Data and Business Intelligence Strategy 2023 to 2028 Executive Summary

The Data and Business Intelligence (BI) Strategy outlines the council’s ambition to place data and intelligence at the core of decision-making and policy development.

Our vision is to become a data driven, intelligent council that uses intelligence and insight to successfully deliver the Council Plan and improve outcomes for the people of Dorset.

The strategy outlines the foundations needed to enhance our forecasting, reporting and analysis of data with the aim of improving, planning and ultimately shaping the services we provide.

While this is a five-year strategy, it recognises the need to adapt and evolve as new technology and innovative ways of using, keeping and storing data are introduced.

This strategy has been shaped following a series of workshops which were completed with colleagues from across the council, our partners in the Integrated Care Service (ICS), and our members through a joint Overview Committee.

In the strategy there are 8 key missions, these are detailed in the following sections. 

We aspire to become a data-driven organisation with a strong ‘data culture’, seeing our data as an asset and valuing its potential to help us make good, intelligence-led decisions.

There will be a shift in the way we understand and use our data, ensuring that data is at the core of decision making across the council.

We will also embed a data culture that will embrace continual learning opportunities, where new knowledge, skills and learning will be fundamental in building our data capabilities.

Data should always be of suitable quality to enable us to make the right decisions. It must also be drawn from a range of sources and systems including partner organisations.

We will improve the accuracy and quality of our data by combining datasets. This will increase our levels of confidence in the data we hold.

By driving a ‘right first time’ data approach, we will see improvements such as the speed and accuracy of our statutory reporting which will reduce the need for amendments and corrections.

Having an appropriate technological infrastructure is key for making best use of our data.

While the council uses the Microsoft platform that supports our data driven ambitions, we need to establish a single version of the truth and reduce data duplication.

We will use a hosting solution to store our data and use new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to provide other efficiencies.

Effective data management is vital in underpinning these technologies, harnessing business intelligence, predictive analytics, or adopting intelligent automation and the Internet of Things (IoT). Data and reporting requirements will be considered as part of system procurement processes, including how data can be extracted from source systems.

The approaches will enable us to provide timely and regular data feeds to meet business need, including real-time data.

We will be able to free up capacity from cleaning data to developing insights and understanding from our data. We will have a technical infrastructure which supports our data management processes and use them across the organisation.

We will also look to make use of our investment in Microsoft products, developing and procuring systems which can integrate with existing systems.

We will continue to invest in business intelligence and data science, focusing on proactive insight and predictive analytics that can inform policy and decisions and better ways of working.

Better business intelligence and data will enhance our understanding of our customers’ needs and requirements.

Our data visualisation will also be accessible, user friendly and appropriate to the audience and we will share and join-up data with our public sector partners.

The appropriate skills, knowledge and behaviours will underpin our ability to deliver this strategy.

Data and business intelligence will be at the core of the council, with every employee or partner collecting, working with, or analysing data to assist them with decisions.

To support, we will introduce mandatory training to ensure all employees have a basic level of data literacy. There will be clear and consistent understanding of data role and responsibilities and where high-level, specialist data skills are needed, we will provide clear data, analytics, and data science career paths.

We will increase confidence and competence in using data, sharing best practice across the council and developing data practices.

We will also increase adoption of data analytics.

We recognise the danger of insufficiently robust data governance and a key consideration is providing clarity over where and how data should be stored and for how long, by both the council and our partners.

A new Strategic IG Board will be instrumental in defining governance processes, ensuring that employees have appropriate access to the data needed to undertake their role.

We will also have clear frameworks in place to manage, utilise and care for our data - following appropriate data governance will be everyone’s responsibility.

We will have robust and transparent processes for how we manage and utilise data, and where Information Asset Owners are accountable and responsible for their information assets.

We will also have clearly defined access management for our data and be able to share data safely with our partners.

We will ensure data security is fit for purpose and protects the organisation’s data assets.

As we begin to make better, more advanced use of our data we will explore our security requirements to focus not just on the systems we use and the physical or software protection we put in place, but how we behave around data.

All employees will understand their data security responsibilities, evidenced through the completion of mandatory training, and will be able to access and share the data they need securely.

We will maintain a safe and trusted data secure environment that represents best value for money and fulfils or exceeds our minimum data security requirements.

As we make increased use of our data and apply increasingly complex techniques to its analysis, we will ensure that we use our data appropriately to ensure we maintain the trust of our residents, partners, colleagues, and other stakeholders.

Data used or collected within the organisation will be in accordance with our data ethics principles. Our employees will have improved knowledge of data ethics and how it relates to their job.

Data ethics is everyone’s responsibility in the council so a standard data ethics framework will be used across the organisation.

As we make use of advanced data techniques, including data science and AI, these will also be governed by appropriate data ethics considerations.

The strategy has identified what we would like to achieve in relation to becoming a data-driven, intelligent council.

We will build on these eight missions by developing an action plan that provides more detail on how we will meet these aspirations.

An initial high-level action plan has been established to sit alongside this strategy, and further work is now required to establish a delivery plan.

The full strategy can be found here Data and Business Intelligence Strategy 2023 to 2028