The five pillars

Our five pillars will enable us to experiment with data, to understand how our residents live and work in the Borough. We'll work with partners to connect and share our data. We'll also use operational data to determine how we shape future council services to best serve our residents.

A single view of the resident

In our digital transformation journey, we aim to create a unified perspective of our residents. This will help ensure we provide them with consistent, coherent services. A single view of the resident allows us to break down silos and offer a comprehensive view of a resident's interactions and history with our services. 

To implement this, we will create a centralised data platform integrated with council systems such as, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, case management systems and resident relationship management.

Data Governance for Collaboration

Collaboration is at the heart of our strategy. We recognise that data has the most potential when it is shared and used in collaboration. We are committed to developing robust governance frameworks that allow the secure and responsible sharing of data and insights within our organisation and with trusted partners. These governance structures will help us harness the opportunity of data to better serve our communities.

To deliver this, we will:

• establish a comprehensive data governance framework to ensure data quality, security, ownership and compliance with relevant regulations
• use Data Governance routes to implement training programs and initiatives to enhance data literacy among staff
• strengthen data security measures, including encryption, access controls, and regular audits, to safeguard sensitive information and maintain residents’ trust
• conduct privacy impact assessments to ensure that data collection and sharing practices align with privacy regulations and respect residents’ rights
• develop a data operating model, roles and skills to support advancing data maturity levels
• create a new Data Dictionary to capture, manage and make transparent the data objects essential to service delivery

Empowering the Organisation

We have invested in the Microsoft Modern Data Platform and Power BI to enable our staff and service areas to make data-driven decisions. The Modern Data Platform is designed to support Southwark in collecting, storing, processing, and analysing data effectively. Power BI enables users to visualise and share insights from their data. It provides a suite of tools for connecting to various data sources, transforming data, creating interactive reports and dashboards, and sharing them with others.

To deliver this, we will:

• build on the success of the Modern Data Platform to conduct further scoping workshops to create a plan of data ingestion and dashboards
• support key programmes, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system replacement

Understanding the needs of our communities

We'll create a data strategy to improve our use of analytics. This will provide insight to help us:

• run business as usual
• support business change

We'll also:

• continue to work in partnership with relevant agencies and partners to extend data sharing where applicable and adds value to the organisation
• continue to embed data analytics tools in decision-making processes
• create a publicly available data portal to expand the accessibility of data to provide open source data for partners