OECD publications are always a team effort but this, the second piece to have my name on it, is hugely down to the work of my colleague Charlotte. Unfortunately she’s been away from the team since I joined so my contribution here was to pick up the thread of her research and get the paper to completion.
What’s the TL;DR?
This Working Paper argues that governments need to go further in putting the collection, processing, sharing and reuse of their data (the Government Data Value Cycle) at the heart of how they think about digital transformation. It’s a guide to how governments can invest in public servants in order to recognise and use data as a core component of the modern state.
Plenty of governments have pockets of good practice but the challenge is to scale those into whole-of-government approaches that are well supported internally as well as finding favour with the public. This is the vision of the ‘data driven public sector’ (DDPS).
The paper discusses three areas of opportunity:
- How governments use data to be better prepared for the future.
- How governments design and deliver policy and services.
- Performance management in terms of greater public sector productivity and better evaluation of policies and impact.
But those opportunities rely on tackling a number of challenges that could prove to be obstacles to establishing a DDPS:
- The availability, quality and relevance of data.
- Sharing data internally
- Skills and capabilities
- Legitimacy and public trust
The paper concludes by discussing the importance of coherent strategic approaches that think about data in the context of the whole public sector in policy, operational and practical terms.
The blurb
Over the last decade the Open Government Data movement has successfully highlighted the value of data and encouraged governments to open up information for reuse both inside, and outside the public sector. This Working Paper argues that governments now need to go further and put the role and value of data at the core of thinking about the digital transformation of government. A data-driven public sector (DDPS) recognises that data are an asset, integral to policy making, service delivery, organisational management and innovation. The strategic approach governments take to building a DDPS can have a positive impact on the results they deliver by promoting evidence-led policy making and data-backed service design as well as embedding good governance values of integrity, openness and fairness in the policy cycle. After framing the concept the paper presents the opportunities offered by embracing the DDPS approach and identifies some of the challenges that governments may face in establishing a DDPS before concluding with the discussion of the need for coherent strategic approaches that reflect the role of data across the entire public sector, not only from a policy point of view but from an operational and practical perspective.