Guest blog: Cross-Government Data Sharing: Enable Business Value & Achieve Mission at Scale

In an increasingly interconnected and digitized world, the efficient and responsible use of data has become a cornerstone of effective governance and business value production. Cross-government data sharing, the practice of sharing information across different government agencies, is emerging as a powerful tool to enhance public services, improve decision-making, and foster innovation. This blog explores the benefits, challenges, and potential of cross-government data sharing in the pursuit of a more connected and responsive government.

Cross-Government Data Sharing: Opportunity to deliver on Public Sector mission.

Data sharing generates business value across the government ecosystem. Below is a quick summary for the benefits span across multiple function areas: 

1. Improved Service Delivery: Cross-government data sharing facilitates a more comprehensive understanding of citizens' needs and preferences. When various government agencies collaborate and share data, they can create a holistic view of individuals, enabling a more personalized and efficient delivery of public services. This not only enhances the overall citizen experience but also ensures that government resources are used more effectively.
2. Enhanced Decision-Making: Access to a broader range of data allows policymakers and government officials to make more informed decisions. By combining data from different sources, agencies can gain deeper insights into complex societal issues, identify trends, and formulate evidence-based policies. This data-driven decision-making process is essential for addressing challenges ranging from public health crises to economic development.
3. Cost Savings and Efficiency: Cross-government data sharing eliminates duplicative efforts and reduces inefficiencies. When agencies share information, they can streamline processes, cut down on administrative costs, and allocate resources more effectively. This not only maximizes the impact of public spending but also ensures that government services are delivered in a timely and cost-efficient manner.
4. Innovation and Collaboration: Collaboration across government agencies fosters innovation by breaking down silos and encouraging the exchange of ideas. Data sharing opens up opportunities for the development of new technologies, analytical tools, and insights that can benefit multiple sectors. This collaborative approach is particularly crucial in addressing complex challenges that require a multidisciplinary perspective.

Several successful cross-government data sharing projects and initiatives have been implemented globally. Here are a few real-world examples:

1. UK Digital Economy Act - Public Service Delivery: The Digital Economy Act in the UK includes provisions aimed at improving public service delivery through data sharing. It allows public authorities to share data for specific purposes, such as fraud prevention, debt recovery, and public health research. The legislation emphasizes the importance of protecting privacy and ensuring secure data handling.
2. Data.gov.uk - Open Data Portal: Data.gov.uk is the UK government's open data portal, providing a platform for the publication and sharing of various datasets across government departments. This initiative promotes transparency and allows citizens, businesses, and researchers to access and utilize government data for analysis and application development. It includes datasets related to areas such as transportation, healthcare, and education.
3. UK National Pupil Database - Education Data Sharing: The National Pupil Database in the UK is a centralized database containing information about students and their educational achievements. This data is shared among government departments, local authorities, and educational institutions to improve educational planning, monitor performance, and develop evidence-based policies.
4. European Data Portal: The European Data Portal is a pan-European initiative that aims to promote the sharing of open data across EU member states. It provides a single access point to discover and access datasets from various European countries. The initiative encourages transparency, innovation, and the development of data-driven solutions in areas such as agriculture, transportation, and the environment.
5. X-Road - Estonia: Estonia's X-Road is a decentralized data exchange platform that enables secure data sharing between government agencies and private-sector organizations. It forms the backbone of the country's digital governance infrastructure, allowing different entities to exchange information seamlessly. X-Road has been instrumental in Estonia's e-Government initiatives, reducing bureaucracy and improving service delivery.
6. Health Data Hub (HDH) – France: the HDH is a public structure whose objective is to enable project coordinators to easily access non-nominative data hosted on a secure platform, in compliance with regulations and citizens' rights. They will be able to cross-reference and analyze the data in order to improve the quality of care and patient support. For example: DAMAE Medical is using training data made available through the HDH to improve the capacity of their technology to better identify potential signs of skin cancer and demarcate the surgical intervention area better.

Challenges and Considerations.

1. Privacy and Security Concerns: One of the primary challenges associated with cross-government data sharing is the need to safeguard individuals' privacy and protect sensitive information. Robust security measures and strict privacy regulations are essential to ensure that data is handled responsibly and ethically.
2. Interoperability: Government agencies often use different systems and formats for collecting and storing data. Achieving interoperability – the ability of different systems to work together seamlessly – is a significant hurdle. Establishing common standards and protocols is crucial for ensuring smooth data exchange.
3. Legal and Regulatory Barriers: Legal and regulatory frameworks must evolve to support cross-government data sharing initiatives. Clear guidelines on data ownership, consent, and usage must be established to navigate the complex legal landscape and build trust among citizens.
4. Cultural and Organizational Challenges: Overcoming cultural resistance and organizational barriers is essential for successful data sharing initiatives. Government agencies may be accustomed to working independently, and fostering a culture of collaboration requires leadership, communication, and a commitment to a shared vision.

The role of the Cloud and a Modern Data Strategy to Enable Data Sharing at Scale.

While data is abundant and growing rapidly, just producing, storing, and sharing this data doesn’t automatically create value. As public sector organizations accumulate a significant amount of data, much of that data lives in different silos. These silos can require different platforms, different management, different security, and different authorization approaches. All of this increases the operational risk and the operational cost – and can make it difficult to analyze and share that data holistically. Also, these systems are typically not built for exponential growth of event data like log files, click stream data, and machine-generated data from internet of things (IoT) devices.

To overcome these challenges, organizations needs to adopt a modern data strategy that focuses on four key areas:

1. Data product mindset: This means adopting a product-oriented mindset versus a platform-oriented one that is typically seen in traditional data strategies. Product orientation means that we design and create data-enabled offerings that take into account business and technical requirements in order to solve business problems and positively affect the citizen experience and can be shared easily across the government to generate value.
2. Business and technology ownership: Owners of traditional data strategies tend to be technology leaders. A modern data strategy is owned by both the business and technology leaders jointly. Integrating business and technology in this way reflects the importance of data.
3. Governance: According to modern data-driven practices, organizations federate or distribute governance to balance nonnegotiable security, privacy, and regulation concerns with the need to innovate. In a more traditional strategy, teams may create organizational constructs where everything must be tightly controlled by a centralized team, restricting innovative developments for one team’s needs.
4. Technology: Purpose-built data stores and analytics services that are based on business needs allow organizations to build cloud-based platforms that are scalable, resilient and data-sharing enabled by design (in-place data sharing, federated data platform). In contrast, a traditional data strategy can often take a one-size-fits-all approach to data store and analytics services, regardless of the actual need. The scalability limitations of on-premises environments can slow down agility, innovation, and data sharing capabilities.

Conclusion

Cross-government data sharing has the potential to transform the way governments operate, offering improved service delivery, informed decision-making, and increased efficiency. However, to fully realize these benefits, governments must address challenges related to scalability, privacy, security, interoperability, and regulatory frameworks. By adopting a modern data strategy built in the cloud, governments can harness the power of data to create more connected, responsive, and citizen-centric societies.

Author: Samer Madfouni, Principal Data & AI Leader - EMEA Public Sector at AWS 

Register for Cross government data sharing – uncover new possibilities (roundtable sponsored by AWS) taking place on 25 January 
techUK is pleased to partner with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host a roundtable on “Cross government data sharing – uncover new possibilities” set for 25 January at techUK offices in London.