I believe it was Donald Rumsfeld who made the following mind bending statement: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” Confused? So is our public sector when it comes to the Herculean task of making sense of the huge amount of data at their disposal and the information it could offer them about patterns and trends in public life.
Recent findings from Policy Exchange show how the government could make astronomically high savings of £33 billion a year through better understanding and use of existing data. During the running of public services, from managing welfare payments and the NHS, education and crime, through to issuing passports and driving licenses, extraordinary quantities of data have been amassed. There is great potential for improved public administration, services and the citizen experience, if it were shared, analysed or brought together.
The Labour government pushed for the publishing of state collected information in Britain but the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition that took power in May 2010 paved the way, convinced that liberating more state data would help devolve power and raise standards. The new data landscape has presented enormous opportunities to businesses, which can now trawl through endless treasure troves of data to hone their offerings.
Forward thinking companies have been quick to benefit from sharing their data freely, while improving their own service and attracting new business in the process.
One example is in transport, where freely downloadable applications and access to direct feeds have raised the quality of their service while also lowering the cost of providing it. London Transport, which runs the capital’s buses and underground trains, made its live transport data freely available in 2011 which has saved them a fortune in customer communications and helps them deal with disruptions, as well informed passengers can quickly identify alternative routes.
An information revolution has emerged through the internet, which has dramatically increased the quantity of management information available, the resolution and frequency at which it is captured, and the speed at which it can be processed. But churning out data isn’t enough to transform Britain’s public services. Thorough analysis is needed in order to deliver entirely new insights into the underlying dynamics of a population, market or business. By examining the relationships embedded in large data sets it is possible to build a new generation of models describing how things are likely to evolve. Modern technology enables fragments of related information to be matched and linked quickly. Data on processes and productivity can be captured and used in extensive detail to generate insights that leaders can act on, which is immensely powerful for helping the government deliver forecasts for aspects of public life.
The challenge for technology companies like Phoebus is to seek ways of not only enabling companies to manage costs, but to help them in a larger business role. Mortgage companies must manage large amounts of data and their success or failure is essentially established by their ability to marshall that data and use it not only profitably, but in compliance with an ever more complex regulatory structure.
Paul Hunt is managing director of Phoebus Software
