Scotland’s Improvement Service has launched a ‘digital sorting office’ for the secure transfer of data between the Scottish Government and local authorities on eligibility for early learning and childcare support.
Named datapipeline.scot, it was developed with Tata Consultancy Services in response to a request by councils for information on families in their area with a child who is eligible for funded early learning and care (ELC).
All three- and four-year-olds in Scotland are eligible for 1,140 hours of funded ELC, along with some two-year-olds who meet eligibility criteria as disadvantaged children, usually because their parents receive a qualifying benefit.
The Improvement Service said research into barriers to uptake of ELC found that many households with an eligible two-year-old child were not aware that they met the criteria. Local authorities have therefore requested data about eligible families in their area so they can contact them directly to let them know about their entitlement and what is on offer to them.
Datapipeline.scot has been developed for the councils to securely access that data.
Secure process
The Scottish Government receives and processes data from Social Security Scotland, the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs about households who are entitled to funded early learning and childcare. Once processed, a data file is uploaded to datapipeline.scot
Records in the file are sorted into 32 mailboxes within the platform, based on their postcodes (one for each local authority area). Records are checked for errors and exceptions. The local authority is then notified that there is a file available for it to download.
Each local authority is provided with data relating to its own geographic area only and on the basis that the data will not be used for any other purpose.
The Scottish Government anticipates that this will provide access to data on around 90% of households with an eligible two-year-old.
So far 16 councils have been signed up to use datapipeline.scot, which is free to use for all Scottish local authorities.
