Standards, skills and sharing: building a ‘smarter state’ is easier than we might imagine

Imag­ine a loved one has just suf­fered a severe acci­dent. You call an ambu­lance, know­ing instinc­tive­ly it is a mat­ter of life or death and that every sec­ond counts. Thank­ful­ly, con­nect­ed data enables the ambu­lance to arrive as quick­ly as pos­si­ble using GPS-linked to road­works data­bas­es and there­by avoid­ing traf­fic hot spots. While en-route, para­medics are pulling up cross-ref­er­enced, live, life-sav­ing med­ical infor­ma­tion on the casu­al­ty, allow­ing them to make rapid, well informed deci­sions and ensur­ing they make every cru­cial sec­ond count.

Imag­ine anoth­er scene: a police offi­cer spots a per­son behav­ing odd­ly on the street. Now, a casu­al obser­va­tion might sug­gest that the per­son is intox­i­cat­ed. The police offi­cer how­ev­er checks her smart­phone app which is con­nect­ed to the local authority’s social care sys­tem and imme­di­ate­ly sees the per­son has some form of neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tion. Armed with this knowl­edge, the offi­cer approach­es the con­fused per­son and can deal with the sit­u­a­tion calm­ly, sen­si­tive­ly, and with­out aggra­vat­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

These hypo­thet­i­cal sce­nar­ios illus­trate how, in an ide­al world, pub­lic ser­vices of the near future will run and show how cit­i­zens could ben­e­fit from open and inter­con­nect­ed data. Encour­ag­ing­ly, we are not at all far from cre­at­ing this ‘smarter state’.

The government’s Nation­al Data Strat­e­gy, launched last Sep­tem­ber, is the cat­a­lyst for the jour­ney towards data-dri­ven, dig­i­tal­ly enabled pub­lic ser­vices of the future. The chal­lenge, as the Strat­e­gy acknowl­edges, is that we are not, as a coun­try, mak­ing the best use of data.

Rein­forc­ing the foun­da­tions: stan­dards, skills and shar­ing

Data is the foun­da­tion upon which pub­lic ser­vices must be built to deliv­er the best out­comes for cit­i­zens and com­mu­ni­ties. Data is a vital resource and one that we have in abun­dance. Untapped data is, at best, a wast­ed resource. At worst, it is unex­ploit­ed poten­tial to deliv­er real change for those who require it the most. It’s impor­tant to stress that util­is­ing data to its full poten­tial is emi­nent­ly achiev­able.

Encour­ag­ing­ly, there is an ever-grow­ing list of case stud­ies show­ing where robust, con­nect­ed data is improv­ing pub­lic ser­vices. In Greater Man­ches­ter, Civi­ca has been work­ing to devel­op a next-gen­er­a­tion dig­i­tal plat­form to sup­port the trans­for­ma­tion of pub­lic ser­vices and empow­er cit­i­zens to take con­trol over their health, well­be­ing and sup­port.

The key to unleash­ing the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of data lies in what we at Civi­ca call the ‘three Ss’: Stan­dards, Skills and Shar­ing. First, data stan­dards pro­vide con­fi­dence to those seek­ing to use qual­i­ty datasets. By defin­ing and apply­ing water­tight data stan­dards, author­i­ties can focus on under­stand­ing and inter­pret­ing data with­out con­stant­ly check­ing what it means or where it came from, sav­ing time, effort and mon­ey.

Next comes skills. The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic proved the piv­otal role that data plays in deliv­er­ing pub­lic out­comes. The scale and speed of the UK’s vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme was made pos­si­ble by high-qual­i­ty data, but cru­cial­ly, by trained experts with the skills and knowhow to man­age and inter­pret that data. There exists a sig­nif­i­cant skills gap when it comes to data. To nar­row this gap, we need to change data’s ‘image’ – from one of spread­sheets and graphs to some­thing that can improve, if not save, lives.

The last bar­ri­er to over­come is the shar­ing of data. Pub­lic bod­ies, from gov­ern­ment depart­ments, to local coun­cils, have a vast amount of data that com­bined, could pro­vide a unique in-the-round view of the needs of each cit­i­zen. By shar­ing their data trans­par­ent­ly and secure­ly, pub­lic ser­vice providers can bet­ter under­stand the needs of each cit­i­zen they serve and offer solu­tions that are tai­lored to indi­vid­ual cir­cum­stances.

Data-dri­ven tech­nolo­gies have trans­formed how we live our lives. From online shop­ping to remote learn­ing, to track and trace, our expe­ri­ences and expec­ta­tions as cit­i­zens would be com­plete­ly alien to any pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion. We are on the cusp of a fun­da­men­tal trans­for­ma­tion between cit­i­zen and state. The cat­a­lyst is data. With the right data stan­dards, skills and shar­ing, this trans­for­ma­tion will hap­pen much soon­er than we might imag­ine.

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