Southwark Council
The Customer
Southwark Council are situated in South London and is connected by bridges across the River Thames to the City of London and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is home to famous attractions like The Shard, Tate Modern, and Shakespeare’s Globe. With over 317,000 residents, the council is one of the biggest local authorities in the UK. Supported by 4,000 employees, LBS work to achieve their unified vision of becoming a data enabled council.
Hitachi Solutions has had a longstanding and successful partnership with the council. Since November 2019, our experts have worked collaboratively with LBS to leverage Microsoft technology and data solutions to enhance the resident experience.
In May 2021 we began our data partnership with LBS. This ongoing four-year data programme focuses on establishing a Modern Data Platform (MDP) that will provide the council with a holistic single view of their data, as part of their vision of ‘One Platform, One Council’, and also help to ensure effective data governance.
The Challenge
Like many other local authorities across the UK, LBS had a fragmented data estate, causing challenges with the data that was held across the council.
As applications and technology have advanced over the last twenty years, different tools have been created to fit the purpose of the service area using them. While this works to keep the processes and information neat within the specific service area, it has made it challenging to see a holistic view and leverage the full value of their data.
LBS found that a lot of their systems had multiple entries and identified that the work they were doing already across the Microsoft technology stack would be complimented by developing a Modern Data Platform (MDP).
With over 300 services provided by LBS, this highlighted a critical need to understand what data is being held, bring together multiple disparate data sets, and create a single platform for intelligence and reporting purposes. This would increase the efficiency of response times, reduce service isolation, and support LBS’ vision of having a ‘One Platform, One Council’ view.
Having that data and information to hand can only lead to more creative and more efficient solutions moving forward.
Adam Dannatt
Assistant Director of Repairs
The Solution
Using a personalised data strategy, Hitachi Solutions experts leveraged Microsoft Azure MDP to bring together data from different lines of business systems including, Mosaic, NEC, and Capita, into a single platform view. The MDP allows the council to use data from multiple sources to create comprehensive reports which enhances their ability to manage and deliver services effectively.
Some LBS teams previously had to gather data and compile reports manually every month. With the MDP, this process is automated, reducing the time required from 3 days to 2-3 hours.
The new ‘One Council, One Platform’ view helps various departments, one example being the Repair Services team. The data provided by the MDP gives them greater visibility of their ‘hotspots’ of demand and where repairs are happening. Having better data helps the team to be more proactive and manage repair services more effectivity.
Another example is ‘Supporting Families’, one of the dashboard tools used by LBS. This tool uses a combination of police, education, social care, revs and bens, and housing data, to give a single view of a household. It then checks the household’s information against complex eligibility criteria to prompt whether funding can be claimed. The ability to drill down into data points from the report ensures confidence in the information being shown.
If we have more evidence-based ways of working, we can improve our understanding of what our residents need and we can tailor our services and programmes specifically to those needs.
Tom Seery
Head of Programme – Knowledge & Intelligence
The Benefits
The MDP solution has brought many advantages to LBS, mainly the ability to make better data-driven decisions. The council is now equipped with a robust data ecosystem that empowers them to be more proactive, gives them a better understanding of resident’s unique situations, and allows them to deliver the best services.
Data Confidence
More Efficient
Increased Independence
Upskilling
Working with Hitachi Solutions has allowed us to have multidisciplinary teams. Having an experienced team to mentor our people and help them upskill has been really crucial to the success of the programme.
Dionne Lowndes
Chief Digital and Technology Officer
The Future
The future for LBS’s ‘One Platform, One Council’ programme is to continue ingesting data from different areas of the business into the data platform by promoting the MDP to service areas that can use this amalgamated data to improve their respective areas. LBS and Hitachi Solutions will roll out the MDP to Housing, Customer Experience, and Planning next.
There are also plans to roll out Microsoft Fabric which will allow LBS to integrate even more advanced capabilities such as AI and data modelling. LBS will be one of the first councils to deploy this progressive technology.