Councillors and committees

Agenda item

Connecting Information Up Across the Council Using Digital Technologies

Decision:

RESOLVED:

 

That the award of a four year contract (2 year + 1 year +1 year) for the provision of an Integration and Enterprise Data Management Platform to Dell Boomi (Dell Corporation Limited) be agreed.

 

Reasons for Decision:

 

Better use of data has been proven to help councils deliver better outcomes for residents and communities.

 

Integration and Enterprise Data Management (EDM) are two digital technologies which will help the council to harness the power of its data and become truly transformational in the way services are designed, commissioned, delivered, experienced and evaluated. 

 

Investment in tools to help the council link technology systems and join-up and manage data better is essential to providing better services to residents. Currently it is very difficult to get a joined-up, complete view of our most important and sometimes vulnerable residents. Critical information is fragmented across numerous technology systems, which do not talk to each other, held in spreadsheets by different teams, or even held outside council walls by partner organisations.

 

The inability to have the required information can result in decisions being made on partial information and can lead to poor performance and higher costs.  Consequently it is hard to understand issues that might arise, forecast costs accurately and plan timely interventions, whether that be for an individual or a community. This also makes it difficult to measure the overall effectiveness of what the council does, or adapt ways of working to improve performance.Pulling together a simple picture of performance is time consuming, resource intensive and error prone as data is often extracted from systems, manipulated and re-entered manually. In addition the data used for operational decision making and analysis is often not real-time and can be of poor quality. 

 

Without solving these problems the ambition to be a digital council will be impossible. Information silos will continue to divide the organisation, impeding the flow of processes, and opportunities to take advantage of new digital technologies like predictive analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and process automation, will be lost.

 

These digital technologies therefore underpin delivery of Surrey’s Community Vision 2030, the council Organisation Strategy, and Closer Residents Programmes. They are also the cornerstone elements of the Digital Project, which is a key enabling component of the Surrey County Council Transformation Programme 2018-21.

 

Addressing the accuracy of our data is fundamental. These new technologies build the essential foundations needed to use data in ways that improve the experience of residents, mitigate organisational and reputational risk, drive costs down and reduce duplication. They are the building blocks which could enable Surrey County Council to make that much needed step change in the way it provides services to Surrey residents and the way in which it works and shares information with its partners.

 

[The decisions on this item can be called in by the Corporate Overview Select Committee]

 

Minutes:

The Cabinet Member for Corporate Support explained how this new data management platform would link data from databases all across the council and give information in real time.  This meant that any issues would be highlighted and help to ensure that no one was left behind whilst assisting the council’s vision of becoming a digital council.  She also emphasised that the council would be paying for services as they were used.

 

The Cabinet Member for Adults spoke of this as a big step for the council to have children’s and adults data linked which would be important for safeguarding and a key part to children’s service improvement and adults service transformation.

 

RESOLVED:

 

That the award of a four year contract (2 year + 1 year +1 year) for the provision of an Integration and Enterprise Data Management Platform to Dell Boomi (Dell Corporation Limited) be agreed.

 

The decision was unanimous.

 

Reasons for Decision:

 

Better use of data had been proven to help councils deliver better outcomes for residents and communities.

 

Integration and Enterprise Data Management (EDM) were two digital technologies which would help the council to harness the power of its data and become truly transformational in the way services were designed, commissioned, delivered, experienced and evaluated. 

 

Investment in tools to help the council link technology systems and join-up and manage data better was essential to providing better services to residents. Currently it was very difficult to get a joined-up, complete view of our most important and sometimes vulnerable residents. Critical information was fragmented across numerous technology systems, which did not talk to each other, held in spreadsheets by different teams, or even held outside council walls by partner organisations.

 

The inability to have the required information can result in decisions being made on partial information and can lead to poor performance and higher costs.  Consequently it was hard to understand issues that might arise, forecast costs accurately and plan timely interventions, whether that be for an individual or a community. This also makes it difficult to measure the overall effectiveness of what the council does, or adapt ways of working to improve performance.Pulling together a simple picture of performance is time consuming, resource intensive and error prone as data is often extracted from systems, manipulated and re-entered manually. In addition the data used for operational decision making and analysis is often not real-time and can be of poor quality. 

 

Without solving these problems the ambition to be a digital council would be impossible. Information silos would continue to divide the organisation, impeding the flow of processes, and opportunities to take advantage of new digital technologies like predictive analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and process automation, will be lost.

 

These digital technologies therefore underpin delivery of Surrey’s Community Vision 2030, the council Organisation Strategy, and Closer Residents Programmes. They were also the cornerstone elements of the Digital Project, which was a key enabling component of the Surrey County Council Transformation Programme 2018-21.

 

Addressing the accuracy of data was fundamental. These new technologies build the essential foundations needed to use data in ways that improves the experience of residents, mitigates organisational and reputational risk, drives costs down and reduces duplication. They were the building blocks which could enable Surrey County Council to make that much needed step change in the way it provides services to Surrey residents and the way in which it works and shares information with its partners.

 

Supporting documents: