Data-driven Decisions for the Future of Public Services

Over the course of many years, advising and guiding public sector organizations through large, complex digital transformation programmes, the “D” word has always caused a conflict of opinion. 

We have entered an era where data is becoming a highly valuable and desirable as a business asset. The real challenges to deriving value from data lie in the sheer volume, variety of data you must sift through, and the speed of response. To be a digital leader, you need to move beyond traditional approaches, and collect data from multiple sources not just to analyse the past (as with traditional business intelligence and data warehouses), but more to predict outcomes, automate and drive decision-making for the future of your organisation. 

When data is managed effectively, it can be used to provide intelligent citizen insights and predictive analysis to enable an organization to deliver digital public services, improve business process efficiency and empower employees with information that will support rapid decision making. 

When data is managed ineffectively, we have seen the opposite effect where key information is buried in mountains of data, business process becomes bottlenecked, and employees become frustrated with the lack of information to hand and meet citizens expectations. 

Does Small Data Provide Sharper Insights?

There is often the camp that fly the flag for “Big Data” which creates an appetite in those public sector employees who want to uncover hidden patterns about citizen behaviour, predict the next demand for public service, where to focus and spend digital transformation budget and lead the next wave of digital disruption.  

Yet all the steam coming out of the big data hype machine seems to be obscuring our view of the big picture. In many cases, big data is overkill, it provides a technologist’s view of the world where an organisation’s all data, of all data types is perfectly stored in a central repository waiting for some instructions. 

 

“In most cases big data is only useful if those of us who aren’t data scientists can do something with it in our everyday jobs, which is where small data enters the picture.” 

 

The term Small Data still refers to a combination of structured and unstructured data, collected from multiple sources that is quantified in BIG volumes (petabytes/exabytes), but the data is presented in a new data model that is built from only relevant business data that can innovate new ways of working. 

The small data models are meaningful to business users, they are populated with only the information from source systems that add value, provide one data point that hosts all the necessary information we need to know about a citizen, public service, or team, that is proven to be 100% accurate. 

Looking forward, the new small data models provide an inception point that presents opportunity to not only improve accuracy but to enrich the data from a multitude of different sources that can innovate an organizational business capability, with enhanced information. 

Innovative Solutions Through Small Data Models

CloudSource have been partnering with customers to implement new small data models in Microsoft Power Platform that provides data hosting services, analytic tools, business application tools, citizen facing portal and vast integration capabilities all within a Software as a Service subscription.  

 

 

Power BI – Data driven, analytical insights of citizen, stakeholder, and public service consumption 

Power Apps – build and publish citizen centric applications without writing code 

Power Automate – Automate public service process and information access 

Power Virtual Agent – build conversations for enhance digital citizen experience  

Dataverse – hosting of small data models that innovate new ways of working 

AI Builder – a product that completely democratizes intelligence, allowing custom and pre-built models to be applied to a business problem in a few clicks 

Data Connectors – Hundreds of different data connectors to transit valuable business data to the Dataverse.

With an accurate, cloud hosted datastore and cutting-edge technology platform, UK public sector organisations are enabled to reach their full potential in delivering the fully digitized, best-in class public services. 

At CloudSource, we aim to deliver fast and secure capabilities through best-in-class Microsoft technology and industry expertise that help government organisations meet the needs of citizens and set foundations to solve the challenges of the future through valuable data and meaningful insights.  

If you would like to learn more about digital transformation for government services and how we can support you through your digital transformation journey, please reach out to us.    

   

Email: ozlem.kilavuz@cloudsource.uk.com 

Teams. +44 (0)1156 782 043  

Connect with CloudSource

Want to learn more? Get in touch to see how we transform organisations in the new digital world.

Contact Us