local authoirity customer story: mid kent improvement partnership

Local Authority Customer Story

Mid Kent Improvement Partnership

Local Authority Case Study

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Local authorities have been subject to a number of budget cuts in recent years. As

the UK government has worked to ease the country back to stability after the

2009 recession, councils have typically felt the squeeze of funding cuts. As

a result, there is a constant pressure on them to make their resources

stretch further and to achieve more while avoiding additional costs.

Big data makes this possible. By analysing the information

accumulated by a variety of input sources, such as

council tax payment methods and parking permit

services, local authorities are able to identify

areas where costs can be minimised, as well as

where extra funding is necessary or whether

there is any potential fraudulent activity.

However, this is only achievable with an

effective approach to analysing and

reporting this data, something that

has traditionally proven difficult

for councils with larger

constituencies.


The concept of big data has gone from strength to strength in recent years. With more

businesses, devices and services making use of internet connectivity and wireless functionality,

there is an abundance of data being generated at every possible moment.

Although making sense of this information can be challenging, doing so provides businesses with

actionable insights that make an organisation more effective and make resources go further. This

is particularly important for local authorities in light of constant pressure to do more with less, as

Mid Kent Services (MKS) has been demonstrating for the past six months.

Our previous approaches to managing and analysing data were very one-dimensional

and unable to provide useful cross-referencing

functionality.

Andy SturtivantTCA Project Manager

MKS

The Mid-Kent Improvement Partnership (MKIP) / Mid-Kent Services

(MKS) is a partnership with an aim to improve and reduce the cost of

key services to residents across Mid-Kent, with the partnership

remaining flexible enough to meet the demands of each partner.

Mid Kent Services (MKS) is one of a

handful of local authority partnerships

working to tackle this problem. The

partnership, which consists of Maidstone,

Swale and Tunbridge Wells Borough

Councils, shares a combined ICT

department that works to serve all three

boroughs.

This accounts for roughly 410,000

individuals, which subsequently produces

a high volume of data and makes analysis

a laborious and time-consuming process.

This problem is exacerbated when you

consider that individuals with specialist

analytical skills are often needed to

interpret and present the raw data into

something more useful.

It is becoming more widely acknowledged

that companies and organisations require

business intelligence software to make

big data work for them. This was recently

highlighted in Gartner’s 2016 CIO Agenda

Report, which featured business

intelligence and analytics as the top

trending priority from a poll of nearly

3,000 Chief Information Officers (CIOs)

globally.

In fact, this is the fifth consecutive year that

business intelligence has been top priority.

As a result, it is of little surprise that MKS

turned to business intelligence software to

help bring together its many data sets into

one central location.

The partnership put in a successful bid for

funding from the Transformation

Challenge Award (TCA), a scheme

introduced by the Department for

Communities and Local Government

(DCLG), in 2014.

A portion of this funding was dedicated to

investment in software, the aim of which

was to simplify the cross-referencing of

data sets to aid each individual council in

meeting government-imposed spending

targets.

An intelligence

approach to big data

The brief we gave to Connexica

was for software that could work across a

number of projects within the partnership to analyse

a variety of data types


MKS


In order to achieve this, the business intelligence software had to be capable of drawing

information from the large quantity of sources and cross-reference it all effectively, while also

allowing for partnership-wide data reports.

“The brief we gave to Connexica was for software that could work across a number of projects

within the partnership to analyse a variety of data types,” explained Andy Sturtivant, TCA Project

Manager at MKS. “The software was required to not only analyse and cross-reference all of this

data, but to also draw it from several data streams to boost efficiency.

Although making sense of this information can be challenging, doing so provides businesses with

actionable insights that make an organisation more effective and make resources go further. This is

particularly important for local authorities in light of constant pressure to do more with less, as Mid

Kent Services (MKS) has been demonstrating for the past six months.

“Our previous approaches to managing and analysing data were very one-dimensional and unable to

provide useful cross-referencing functionality. With much of the data that we are

making use of, it can only truly benefit us when we are able to see a more

comprehensive overview of information across the partnership.”

