Data protection issues threaten savings from place-based budgeting: Socitm

The potential for “place-based budgeting” to deliver savings could be lost without a better understanding of the value of information and how it should be managed, a report for Socitm has claimed.

Socitm Insight conducted a study of the final reports into the 13 Total Place pilots. This found that “almost every one of them raise serious issues about information availability, quality, sharing and management”.

The report said problems with information exchange between public agencies centred on two main issues – the willingness to share and the format of the data.

“Getting a big picture of what is happening local is frequently prevented by fears, real or imagined, of transgressing the provisions of the Data Protection Act,” it said.

“Data formats can be equally problematic. Data may refer to different areas, or be aggregated at a level higher than the locality of interest. Double counting becomes an issue where there are different tiers of government. Finally, the sheer volumes of information involved present analytical and presentational problems.”

The Socitm report revealed inconsistency in approaches to data handling and exchange and the development of silos. One case study revealed that:

• Council A was able, through local negotiation to access to live birth data, housing benefit data and council tax benefit data.
• Council B worked with its local PCT to gain access to live birth data on a monthly basis
• Council C was unable to access any of this data with both the Primary Care Trust and the local authority’s legal team quoting the Data Protection Act as the barrier to access.

Report author Chris Head said: “If we are to protect the frontline despite the cuts, local, joined up, evidence-based approaches are essential. But these will not happen unless there is better understanding of what can be done now and what might be done in future to ease availability and collation of key datasets required to inform change.

“In addition, public services need to get their information assets in order and ensure that employees have essential skills in analysis, presentation and interpretation of data in order to deliver evidence-based decision-making.”

For more information, go to www.socitm.org.uk.