Too often we lack the information to make good decisions both internally and for our residents. Better data, and the ability to use it wisely, brings a huge amount of opportunity, from better investment decisions to more opportunity to protect residents by understanding their need across multiple systems. We want to change this so we have the right data, to make the right decisions.  

Our intended outcomes for this workstream are that: 

• service areas have all the data they need to protect and improve service for their users 

• we have a clear and comprehensive understanding of our residents’, businesses’, partners’ and visitors’ needs, both qualitatively and quantitatively, so that we can improve outcomes for and with them 

• we can get insights from our data that help us be more efficient and effective 

• we have the right infrastructure to share data and insights with partner organisations in the local area and nationally, so that we all get better together 

• we have better data about our staff, so that we can make them happier and more fulfilled in the workplace 

• we publish data that others can build on. 

To do this we will:  

• build a data team with the remit to bring insights directly to business areas. The team will consist of data engineers, analysts, and data scientists, who together will form a key part of service transformation 

• work with business areas on a programme of work to find out and answer their most burning questions from their data   

• build a standing analytics function which anyone in the council can draw on as a resource to help them better understand their business and users 

• engineer our systems data to make it easy to combine and analyse, including multiple deep dives into business systems 

• work with suppliers to get better access to our own data 

• expand our data warehouse to improve and expand the insights we can collect

• build on our work during the COVID-19 pandemic to expand our ‘gold record’ and how we use it to help our more vulnerable residents 

• build better reporting and insight on a service-by-service basis so people can truly understand their customer base 

• experiment with machine learning to see if it can help us reach our corporate objectives, improve customer service and make us more efficient  

• carry out a full data privacy review of the council, followed by a data cleansing and reduction programme, making sure we’re not holding anything we should not be, deduplicating records and making our data extractable  

• work in partnership with the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) to share and join anonymised data and insights.