Image source: iStandUK
Interview: Paul Davidson, programme director iStandUK, talks about the learnings and further ambitions of developing the vulnerability data standard
A couple of significant milestones have recently been passed in iStandUK’s SAVVI programme.
The organisation has published a new iteration of its playbook for public authorities to implement the Scalable Approach to Vulnerability Via Interoperability data standard, and it has entered phase four of the initiative, aiming to promote the wider use of the standard.
Paul Davidson, programme director iStandUK, says the content and navigability of the playbook has been refreshed and a series of templates created to help organisations in their deployment, and there are hopes that this will provide a momentum for take-up.
“The more people who use it, the more standardised outputs we get that other people can repeat later,” he says. “As you work through the playbook it drives out a consistent set of assets and they become useful to others.”
SAVVI is currently providing a key focus of iStandUK’s work, reflecting its wider role in promoting the use of data standards in local public services. Davidson previously spent 40 years at Sedgemoor District Council, ultimately as chief digital officer, and since last year has been leading iStandUK, which is hosted byTameside Metropolitan Borough Council.
Origins in Covid-19
The programme emerged from local government’s efforts to identify and protect vulnerable people during the Covid-19 pandemic, which highlighted the need for standards to support data sharing among organisations. It won funding from the then Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to get going in 2021, and has since gone through three phases.
The first involved a round engagement with local authorities to pick up their learnings from the pandemic, followed by the creation of the first set of standards and an early version of the playbook.
The second, described by Davidson as a “bench check”, involved projects with Huntingdonshire District Council on its early use of SAVVI, and with North Yorkshire County Council on supporting children at risk of not being ready for school. This led to some refinements in the playbook and the beginning of the relevant work on information governance, and provided an important lesson.
“It became apparent to us in that phase that, although we thought we were setting out on a data standards project, there was little point in that if people didn’t have the confidence to re-use data,” Davidson says.
“So we had to spend time thinking about the lawfulness, ethics and transparency of whether you could share data for something over the original purpose. People get stuck on that from the start, not having the confidence to use data. We put quite an effort into that and created our information governance framework.
“We also learned in that phase how sporadic the involvement of information governance was within councils. Some have great IG teams and some have also nothing. We wanted IG to be more of an enabler at the start and be there at the start of projects.”
Practical uses
Phase three, which has recently been completed, was focused on the practical use of the standard. It has involved projects run by Wigan Council to develop a data model for finding and supporting people who might be vulnerable in a flood, and learning from Greater Manchester Combined Authority as it creates a Data Mesh to coordinate data for the Supporting Troubled Families and other vulnerability programmes.
Davidson says the Wigan project has shown the potential for SAVVI in civil contingencies planning. The Manchester effort is technically exciting as “rather than just creating copies and snapshots of the data, it is about keeping it close to the users and serving up the information on demand”.
He adds that there has also been work with some Scottish councils on child poverty: “We weren’t setting out to do that but they came to us, to understand how they could use SAVVI to find families with children struggling with the cost of living.”
This has been accompanied by discussions with other partners, including the Digital Economy Act team in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to understand SAVVI’s relevance to its work, and with the Department for Work and Pensions to understand the value of universal credit data.
“A lot of effort is going in and slowly we’re getting something out the other end,” Davidson says. “Our ambition is to create catalogues of accepted data shares and good ways of finding vulnerable people that others can report.”
Lessons so far
The three phases have produced plenty of valuable lessons. These include a perception, despite data sharing standards having been on many organisations’ agenda for several years, that there is still a lack of joining up, a lot of duplicated data, not enough in a standard form and not a lot of master data. This is making it hard for people to see the whole picture of vulnerability and to miss opportunities in dealing with it.
“We’ve also found that standards typically work within their silo – there are some good ones in welfare, health, education – but when you want to join it up across the public sector there are not good standards,” Davidson says. ”So we are breaking new ground with SAVVI.
“And we’ve learned there is a real passion in local government to do better with data. Practitioners can see that if only we could work collaboratively we could do so much better. So a lot of councils come to us with their issues. There is enthusiasm to do this right.”
Now comes phase four, supported by a new round of funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).
“It’s about getting it adopted, getting government departments to stand up data services compliant with the standard.
“We think it might have a focus on the civil contingencies work, because we keep getting councils and resilience forums asking for more information about that. There seems to be real enthusiasm about sharing data to find people at risk during an emergency.”
Encouraging usage
iStandUK is currently taking stock to work out how to accelerate the usage of the standard, looking to work with bodies such as MHCLG, the Data Standards Authority and the Local Government Association, and using the resources it already has in place, such as its engagement team of a SAVVI coach, information governance expert and technology export.
“We’ve sent them out to councils, but our ultimate ambition is not to be at the centre of that but establish it as a competency, with SAVVI practitioners, to build a lot more capacity.
“We have some regions already talking to us about how they might want to do that. That’s we how accelerate and bring the capacity into the sector; where we become the curator for the standard; and we are encouraging a much bigger capacity with SAVVI practitioners who are making it happen and spreading the word.
“We can’t do this incrementally, one council at a time, so our phase four deliverables talk about widescale adoption and how we are going to work with existing stakeholders to bring it about.”
Next priorities
iStandUK has other priorities for the next year It is working with MHCLG and other partners on defining a set of capabilities in areas such as digital identity, and on the wider promotion of standards and secure data sharing, delving into areas including APIs and trusted networks.
But it has promoted SAVVI more loudly, reflecting the belief it could ultimately have an influence beyond support work to protect vulnerable people. Davidson emphasises that it has a relevance to the wider issue of data sharing in public services, and that it could feed into other initiatives.
“SAVVI is almost the first that time that government has thought about sharing data not in the silos of government but making it ready to share across boundaries, breaking down the siloes,” he says.
“We’re learning quite a bit and government departments are keen to use it as an exemplar on data sharing and standards. It’s a practical example of data standards that hopefully can influence a more foundational feeling on how to collaborate on standards.”
