Smarter Use Of Data Can Ease The Pressure On Our Public Services This Winter

With inflation running in the double digits, energy prices sky high, and an economy teetering on the edge of recession, 2023 looks set to be another turbulent year for public services across Northern Ireland. Civica’s Mark Owens takes a look at how the smarter use of data can help to ease the burden.

From tackling hospital waiting lists to supporting an ever-increasing number of people who’ve never before found themselves in financial difficulty, our public bodies are increasingly having to do far more with ever-tighter resources. With no clear end in sight to the perfect storm of problems facing Northern Ireland and indeed the wider world right now, harnessing the power of data will be of paramount importance to ensuring our public services can do more with less.

Exploiting data to deliver more with less

Data-driven smarter decision-making ensures better use of scarce resources, saves money, and ultimately leads to better outcomes for citizens and communities. The good news is that across our public services here in NI, we have data in abundance. From executive departments to arms-length bodies to local councils, our public services are sitting on a veritable digital goldmine of data, which is growing by the day as our society becomes more digitised. The problem, however, is that we’re not using it to its full potential. Untapped data is more than just information lying idle on a spreadsheet or a hard drive; it is a missed opportunity to deliver tangible benefits for the people and communities who need it most. Let’s consider some examples.

A recent UK-wide in-depth survey conducted by Civica found that 45% of social housing residents feel they are not being listened to by their landlords. While this is a worryingly high number, the issues driving it could in fact be easily remedied. Data-driven decisionmaking can help housing providers such as the NI Housing Executive and housing associations to proactively identify and tackle issues at an earlier stage, thereby improving life for residents and reducing costs.

High quality data also has a vital role in helping public services such as health and care providers to proactively support people in vulnerable circumstances like the elderly or those with long-term medical conditions. Earlier intervention in these situations can not only ensure better outcomes for the individual concerned, but also free up other vital services which otherwise may have needed to become involved.

Deploying data: the will, but not the way

Back in December 2020, at the peak of the pandemic, the UK government published its National Data Strategy. Two years on, we at Civica wanted to find out how close we are to hitting that bar the government set for itself. To do so, we surveyed more than 800 civil servants at all levels of seniority.

While 60% of the 800 officials we surveyed felt that the perception of data had improved within their department, problems persist around data quality, with only 9% of civil servants saying that ‘significant progress’ had been made in this area.

Another issue which came across quite strongly amongst officials was data sharing – or rather the distinct lack of it. Almost half (49%) of our respondents said that data sharing between their own department and others had remained ‘unchanged’ in the wake of the pandemic. Perhaps even more concerning is the fact that less than a third (28%) of our respondents were aware of data sharing within their departments. The good news, however, is that most of our respondents were of the same mind when it came to the solution: joined up systems and processes across all departments to enable data sharing. The lingering issue of Legacy IT also came across quite strongly in our survey. 54% of the officials we interviewed felt this along with ‘resource capability and capacity’ (53%) would be the next top two challenges in achieving data priorities in the next 12 months.

From healthcare to education to the police, our public services are doing an exemplary job, despite the extraordinary pressures they are facing. While data may not be the silver bullet to all of the challenges services will face in the coming months, it will play a key role in helping them deliver the best for citizens in very difficult circumstances.