Data for a modern civil service

The UK government’s new missions, aimed at tackling pressing challenges and driving sustainable growth present a unique opportunity to embrace a smarter state with digital success fundamentally reliant on effective use of data.  

Data underpins all business and governmental processes and outputs across the country, a data-driven, smarter state strategically leverages data to enhance every aspect of public services. The Central Digital and Data Office’s (CDDO) newly appointed Chief Strategy Officer, Gina Gill, recently emphasised the need for improvement in data use and system reform.  

Historically, the government’s approach to data has been more reactive than proactive, with significant developments driven by necessity or emergency. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department for Education developed a system to measure, in real-time, the attendance of students and teachers. This data informed nightly ministerial meetings and decisions. The infrastructure built for this was later used for publishing statistics on teacher’s industrial action, winning the 2023 Campion Award for Excellence in Official Statistics. 

In a data-driven civil service, policy makers would have the ability to access to more timely, real-time, or near real time data leading to more effective policies, resource allocation, and quicker responses to emerging issues. For example, data can be used to streamline and personalise public services such as Healthcare, where it could predict and respond to a patients need more efficiently.  

Rather than reacting to problems as they arise, a data-driven, smarter state anticipates issues through predictive analytics, identifying trends and potential challenges early so the government can implement preventative measures, thereby mitigating risks and reducing the impact of future crises. 

Strategies for driving meaningful change   

A data-driven state must start with a robust data strategy that is intricately linked back to government missions and the overarching goal of delivering public value. This strategy should outline the vision, goals, and roadmap for becoming a data-driven state, ensuring that every data initiative is aligned with overall government objectives. 

A well-defined data strategy establishes clear policy frameworks that support data sharing, data quality, and data ethics so public services can ensure that data is collected, stored, and used in a manner that is both efficient and secure. Think about the data needs and data pipelines you need throughout the process of policy delivery and ensure that value identification and the measurement of progress and impact of data initiatives are integral parts of the project lifecycle. 

These frameworks provide the necessary guidelines to maintain the integrity of data throughout its lifecycle. 

Identifying the value of data 

Whilst there is still a lack of sufficient education on data, there is vast ambition among civil servants regarding the potential outputs data can provide.  

The first step towards driving transformative impact across all levels of public service is fostering a culture of knowledge and understanding so civil servants will be better positioned to reimagine the potential of data and the problems it can solve.  

Whilst much is done to understand how to turn data into insights, there is a critical need to focus on the whole science of end to end data pipelines, the costs, burdens and trade offs, and how data and business processes are inextricably linked if we are to truly unlock the value of  data.  

Delivering at pace 

It is vital that the value of an organisations data is harnessed quickly, be that public value, productivity value, or social value. Starting small and building on the foundations not only sells the ‘art of the possible’ across the organisation, but it also helps set direction for the future. Utilising preformed multi-disciplinary teams, who can deliver at pace, understanding and aligning with the organisation’s vision and strategic direction. This could be around enhancing and developing more effective ways of working, building the organisations data platforms, or other value enhancing projects. 

Open Data Initiatives 

A data-driven smarter state is characterised by increased transparency and accountability.  

Open data initiatives empower citizens and enable cross government access to data. The Office for National Statistics are world leaders in opening up independent aggregated statistics fostering value quality and trustworthiness that enables citizens to hold their government accountable. While necessary security guardrails must remain, opening up individual level data across departments could significantly increase efficiencies in citizen facing transactional services unlocking further public value. 

Data Infrastructure 

But data is not a free good, and with the ever increasing volumes of data needed to drive public services (the teacher’s industrial action example above necessitated nearly 80 million individual records to flow from around 20,000 schools in a single 5 hour period) attention must be given to how we store and model the data so that we do not design unacceptable time lags in how we access and use the data and optimise storages costs of the estimated 2.5 quintillion bytes of data that are generated across the world each day (this is the equivalent of 660 billion Blu-ray discs). 

We need to invest in this infrastructure, in the same way that we invest in roads and rails, so our data traffic flows are optimised, and the correct ‘rules of the road’ are enabled and regulated to reduce the number of accidents. 

Data powers everything we do, without it we can’t run our organisations, monitor or measure what works, or hold our Governments to account, but like electricity we need to treat it with respect, as not doing so creates real dangers and cause blackouts in organisational delivery.