Modernising public services requires a focus on data for positive outcomes, writes Russell Macdonald, chief technology officer for the public sector at HPE.
It’s time for the public sector to stop thinking about ‘cloud first’ for its digital transformation and place the emphasis onto ‘data first’ and the outcomes it wants to achieve.
The emphasis on using public cloud for digital services was a necessary catalyst when introduced in 2013, providing the basis for cost savings and access to new solutions. But the data landscape has changed and the experience of the Covid-19 response – in which innovations in the use of data played a great role in public protection and support for vulnerable people – showed the need to see data as the crucial factor in working for the public good.
This comes with challenges and requires a cultural change among business leaders in the sector towards an approach focused on how data can provide desired outcomes.
I took part in a recent UKA Live discussion on the subject with Dr Claire Bloomfield, director of the Centre for Improving Data Collaboration at NHS England, Steve Hall, chief executive officer of Crown Hosting Data Centres, and UKAuthority publisher Helen Olsen Bedford. It highlighted what is needed to facilitate the change, the demands on data and the fact that cloud, while not the priority, will remain a significant enabler.
Growth and distribution
A key point to emerge was that there is continual growth not just in the volume of data used by the public sector, but in the number of sources in which it is held. Organisations are sharing more data internally and with third parties in the private and third sectors and will never have ownership of all they need to use. It is widely distributed between public and private cloud services and the remaining in-house data centres.
In addition, significant volumes will be held in legacy systems for the foreseeable future. While this is often seen as a barrier to transformation, not everything in legacy digital estates is bad as some make it possible to share key data. There has to be some serious thinking about how to use rather than replace them.
An important step is to establish what data the organisation owns and where it resides. The massive growth in the volume of data has meant that some public bodies do not have clear sight of all their data or the systems in which it is held.
The shortcomings tend to come to light only when change is taking place, but making a proactive effort to get a clear view of the data in advance of change can provide the benefit of a clearer view of its capabilities and how it can be used.
This should be accompanied by acknowledging the complexity of the data landscape and being ready to use a distributed rather than a wholly centralised model. The point was raised in the discussion that the public sector has often been slow to reassess the nature of its data due to its emphasis on asking the public to provide it for specific processes. It could learn from the private sector in establishing what data is needed for better customer service and identifying the sources.
Partners and analytics
There are increasing opportunities to work with partner organisations that hold the data to make this possible, and to run analytics ‘at the edge’ – in those distributed sources rather than in a centralised system – that help develop clear perspectives on local issues and support the development of effective place based services.
Then there are opportunities to federate and link data to understand issues at regional and national levels. This is another element in making data the prime factor in transformation.
It requires common standards in areas such as taxonomy and the use of identifiers to support interoperability. This is a diverse area with initiatives such as the work of the Data Standards Authority in the Cabinet Office and creation of the NHS Data Standards Directory, and partners in data sharing have to ensure they are following the same leads.
It is also necessary to ensure that these standards are followed by solutions suppliers. A failure to do this in the past has created problems, but public authorities are becoming more insistent on this in contractual negotiations, and many suppliers are recognising the need to co-operate to remain competitive in the market. Public bodies would be right to persist on this course.
This all provides the scope for federated platforms, such as the Integrated Data Service under development by the Office for National Statistics, as major assets for a data first approach to transformation. But a couple of important caveats should be kept in mind.
Maturity factor
One is that there are different levels of data maturity, as organisations have developed it to meet their immediate needs rather than a regional or national requirement. This can make it harder to bring the data together, especially when it involves partners from the third and private sectors. The recently established integrated care services are facing this and it is likely to become a bigger factor for the public sector overall.
The other is the need to build and preserve public trust in how the data is used. It requires transparency around use cases, robust governance, anonymisation of personal data, and a readiness to explain the need for diversity in a dataset to ensure it represents all of the population.
Underlying all this, and possibly the most difficult to achieve, is the need for a change in culture in which senior leaders, including those of digital teams, adopt a mindset focused on outcomes and the role of data in achieving them. This should be the prime factor, with ‘cloud first’ providing not the priority but an important capability to support the change.
It provides a big challenge for the public sector, but also the promise of more consistently positive outcomes in the modernisation of services. The next wave of digital transformation needs to have data at its centre.
For a tactical guide to 'data first' modernisation, visit: https://www.hpe.com/us/en/solutions/data.html
Catch up on the full UKA Live discussion below:
