Public-sector organisations have made poor progress in data analytics in past 10 years - report

Government bodies 'need to step out of era of data blindness' in order to deliver remaining 80 per cent, says Civica CTO

Public-sector organisations are only 20 per cent of the way through their business transformation journeys when it comes to data analytics, according to a report by Civica Group.

John Hood, CTO at Civica, said: "From a data insight and analytics perspective the last 10 years have seen public-sector organisations progress only 20 per cent of the way through the business transformation journey, with the remaining 80 per cent to be delivered over the next 10 years. For innovation to happen we need to step out of this era of data blindness."

In the report, Enabling a new world of public service delivery, Civica urges public-sector bodies to move away from their current reliance on multiple systems to collect data, and instead aim to collect data in a unified way to avoid overlap between departments and gain better insight.

One council that is aiming to do just this is Denbighshire County Council.

"We're changing the way we do things. With over 300 active systems, the cost of maintaining them is not viable. At the moment we're collecting data multiple times, but we want to get to a point of collecting data once and then push it out to relevant parties as a service," Jackie Walley, head of customers and education support at the council, explained.

Steve Shakespeare, managing director at Civica Services, said that up until now public services had been "data rich but information poor".

"With £30bn in savings yet to be found, data insight is pivotal to enabling public service organisations to act smarter, identify opportunities for greater efficiency and deliver services at the point of need," he said.

Richard Jones, senior partner at Moorhouse Consulting, called for wholesale transformation within the public sector. He suggested that this was the only answer.

Chris White, CIO of Clyde & Co, agreed.

"A new brave world of public service delivery will only happen if we see a radical shift in the culture of local government to drive innovation," he said.

And the person to drive this is the CIO. But only 10 per cent of servicing CIOs fall into the category dubbed the "agent of change CIO", said Jonathan Mitchell, non-executive chairman of the CIO practice at Harvey Nash.

That is a CIO who is "bold in expressing their vision for change, with a clear ‘migration plan' for investment in digital technology" and "active in using technology to future-proof the entire organisation and ensure outcomes based intervention becomes a reality".