Local Authoirity Customer Story: Mid Kent Improvement Partnership
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Transcript of Local Authoirity Customer Story: Mid Kent Improvement Partnership
Local Authority Customer Story
Mid Kent Improvement Partnership
Local Authority Case Study
[email protected] +44(0)1785 246777
Local authorities have been subject to a number of budget cuts in recent years. As
the UK government has worked to ease the country back to stability after the
2009 recession, councils have typically felt the squeeze of funding cuts. As
a result, there is a constant pressure on them to make their resources
stretch further and to achieve more while avoiding additional costs.
Big data makes this possible. By analysing the information
accumulated by a variety of input sources, such as
council tax payment methods and parking permit
services, local authorities are able to identify
areas where costs can be minimised, as well as
where extra funding is necessary or whether
there is any potential fraudulent activity.
However, this is only achievable with an
effective approach to analysing and
reporting this data, something that
has traditionally proven difficult
for councils with larger
constituencies.
Local Authority Case Study
The concept of big data has gone from strength to strength in recent years. With more
businesses, devices and services making use of internet connectivity and wireless functionality,
there is an abundance of data being generated at every possible moment.
Although making sense of this information can be challenging, doing so provides businesses with
actionable insights that make an organisation more effective and make resources go further. This
is particularly important for local authorities in light of constant pressure to do more with less, as
Mid Kent Services (MKS) has been demonstrating for the past six months.
Our previous approaches to managing and analysing data were very one-dimensional
and unable to provide useful cross-referencing
functionality.
Andy SturtivantTCA Project Manager
MKS
The Mid-Kent Improvement Partnership (MKIP) / Mid-Kent Services
(MKS) is a partnership with an aim to improve and reduce the cost of
key services to residents across Mid-Kent, with the partnership
remaining flexible enough to meet the demands of each partner.
Mid Kent Services (MKS) is one of a
handful of local authority partnerships
working to tackle this problem. The
partnership, which consists of Maidstone,
Swale and Tunbridge Wells Borough
Councils, shares a combined ICT
department that works to serve all three
boroughs.
This accounts for roughly 410,000
individuals, which subsequently produces
a high volume of data and makes analysis
a laborious and time-consuming process.
This problem is exacerbated when you
consider that individuals with specialist
analytical skills are often needed to
interpret and present the raw data into
something more useful.
It is becoming more widely acknowledged
that companies and organisations require
business intelligence software to make
big data work for them. This was recently
highlighted in Gartner’s 2016 CIO Agenda
Report, which featured business
intelligence and analytics as the top
trending priority from a poll of nearly
3,000 Chief Information Officers (CIOs)
globally.
In fact, this is the fifth consecutive year that
business intelligence has been top priority.
As a result, it is of little surprise that MKS
turned to business intelligence software to
help bring together its many data sets into
one central location.
The partnership put in a successful bid for
funding from the Transformation
Challenge Award (TCA), a scheme
introduced by the Department for
Communities and Local Government
(DCLG), in 2014.
A portion of this funding was dedicated to
investment in software, the aim of which
was to simplify the cross-referencing of
data sets to aid each individual council in
meeting government-imposed spending
targets.
An intelligence
approach to big data
The brief we gave to Connexica
was for software that could work across a
number of projects within the partnership to analyse
a variety of data types
Andy SturtivantTCA Project Manager
MKS
Local Authority Case Study
In order to achieve this, the business intelligence software had to be capable of drawing
information from the large quantity of sources and cross-reference it all effectively, while also
allowing for partnership-wide data reports.
“The brief we gave to Connexica was for software that could work across a number of projects
within the partnership to analyse a variety of data types,” explained Andy Sturtivant, TCA Project
Manager at MKS. “The software was required to not only analyse and cross-reference all of this
data, but to also draw it from several data streams to boost efficiency.
Although making sense of this information can be challenging, doing so provides businesses with
actionable insights that make an organisation more effective and make resources go further. This is
particularly important for local authorities in light of constant pressure to do more with less, as Mid
Kent Services (MKS) has been demonstrating for the past six months.
