Developing a Data Strategy for Liverpool City Council

We supported the council its first step towards its goal of using data for effective decision-making and delivering a better service for residents and businesses across the city.

Background

Liverpool City Council had outlined its plans to embrace new technology and ways of working in its Digital, Data and Technology Strategy for 2024-28. As part of this, the local authority had identified it could improve how it delivers its services for residents and businesses by making better use of its data to drive effective decision-making and service transformation.

Our Brief and Goal

Civiteq won the tender to build a data strategy focused on what the council should do to guide its decision-making. They asked us to deliver a strategy that would enable them to take advantage of their key information for the benefit of the people and businesses that use their services.

“We needed a third-party organisation to help us articulate the realities of our situation in an unbiased, informative and helpful way. We wanted to understand where we are, where we want to be and what we need to do to get there.”

Ivan Hart, ICT Operations Delivery Group Manager, Liverpool City Council

Our Approach

Our work included:

Workshops, one-to-one interviews and surveys to assess the council’s data maturity.
Discovering our client’s motivators, drivers and goals.
Definition of data standards – establishing rules around how the council should use its data to achieve its objectives.
Mapping of the council’s current functional data architecture.
A governance model to standardise how the data could be controlled across the organisation, so it can be used strategically at a corporate level.
Creating a strategy for continuous improvement.
Advice on how to structure the data team.
Mapping of the council’s future data architecture and analytics pipeline.
Knowledge transfer workshops to help the client understand what they need to do and how.
An indicative data operating model – with a recommendation to establish a full data operating model.
A data strategy report.

“We built a relationship with the council that allowed us to have open and direct conversations, and this good rapport continued all the way through.”

Jason Stirling, Principal Consultant, Civiteq

We partnered with Simpson Associates for the technical aspects of this project and their collaboration included:

Running use-case workshops and the creation of a supporting prioritisation matrix to identify the pilot and future uses of data within the platform.
Recommendations on the type of technology the council should use.
Detail about the skills and capabilities needed to support that technology.
A roadmap of key deliverables at 6, 12, 18 and 24 month milestones.

“We delivered an evidence-based review and recommendations the client could now take to its board to approve the change and get funding.”

Reiss McSporran, Principal Consultant, Simpson Associates

The Biggest Challenge

Working with a partner on the project added an extra layer of complexity, but we quickly established a good working relationship with the team at Simpson Associates.

Another challenge was the realisation the technology platform that would be the best fit for the council was a more expensive option than its original choice.

“We backed up our recommendation with evidence of how it would be the best platform for what the council was looking to achieve,” explains Reiss.

Outcomes and Benefits

Now we’ve delivered the data strategy, Liverpool City Council has a plan and roadmap for how it could manage and use its data to drive performance and innovation, aligned with its wider corporate strategy. The next step for the council is to decide on its future ‘to be’ model and technical architecture, i.e. how the council will operate and the technology it will use.

Ivan Comments: “The input from Civiteq and Simpson Associates will help to shape our final decisions. And I enjoyed working with Jason from Civiteq, who was engaging, helpful and had a ‘let’s get this done’ attitude. I also appreciated the weekly reports, which kept us on our toes.”

Jason Adds: “We’ve given the council the first step on their journey, which has prompted a lot of useful conversations. Everything we’ve done is based on best practice and what we believe is best for them and what they’re looking to achieve.”