The ability to cross-reference data sets was especially important in

reducing administrative costs for the borough councils. In one

of the MKS projects, Swale Borough Council wanted to

use business intelligence software to reduce the

cost of processing payments for council services.

Although Swale Borough Council was

already processing some of its electronic

payments automatically, without the

need for staff to complete transactions, a

large amount of service users in the

mid-Kent region were still using

traditional methods such as

cheques or phone payments.

This resulted in elevated

operational costs for the local

authorities.

The software was required to not only analyse and

cross-reference all of this data, but to also draw it

from several data streams to boost efficiency.


MKS

In fact, this is the fifth consecutive year that

business intelligence has been top priority.

As a result, it is of little surprise that MKS

turned to business intelligence software to

help bring together its many data sets into

one central location.

The partnership put in a successful bid for

funding from the Transformation

Challenge Award (TCA), a scheme

introduced by the Department for

Communities and Local Government

(DCLG), in 2014.

A portion of this funding was dedicated to

investment in software, the aim of which

was to simplify the cross-referencing of

data sets to aid each individual council in

meeting government-imposed spending

targets.


In order to achieve this, the business intelligence software had to be capable of drawing

information from the large quantity of sources and cross-reference it all effectively, while also

allowing for partnership-wide data reports.

Connexica is a business intelligence

company formed in 2006 that specialises

in making an organisation's data

actionable.

This is achieved using CXAIR, a

search-based analytics program that can

draw from multiple data streams and

allow for effective cross-referencing.

The software has proven popular within

the healthcare sector for bringing

together data from a wide range of

sources and producing intuitive visual

reports and dashboards.

“CXAIR is designed to easily integrate a

multitude of data streams, whether it’s

within an SME or even encompassing an

entire county,” explained Greg Richards,

Sales and Marketing Director at

Connexica. “However, being able to

gather data from multiple sources raises

the challenge of dealing with low quality

data.

One of the objectives for Swale Borough

Council in particular was to identify those

customers who already make some form

of direct debit or electronic payment for

some services, but continue to use

traditional payment methods for other

services where automation isn't available.

Uniting the data

CXAIR is designed to easily

integrate a multitude of data streams, whether it’s within an SME

or even encompassing an entire county


MKS


This costly and laborious process has traditionally been one of the biggest barriers to making use of

big data and gaining deeper insights from it.

“Undoubtedly one of the biggest grievances companies face when deciding on analytics software is

just how effective it really is at providing genuine insight,” continued Richards. “Business

Intelligence has become increasingly high on CIO priority lists in recent years, so there are a lot of

start-ups creating analytical software. However, it often requires specially-trained analysts to draw

any valuable insight from what is collected.

Traditional analytics software struggles

when presented with data that contains

inconsistencies — usually errors that were

introduced when the data was entered into

the system.

Even a missing space in a postcode, for

example, can throw off many analytics

solutions.

“Fortunately, CXAIR addresses this issue by

running data validation processes as it

receives information. This allows us to

identify these potential problems from the

very beginning and resolve them before

errors occur, helping to ensure all future data

is high quality.”

However, even having high quality data is

not enough. Hiring the right people, with

the right technical expertise to analyse,

interpret and present the data in a way that

makes it easy to digest for non-technical

staff is equally as important.

Data Security

“One of our biggest priorities when choosing the right business

intelligence software was that of data protection and

security,” explained Sturtivant from MKS.

“Much of the information that councils work with

is of a sensitive nature and so it must be handled

in accordance with a number of regulatory

guidelines.”

With CXAIR we set out to achieve a democratisation of business

intelligence, which is the process of enabling any member of staff,

regardless of their technical know-how, to navigate the

information and understand it.

Greg RichardsSales & Marketing Director

Connexica


This costly and laborious process has traditionally been one of the biggest barriers to making use of

big data and gaining deeper insights from it.