“Our previous approaches to managing and analysing data were very one-dimensional and unable to
provide useful cross-referencing functionality. With much of the data that we are
making use of, it can only truly benefit us when we are able to see a more
comprehensive overview of information across the partnership.”
The ability to cross-reference data sets was especially important in
reducing administrative costs for the borough councils. In one
of the MKS projects, Swale Borough Council wanted to
use business intelligence software to reduce the
cost of processing payments for council services.
Although Swale Borough Council was
already processing some of its electronic
payments automatically, without the
need for staff to complete transactions, a
large amount of service users in the
mid-Kent region were still using
traditional methods such as
cheques or phone payments.
This resulted in elevated
operational costs for the local
authorities.
The software was required to not only analyse and
cross-reference all of this data, but to also draw it
from several data streams to boost efficiency.
Andy SturtivantTCA Project Manager
MKS
In fact, this is the fifth consecutive year that
business intelligence has been top priority.
As a result, it is of little surprise that MKS
turned to business intelligence software to
help bring together its many data sets into
one central location.
The partnership put in a successful bid for
funding from the Transformation
Challenge Award (TCA), a scheme
introduced by the Department for
Communities and Local Government
(DCLG), in 2014.
A portion of this funding was dedicated to
investment in software, the aim of which
was to simplify the cross-referencing of
data sets to aid each individual council in
meeting government-imposed spending
targets.
Local Authority Case Study
In order to achieve this, the business intelligence software had to be capable of drawing
information from the large quantity of sources and cross-reference it all effectively, while also
allowing for partnership-wide data reports.
Connexica is a business intelligence
company formed in 2006 that specialises
in making an organisation's data
actionable.
This is achieved using CXAIR, a
search-based analytics program that can
draw from multiple data streams and
allow for effective cross-referencing.
The software has proven popular within
the healthcare sector for bringing
together data from a wide range of
sources and producing intuitive visual
reports and dashboards.
“CXAIR is designed to easily integrate a
multitude of data streams, whether it’s
within an SME or even encompassing an
entire county,” explained Greg Richards,
Sales and Marketing Director at
Connexica. “However, being able to
gather data from multiple sources raises
the challenge of dealing with low quality
data.
One of the objectives for Swale Borough
Council in particular was to identify those
customers who already make some form
of direct debit or electronic payment for
some services, but continue to use
traditional payment methods for other
services where automation isn't available.
Uniting the data
CXAIR is designed to easily
integrate a multitude of data streams, whether it’s within an SME
or even encompassing an entire county
Andy SturtivantTCA Project Manager
MKS
Local Authority Case Study
This costly and laborious process has traditionally been one of the biggest barriers to making use of
big data and gaining deeper insights from it.
“Undoubtedly one of the biggest grievances companies face when deciding on analytics software is
just how effective it really is at providing genuine insight,” continued Richards. “Business
Intelligence has become increasingly high on CIO priority lists in recent years, so there are a lot of
start-ups creating analytical software. However, it often requires specially-trained analysts to draw
any valuable insight from what is collected.
Traditional analytics software struggles
when presented with data that contains
inconsistencies — usually errors that were
introduced when the data was entered into
the system.
Even a missing space in a postcode, for
example, can throw off many analytics
solutions.
“Fortunately, CXAIR addresses this issue by
running data validation processes as it
receives information. This allows us to
identify these potential problems from the
very beginning and resolve them before
errors occur, helping to ensure all future data
is high quality.”
However, even having high quality data is
not enough. Hiring the right people, with
the right technical expertise to analyse,
interpret and present the data in a way that
makes it easy to digest for non-technical
staff is equally as important.
Data Security
“One of our biggest priorities when choosing the right business
intelligence software was that of data protection and
security,” explained Sturtivant from MKS.
“Much of the information that councils work with
is of a sensitive nature and so it must be handled
in accordance with a number of regulatory
guidelines.”
With CXAIR we set out to achieve a democratisation of business
intelligence, which is the process of enabling any member of staff,
regardless of their technical know-how, to navigate the
information and understand it.
Greg RichardsSales & Marketing Director
Connexica
Local Authority Case Study
This costly and laborious process has traditionally been one of the biggest barriers to making use of
big data and gaining deeper insights from it.
