Suffolk County Council

The Suffolk Office of Data & Analytics (SODA), established June 2018, to:

• make better use of data to generate new insights into public services and the needs they serve; and
• to apply these insights to improve policy and service design and delivery.

Achieved through

• joining up data from multiple sources, including internal data from Suffolk’s public service organisations and its partners; and
• applying robust analytical techniques and synthesising data to generate insight.

SODA is a collaboration between all Suffolk’s local authorities (7 districts & boroughs and county council), 2 CCGs and Suffolk Constabulary.

There are two common problems to building a joint-up evidence-base through combining routinely collected data from multiple partners. These focus on concerns around Information Governance and the technology used to combine, store and analyse personal-level data.

SODA proposes to

• produce a reusable Information Governance Framework across the Suffolk System;
• develop a re-usable roadmap on how to scope common Information Architecture across the Suffolk System; and
• scope the technical architecture, resources and approaches to deployment needed to combine data routinely, safely and lawfully.

Once SODA has established a System-wide IG Framework and partners have agreed on the common Information Architecture there will be Use Cases that can be shared. These Use Cases would focus on analytical outputs and the outcomes that were achieved through evidence-based decision making.

However, the work around IG and IT would also enable other Use Cases, which are currently outside of SODA’s remit, such as linking case management systems to enable single-customer view / CRM.