“Undoubtedly one of the biggest grievances companies face when deciding on analytics software is

just how effective it really is at providing genuine insight,” continued Richards. “Business

Intelligence has become increasingly high on CIO priority lists in recent years, so there are a lot of

start-ups creating analytical software. However, it often requires specially-trained analysts to draw

any valuable insight from what is collected.

Traditional analytics software struggles

when presented with data that contains

inconsistencies — usually errors that were

introduced when the data was entered into

the system.

Even a missing space in a postcode, for

example, can throw off many analytics

solutions.

“Fortunately, CXAIR addresses this issue by

running data validation processes as it

receives information. This allows us to

identify these potential problems from the

very beginning and resolve them before

errors occur, helping to ensure all future data

is high quality.”

However, even having high quality data is

not enough. Hiring the right people, with

the right technical expertise to analyse,

interpret and present the data in a way that

makes it easy to digest for non-technical

staff is equally as important.

“With CXAIR we set out to achieve a democratisation of business intelligence, which is the process of

enabling any member of staff, regardless of their technical know-how, to navigate the information and

understand it.

This has many benefits for a variety of businesses, but is of particular importance to councils looking to

minimise costs. After all, using analytics to reduce administrative fees is counterproductive if the

authority has to pay a specialist to do so!”

One of our biggest priorities

when choosing the right business intelligence

software was that of data protection and security


MKS

One such regulation is the Data

Protection Act (DPA) 1998. The DPA 1998

outlines that all personal data held by

businesses or organisations must abide

by eight data protection principles, the

seventh of which relates to the security of

held information.

This covers protection from both

third-party compromisation and

accidental data loss.

However, this causes concerns for many

local authorities. There is currently a

heated technological debate about the

security of cloud computing, which is the

platform that many web-based services

use for handling programs and data.

In fact, the 2016 state of the cloud survey

revealed that many IT staff believe that

security is the one of the biggest

challenges to cloud implementation –

second only to functional competency.

To calm those fears, Connexica uses a mix

of cloud and local storage. The software

itself is based in a private cloud,

accessible only to an organisation’s

workforce and keeps a local index of

information. or MKS, the data streams

Implementing business intelligence

software into a system can come with a

unique set of challenges in each

application. Whenever an organisation rolls

out a new piece of software or a new

computer system, it often places a steep

learning curve on staff to get up to speed

quickly. In order to overcome this,

Connexica provided a series of training

sessions to MKS, including admin setup and

dashboard navigation, to ensure staff were

fluent in the software.

“The support we received from the team at

Connexica was excellent. They guided us

through the installation process and helped

with minor teething problems,” continued

Sturtivant. “After setting up CXAIR

promptly, the team remained on hand to

help, ensuring that it was the ideal solution

for the partnership.”


Challenges of business

intelligence

Making big data work

The use of business intelligence software has streamlined the tasks of MKS. Within Maidstone

Borough Council, for example, one such task was monitoring and analysing the housing options in

the borough. This had previously been a time-consuming process involving three separate systems,

but is now all done within CXAIR.

The benefits of this were that staff could see at a glance whether household spending was in line

with audited household income, which in turn informed decision-making. Likewise, the centralised

location of data made for better management of funding for temporary accommodation —

something particularly important in light of the area’s rising reports of homelessness.

These efficiency and business-planning benefits are possible with the combined use of big data and

easily-accessible business intelligence software. As the quantity of generated and accumulated data

continues to increase, it will only become more important for higher numbers of staff to be able to

make use of it.

While not every company or organisation will face the same budgetary

limitations as local authorities, many are under the same pressure of

streamlining processes and increasing return on investment.

Effective business intelligence software is the key to

achieving this and making resources go further

and gain a competitive advantage in the

process.

The support we received from the team at Connexica was excellent. After setting up CXAIR promptly,

the team remained on hand to help, ensuring that it was the ideal

solution for the partnership.


MKS


local authoirity customer story: mid kent improvement partnership

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