Our principles for change
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
Simplicity is the overarching objective for all the improvement and change within the areas covered by this strategy.
We want to develop simple:
- digital services where residents can find the information they need
- processes that deliver exactly what the customer needs when they need it.
- online forms and intuitive processes that can be used without help.
If residents do need help, we'll offer help for those who need it, which are fully covered within other sections of this DDaT strategy.
To achieve this, our DDaT strategy guiding principles are:
Corporate business intelligence review (CBIR)
A CBIR was carried out in 2021 to provide an overview of our current level of data maturity, including:
- current deliverables
- capacity, capability
- inefficiencies, efficiencies and requirements.
To develop a single view of the customer, we'll be focusing on delivering a dynamic data platform to optimise the use of data using analytical techniques.
Azure data lake and analytics platform
We have already established a data lake, which was implemented in Microsoft Azure using a corporate Data and Analytics Platform (iDAP).
The Azure Data Lake includes the capabilities required to allow our developers, data scientists and analysts to:
- store data of any size and shape, and at any speed
- do all types of processing and analytics across platforms and languages.
A proof of concept for the data lake was implemented in 2021.
This included the automated extraction and secure storage of data from 5 key systems and shared datasets into the iDAP.
This was to help deliver business intelligence and increased potential for data integration to support our Covid-19 response.
The proof of concept was successful in:
- providing insight
- demonstrating the art of the possible
- providing an infrastructure for further development.
It would not be practical to simply load all the data from our 44 systems into the data lake all at once, as the costs to set up the pipeline of feeding the data lake from various systems, and the data storage costs, would be too high.
We'll be aligning the prioritisation of data being added to the data lake with our transformation programmes so that we can ensure there is a return on investment for the increased use of the data lake.
A data warehouse will also be developed as a repository for structured, transformed, data that is ready to be used for a specific purpose.
Our main priority is to implement these platforms to provide automated provision of insight and analytics.
A second priority of achieving a single view of the customer is to join up data from different systems to achieve a more holistic view of our customers.
Currently, we hold information about our residents in various systems such as:
- Revenues and Benefits
- Housing
- Social Care
- Parking
- Libraries
- Leisure.
When the data from these various systems is fed into the data lake, we'll be able to use Master Data Management (MDM) to provide data matching capability and to create citizen-based and asset-based views across different datasets.
This will allow the creation of a single, corporate, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
A strong CRM solution is a platform where everything crucial to developing, improving, and retaining our customer relationships is stored.
Having all of this information in one place, instead of scattered across different systems, would:
- enhance our ability to serve customers
- reduce costs as we make better decisions based on insight
- help to automate customer engagement experiences (for example, using chat bots)
- use artificial intelligence to guide business decisions and drive innovation.
To realise the full benefits of the capabilities provided by the data lake, we must develop, and maintain, a culture of informed service improvement.