In the public sector, there a need to be creative with resources in order for them to stretch and meet increasing demand for services. Neill Crump of Worcestershire County Council told Toni Sekinah how the non-metropolitan council is piloting new ways of sharing data to reduce vulnerability across the county.
Worcestershire is a hotbed for experimentation and innovation with data. Neill Crump, chief data officer of the Worcestershire Office for Data Analytics or WODA, explained that the council initiated six pilot projects with different agencies sharing data.
Crump used to be head of digital transformation and customer service at the county council, when Worcestershire’s Partnership Executive Group was evaluating what would have to happen in order for devolution to be a success.
Although devolution did not take place, it was decided that there would have to be better integration of public services and that data sharing could assist with that.
Crump and representatives of other public sector agencies created a data sharing roadmap and a chief data officer was needed for the 12-month project. Crump got the role in September 2017.
“Each of the agencies put seed money in to kick start greater maturity in the way that we use and share data,” he said.
The agencies conducted workshops with frontline staff which resulted in the creation of a longlist of 40 ideas for better data sharing. Those ideas were taken to the Partnership Executive Group which decided on six to pilot.
Crump explained that those six ideas are based on some of the critical issues faced by the county. Those six issues are: patient flow from hospital to social care settings, domestic abuse, falls and frailty, emergency planning and critical responses, connecting families and targeting support, and a business intelligence register.
Each pilot project had to meet three requirements. Within each project there had to be the possibility to link systems, data sharing had to have a positive effect on vulnerabilities in Worcestershire, and data sharing had to create benefit across a variety of Worcestershire public services.
With the domestic abuse pilot, the aim was to take perpetrator information from West Mercia Police and share it with other agencies; bringing together siloed data.
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