Removing the barriers to Data Driven Innovation

The New Zealand government wants to improve its economic and social value. And Data Driven Innovation is the key to enable the evolution of better public services, says a report by Innovation Partnership Group.

Information is an asset. In 2014 alone, it was estimated that New Zealanders shared $2.4 billion of value as a result of using data that created operational efficiencies, targeted policies and informed product development.

There has never been a better time to take this number far higher. With the drive from Cabinet, increasing availability of open government data, data governance projects and requirements driven by the public, comes the need to harness the value offered by each organisation’s own and other supplementing data sets.

Many government agencies stand to improve benefit in social and environmental terms as they realise the impact that timely, relevant and good quality data can have. The Strategic Investment Framework, is just one example. Potential benefits to be realised include:

• Ability to create targeted programmes for children caught in the poverty trap such as the many thousands of children who have a parent in the Corrections system. The government can assist this group by providing the right services and support if they know where these children are located and the data is anonymised.
• A cross-government geographic information system that allows the effects of funding to be monitored at a regional level even if different agencies submit reports based on different boundaries (regions).
• A proactive public warning system that can utilise accurate location-based data sets and inform specific members of the public affected by an outage, emergency or other event can save lives and improve emergency response efforts.

Underpinning the success of all these capabilities though is the processes, infrastructure, technology and quality of the agency’s data assets. Specifically, the DDI report listed the barriers of implementation as:

• A lack of understanding of the value of data,
• Privacy concerns,
• Misapplication or under-application of data sets,
• Dispersed and non-compatible data sets,
• Shortage of data analysis skills and
• Poor quality of data.

Without a targeted and comprehensive assessment of the current state of play in an organisation in each of the above areas, it is impossible to tell how much they are holding you back. Compile and understand a range of issues that may be festering within your data sets, including:

• Finding out what data sets exist across the organisation and beyond that what you may be entitled to be using and currently missing out on.
• Profiling your data sources for misspellings, duplication, formatting and inconsistencies.
• Auditing your workflows and information sources to reveal any potential misuse of information.
• Doing a user satisfaction survey of key systems within the business to work out pain points and limitations attributed to poor quality data.

It is then necessary to undertake a business needs workshop to define current needs and elaborate on future initiatives. This assessment will help identify the gap between what you have and what you need, such as:

• Specific project requirements that require the use of certain data sets, for example socio-economic information plus overlaying of data from different government agencies.
• The current and expected use-cases and workflows for various arms of the business.
• Remediation of current data capture and processing facilities and incorporation of automated validation and verification processes.

Taking the time out to conduct such measured, deliberate activities is the key to embracing the full potential that Data Driven Innovation offers. The OECD urges government departments to "lead by example" and the report authors note:

"Government needs to be not only a supporter of DDI, but should be one of the most enthusiastic innovators. It can use its position, its wide service provision responsibilities, and its broad overview of social and economic value, to innovate in ways that would be inappropriate or impossible in the private sector."

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Article by Elizabeth Eastwood.