Government crest UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)

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Laying the foundations for better local public services

Registration services data – unlocking local government opportunities

Contents:

  1. Project outputs
  2. Project timeline
  3. Feedback

This discovery has explored the benefits of securely sharing data to support various services such as planning provision, safeguarding and fraud prevention.

The Digital Economy Act 2017 enables greater powers to share registration services data for birth, deaths and marriages with other local public sector partners. There is a need to identify for what purpose this data should be shared, how to share it and the business benefits of doing so.

Project outputs

All Local Digital Fund discovery projects were asked to provide the following information at completion:

  • User research report
  • Benefits case
  • Recommendations for next steps

Downloads

Alternative ways to view the outputs:

Contact [email protected] if you are having problems accessing the outputs.

Project details

Phase: Discovery

Funding granted: £57,500

Duration: December 2018 – April 2019

Partners: Worcestershire County Council, Wychavon District Council, Worcester City Council, Redditch Borough Council, Bromsgrove District Council, Malvern Hills District Council, Wyre Forest District Council, Hereford & Worcester Fire & Rescue Service, West Mercia Police, Worcestershire NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups, Worcestershire Acute Hospital NHS Trust, Worcestershire Health & Care NHS Trust, Hull City Council, Suffolk County Council

Services: Government, citizens and rights,

Housing

Project links

Related projects:

Project timeline

December 2018 - discovery

‘Registration services data – unlocking local government opportunities’ discovery receives £57,500 from the Local Digital Fund.

April 2019 - discovery

Project team delivers agreed outputs from ‘Registration Services Data – unlocking local government opportunities’ discovery, published openly on the Local Digital website.

September 2019 - alpha

MHCLG awards £73,095 for alpha into providing registrations data to housing services from the Local Digital Fund.

February 2020 - alpha

Project team delivers agreed outputs from ‘Providing registrations data to housing services’ alpha, published openly on the Local Digital website.

Feedback

Each project was assessed using these lenses by the Local Digital Collaboration Unit. We have provided feedback directly to the project teams and this is a summary of what we shared with them.

It aims to be constructive for both the project team and any other organisation wishing to learn about the project or make use of the work done.

  • The project team mapped registrations data fields to service areas providing a useful resource which other local authorities could benefit from.
  • The project made the first attempt to request central government data under the Digital Economy Act.
  • The outputs provided give a good overview of how registration services data can be used to support service delivery in 4 different areas.
  • The team did a lot of user research and produced personas. To make these personas more useful for the wider local authority sector, the team should consider the addition of real user needs, motivations, behaviours and digital literacy information.
  • Using hypotheses to frame an Alpha is a good way to explain what the team will test next, provide a non-prescriptive way of progressing the project, and test options and assumptions.
  • The team made their Trello board publicly visible and used Pipeline to share their weeknotes, making it easy to understand how they worked and how the project unfolded. The team should consider inviting a wider group of participants to their show and tells, or making live-streams or video recordings available to encourage a wider understanding of their work.
  • The project team quantified benefits even when these were not monetised which is beneficial when there are sensitivities around benefits being regarded as cashable savings. The team also considered the impact of costs for development and implementation of a solution which may be useful for other local authorities.
  • The team should consider the benefits realised at a national level as the housing stock for councils within this report appears relatively low. Garnering wider support for the project within the sector would help to support this, as would validating benefits and cost with housing associations.