will exceed the target for the number of children it expects to identify.
“It’s saving staff significant time in that they’re not matching the data manually. We’re using the data model that we built in Power BI to visualise that data. And we’re now starting to have that conversation … that we’ve built this amazing model for a particular use case, but there are aspects of that that will be helpful across the service,” said Preston.
Fleshing out a data strategy
Satyam Bhagwanani, is head of data for both the London Boroughs of Kingston and Sutton, which share services. Since he joined five months ago, Bhagwanani has been developing a data strategy for each council. She shared his three main takeaways from the process.
The first involves the journey itself to becoming data-driven. Bhagwanani noted to many local government services means local authorities lack data maturity.
“When I’ve spoken to lots of people in the organisation, it’s reasonable to say 90 percent of what we’re doing around data is still being done in spreadsheets. There’s very little in the way of an architecture. There’s very little in the way in terms of any standard processes. So, one of the key things that I’m trying to sell internally, is that we need to call this ‘a journey.’”
Bhagwanani said that if the councils lack things like good quality data and basic infrastructure, technologies like AI are probably out of reach.
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“It’s trying to determine what is that end goal: where we are? Where are we at, and what is the journey to get there? And that’s the thing that I’m trying to land within the organisation.”
The second takeaway involves local councils’ financial struggles.
“Again, that’s partly due to funding, but it’s also partly due to the current economic climate. So … how can a data strategy talk to that? How can data help the council deal with some of these budget issues?”
Bhagwanani said that might mean data helping councils be more efficient in how they work, but also in terms of income generation, citing the Free School Meals program in Lewisham and supporting families in Southwark.
“Identifying those kinds of use cases that bring in money should be a really good way of getting people on board, getting leadership on board,” he said.
The final takeaway was around getting the basics right, and ensuring the fundamentals are in place.
“Within our strategy some of the key things are going to be around data governance. So trying to put in place things like data standards, improving our data quality, which is a really key issue in the Council at the moment.”
To that point, Bhagwanani also referenced the role of data stewards, which he said the Council is keen to explore.
Another of the basics involves skills. He said currently across both councils, there are no data architects, data engineers or a data scientists. However, they do have lots of analysts.
“Between both councils and a few of our partners, I’ve counted 90 people who deal with data as an analyst, or in some way in their role. There’s a huge number of people, and they’re all really enthusiastic about using data, but we haven’t really invested in them [or] their skills. And we haven’t invested in the tools that they really need to make the most of that data that they have available to them.
“So again, one of the key things I’m trying to argue for is … we can go out and hire new people, and I definitely want to do that too. But there’s a whole pool of really talented, really enthusiastic people already in the organisation. How can we use them, upskill them, empower them to actually use our data more effectively?”
Potential of the data economy
Elsewhere, Omid Shiraji, consultant CIO, London Borough of Newham pointed out the potential of the UK’s data economy. The UK data economy in 2022 was $165 billion, he said.
“The UK has started to … separate out data economy to digital economy,” he explained. “Is there a possibility for London to not only be known as a financial services powerhouse, as a technology powerhouse, but also potentially can it harness this new emergent data economy?”
Shiraji said there were practical use cases of exploiting data for benefit of residents, but there’s also” an entire economic growth and societal progression element related to the data economy.”
Earlier this year, Newham Council unveiled plans for London’s first Data Campus at East Ham Town Hall. The plans are part of the Council’s £1.2 million investment in Newham Sparks, a digital and data programme aimed at unlocking growth and transforming local government delivery in the borough.
The council wants to create opportunities for young people to develop skills and careers while providing an incubator for start-ups and businesses in high growth data industries.
“There are traditional growth sectors like retail manufacturing, logistics, whatever it might be. Could this be a thing that the young people of Newham have? [Newham is] one of the most diverse boroughs, one of the youngest populations in the country,” said Shiraji. “So really amazing young people and population and talent. Could this be a sector that we might try to attract, and have these sort of conversations about what good looks like and what’s the growth opportunity?”
Shiraji said the efforts in Newham were not just about the use of the data “locked up in an organisation, but the wider societal and societal benefits that the data economy can bring.”
Save the date! The next Think Data for Government is on June 5, 2024.
