Delivering better public services increasingly depends on organisations working together.
Whether addressing challenges that span national government, local government or devolved authorities, organisations need to be able to share information, coordinate activity and act on a common understanding of people, organisations and places.
Over the past year, a small discovery team in the Office of the Chief Data Officer has been exploring what this means in practice. We have been identifying the foundational data that is critical to creating public services that are simpler, more joined up and organised around the needs of people, organisations and places.
This work forms part of the wider effort to build the longer term digital and data foundations that public service delivery depends on.
A real example: supporting children in their early years
The value of this work becomes clear when looking at a real public service challenge.
In June, the government launched the Early Years Kickstarter. The project is exploring how information held by different services could be connected more effectively. This could help ensure children receive the support they need to be ready for school.
Information about children is often held in separate systems by different organisations and professions. This can make it harder to identify needs early and coordinate support effectively.
Connecting relevant information, where appropriate, could help professionals build a more complete picture. This could enable earlier intervention and better outcomes for children and families.
This reflects a wider challenge across government. In many cases, the foundational data needed to improve outcomes already exists. The difficulty is making that data easier to find, access and use consistently across organisational boundaries.
The challenge and the opportunity
The public sector holds vast amounts of information, but we still find it difficult to share and reuse that information effectively.
Different services often maintain their own versions of the same data. This creates duplication, makes collaboration more difficult and can lead to frustrating experiences for citizens and businesses.
Our discovery found that some data sets play a particularly important role because they are used repeatedly across many services and organisations. We call these foundational data.
Foundational data can be thought of as a small set of core facts that many services rely on. These might include who someone is, which organisation they belong to or where a property is located.
When those facts are accurate, trusted and reusable, organisations can spend less time recreating or validating information and more time delivering services. The public can also spend less time providing the same information repeatedly to different organisations.
Other countries, including Denmark and Estonia, have demonstrated approaches to making trusted foundational data easier to discover and reuse while maintaining appropriate safeguards.
Connecting information across government
One of the clearest findings from the discovery is the importance of consistent ways to describe people, organisations and locations. These are among the most widely used forms of foundational data across the public sector.
We identified a need for what we call reference spines. These are shared ways of confirming that the same person, organisation or place is being referred to across different systems.
This could make it easier to connect relevant information when there is a lawful and legitimate reason to do so.
For locations, much of the infrastructure already exists. The Unique Property Reference Number provides a common identifier for properties and locations across the public sector. However, its use is not yet consistent enough for organisations to realise its full value.
For organisations, there is currently no widely adopted equivalent. Different parts of government identify organisations in different ways. This makes it harder to exchange information and provide effective services to businesses.
Similar challenges apply to information about people. The aim is not to create new data sets or bring information together in one place. It is to make it easier for organisations to connect information where appropriate, reducing the need for citizens to provide the same details repeatedly to different services.
This work must be underpinned by strong safeguards, transparency and clear accountability. Information should only be connected where there is a lawful basis, a clear public benefit and appropriate oversight. These principles are fundamental to maintaining public trust.
A federated approach
One of the strongest conclusions from the discovery is that improving how organisations use data does not require the creation of a single, centralised database.
The value comes from consistency, connectivity, standards and common approaches, rather than storing everything in one place.
Common standards, interoperable data and stronger digital foundations all have an important role to play in enabling more joined up services across national, local and devolved government.
Data sets should continue to be managed by the organisations best placed to maintain them. The challenge is to ensure that foundational data can be discovered, understood and reused more easily across organisational boundaries.
This is not a simple task. Organisations are understandably focused on delivering their own services and priorities. As a result, it can be difficult to invest in data assets and capabilities that create benefits across the wider public sector.
We therefore need an ecosystem that supports common ways of finding, accessing and using trusted foundational data while respecting existing responsibilities, devolved arrangements and local ownership.
What comes next?
The discovery has provided a clearer picture of the foundational data, products and capabilities that could support the ambitions set out in the Blueprint for Modern Digital Government.
This work will help inform the development of the forthcoming government Strategic Data Roadmap, led by the Chief Data Officer and due to be published in the autumn.
Modern digital government depends on trusted foundational data that can be discovered, accessed and reused across organisational boundaries.
When organisations can work from the same reliable information, support can reach the right people more quickly, duplication can be reduced and services can become easier to use.
Ultimately, this is not about data for its own sake. It is about creating the conditions for better outcomes for citizens, communities, organisations and places.
Help shape this work
You can help shape this work by providing feedback on the alpha Person Data Standard by emailing data-standards-authority@dsit.gov.uk.
You can send your feedback to the Data Standards Authority, via data-standards-authority@dsit.gov.uk
If you are a public sector data professional, you can also register for DataConnect26, taking place on 6 and 7 October. The event will bring together data leaders and professionals to discuss how better data can support growth, improve public services and deliver better outcomes for people and places.
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