“Undoubtedly one of the biggest grievances companies face when deciding on analytics software is
just how effective it really is at providing genuine insight,” continued Richards. “Business
Intelligence has become increasingly high on CIO priority lists in recent years, so there are a lot of
start-ups creating analytical software. However, it often requires specially-trained analysts to draw
any valuable insight from what is collected.
Traditional analytics software struggles
when presented with data that contains
inconsistencies — usually errors that were
introduced when the data was entered into
the system.
Even a missing space in a postcode, for
example, can throw off many analytics
solutions.
“Fortunately, CXAIR addresses this issue by
running data validation processes as it
receives information. This allows us to
identify these potential problems from the
very beginning and resolve them before
errors occur, helping to ensure all future data
is high quality.”
However, even having high quality data is
not enough. Hiring the right people, with
the right technical expertise to analyse,
interpret and present the data in a way that
makes it easy to digest for non-technical
staff is equally as important.
“With CXAIR we set out to achieve a democratisation of business intelligence, which is the process of
enabling any member of staff, regardless of their technical know-how, to navigate the information and
understand it.
This has many benefits for a variety of businesses, but is of particular importance to councils looking to
minimise costs. After all, using analytics to reduce administrative fees is counterproductive if the
authority has to pay a specialist to do so!”
One of our biggest priorities
when choosing the right business intelligence
software was that of data protection and security
Andy SturtivantTCA Project Manager
MKS
One such regulation is the Data
Protection Act (DPA) 1998. The DPA 1998
outlines that all personal data held by
businesses or organisations must abide
by eight data protection principles, the
seventh of which relates to the security of
held information.
This covers protection from both
third-party compromisation and
accidental data loss.
However, this causes concerns for many
local authorities. There is currently a
heated technological debate about the
security of cloud computing, which is the
platform that many web-based services
use for handling programs and data.
In fact, the 2016 state of the cloud survey
revealed that many IT staff believe that
security is the one of the biggest
challenges to cloud implementation –
second only to functional competency.
To calm those fears, Connexica uses a mix
of cloud and local storage. The software
itself is based in a private cloud,
accessible only to an organisation’s
workforce and keeps a local index of
information. or MKS, the data streams
Implementing business intelligence
software into a system can come with a
unique set of challenges in each
application. Whenever an organisation rolls
out a new piece of software or a new
computer system, it often places a steep
learning curve on staff to get up to speed
quickly. In order to overcome this,
Connexica provided a series of training
sessions to MKS, including admin setup and
dashboard navigation, to ensure staff were
fluent in the software.
“The support we received from the team at
Connexica was excellent. They guided us
through the installation process and helped
with minor teething problems,” continued
Sturtivant. “After setting up CXAIR
promptly, the team remained on hand to
help, ensuring that it was the ideal solution
for the partnership.”
Local Authority Case Study
Challenges of business
intelligence
Making big data work
The use of business intelligence software has streamlined the tasks of MKS. Within Maidstone
Borough Council, for example, one such task was monitoring and analysing the housing options in
the borough. This had previously been a time-consuming process involving three separate systems,
but is now all done within CXAIR.
The benefits of this were that staff could see at a glance whether household spending was in line
with audited household income, which in turn informed decision-making. Likewise, the centralised
location of data made for better management of funding for temporary accommodation —
something particularly important in light of the area’s rising reports of homelessness.
These efficiency and business-planning benefits are possible with the combined use of big data and
easily-accessible business intelligence software. As the quantity of generated and accumulated data
continues to increase, it will only become more important for higher numbers of staff to be able to
make use of it.
While not every company or organisation will face the same budgetary
limitations as local authorities, many are under the same pressure of
streamlining processes and increasing return on investment.
Effective business intelligence software is the key to
achieving this and making resources go further
and gain a competitive advantage in the
process.
The support we received from the team at Connexica was excellent. After setting up CXAIR promptly,
the team remained on hand to help, ensuring that it was the ideal
solution for the partnership.
Andy SturtivantTCA Project Manager
MKS
Local Authority Case Study