Looking back over the past 12 months

Evolving Geospatial Data Infrastructures for decision-making across central, regional and local government

1Spatial over the past 12 months

By Matthew White, Senior Business Development Manager

Over the past 12 months I have written several blog articles about the value and evolution of Geospatial Data Infrastructures across central, regional, and local government.

In January I talked about a new decade and new emerging approaches to evolving Geospatial Data Infrastructures. In April the Geospatial Commission announced the new Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA) with Ordnance Survey Great Britain. This will enable the continued evolution of Geospatial Data Infrastructures across the public sector, making geospatial data easier, not harder to work with. In June I talked about the Centre for Digital Built Britain’s pathway towards an information management framework for a national digital twin. Geospatial Data Infrastructures are vital for laying the foundation for digital twins. I also talked about the new and how the strategy will enable the continued evolution of Geospatial Data Infrastructures.

In September I talked about improving the standardisation of local data for regional, national, and international access. Such improvements require both top-down and bottom-up defensive and offensive approaches to specifying data formats and data standards. COVID-19 has highlighted the need to make health and social care data accessible to neighbourhood teams, the wider public and private sector and to research projects at local, regional, national, and international scales. At the beginning of the crisis, when people with clinical needs were required to shield themselves, the Vulnerable Persons Service broke down a huge number of barriers between government departments to deliver more than a million food parcels. The Department of Health and Social Care needed to share patient-level records so other organisations could understand vulnerability. There was a need to connect local, regional, and national delivery teams to co-produce actionable insights from data about vulnerable persons.

Also, in September the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport published the National Data Strategy. The National Data Strategy complements the National Geospatial Strategy.

Finally, in November I talked about  hosting our first online Smarter Data Smarter World conference. Our government day focussed on discussing how organisations are unlocking the value of location data and maintaining public trust in government decision-making using authoritative data by evolving their Geospatial Data Infrastructure. You can catch up on the presentations here.

Co-producing authoritative and actionable information from geospatial data for decision making

From all the engagements and collaborations that I have been involved with this year across government, one recurring theme keeps being discussed and needs addressing.

“There is an increasing need to engage, connect and digitalise local, regional and national delivery teams to co-produce authoritative and actionable information from geospatial data to understand and make decisions about our past, the present and our future.”

COVID-19 has highlighted the need to invest in people and systems for collecting data and storing it in a ready-to-share way. We need to co-produce authoritative and actionable information about our environment, health, transport, planning, housing, infrastructure, and development to name a few. Actionable information is needed to undertake “rear view mirror” assessments, drive changes in the here and now, and shape the future. Co-producing authoritative and actionable data can accelerate and improve delivery and in turn enable more effective decision making.

“Co-producing needs collaboration."

To achieve co-produced authoritative and actionable information requires a scale of collaboration and trust not seen before working across government teams and organisations. Organisations at regional and national levels need to collaborate with organisations at the local level. We are proud to work with teams and organisations at all geographic scales including local authorities, combined authorities, and national government departments. We work to help bridge the gap between local geospatial data and local, regional, and national authoritative and actionable information by evolving their geospatial data infrastructures.

Environment Agency and Defra are national government departments we have worked with to co-produce authoritative and actionable information. We are working collaboratively to automate the delivery of quality and timely asset information from local suppliers for informed decisioning making.

We are also working with the Greater London Authority (a combined authority) to automate the process of transforming and validating authoritative underground asset data into actionable information for utility strike avoidance. This data comes from local suppliers, including utilities and local authorities and is one of the pilots for the National Underground Asset Register.

In a world of increasing connectivity, do you need to evolve your geospatial data infrastructure to bridge the authoritative and actionable information gap between your local, regional, and national partners?

Our approach and tools

The approach we take and tools we offer for evolving geospatial data infrastructures across government follows learning by doing, overcoming by sharing and succeeding together through data collaboration, data automation, data transformation, data validation and data visualisation principles.

• Data Collaboration – working with employees and stakeholders internally and externally to share data management responsibilities and connect authoritative and actionable data at local, regional, and national scales using 1Data Gateway and Location Master Data Management tools.
• Data Automation – operationalising automated data workflows to manage and share authoritative and actionable data at local, regional, and national scales using 1Data Gateway, 1Integrate, FME and Geocortex
• Data Transformation – making data fit for purpose by transferring data between data source(s) and target interface(s) using Safe Software’s FME
• Data Validation – ensuring data is both correct and complete using 1Integrate.
• Data Visualisation – making authoritative and actionable information accessible using VertiGIS’s Geocortex

We are supporting organisations across central, regional and local government to bridge the gap between local geospatial data and local, regional, and national actionable information. This is achieved by evolving their geospatial data infrastructures and adopting the above principles. We have expertise in data engineering and DataOps to improve the use of geospatial data as information through better data quality, shorter cycle times and effective data management.

Find out more

If you would like to find out more about how we work with central, regional and local government organisations to connect and unlock the value of location by evolving geospatial data infrastructures, please contact us.