Covid-19: Data for local resilience and recovery

Over the coming months, I’ll be posting a series of articles on issues arising from, and responses to, Covid-19 in the UK and beyond. In the first of this series, I discuss data for local resilience and recovery based on a webinar of the same title delivered by the Connected Places Catapult. The focus here is on the importance of place based responses. 

Data is a key tool in driving local services – the identification of needs and prioritisation of resources, as well as in shaping policy. The current Covid-19 crisis requires a rapid identification of known and new needs to shape the delivery of services. This is both an immediate task as well as one that will be critical in supporting communities to recover.

The session was chaired by Ben Hawes, Associate Director of the Connected Place Catapult. Speakers included:

• Nicola Mallett, Head of Profession for Data and Analytics, Essex County Council
• Eddie Copeland, Director of the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI)
• Sunayana Sen, Project Manager, DARAJA – Developing Risk Awareness through Joint Action, at Resurgence
• Isaac Squires, Data Scientist, Connected Places Catapult.

My interest in data comes from an understanding of its value – for personal and public good; and with it, the opportunities and costs. Working alongside John Kellas, we’ve supported local health and care analysts in Bristol and developed an open knowledge base, Advancing Analytics and AI in health and care. 

Data requirements during Covid-19

Local government plays an essential role in identifying and providing services that are place based and directed at communities and individuals. And this is underpinned by data, data analytics and insight.

One of the most urgent and immediate tasks has been to identify the vulnerable, including those that are shielding. But there will be many more people who will need to be identified, including those who are ‘newly’ vulnerable perhaps through having recently lost of job, those at a heightened risk of mental health issues, where there may be child protection issues, or where there’s a real risk of hunger.

This is complex to do. For example, identifying children in receipt of free school meals whose families are eligible for food vouchers can be challenging in cases where children go to school outside their immediate council area.

This has meant reprioritising the work of those working with data. For Essex County Council, their three priorities are on using data to

• save lives,
• support the most vulnerable, and
• to support recovery in the longer term.

But how data is managed is done differently across the country and it is a mixed picture with some local organisations finding it difficult to identify and access the data they need.  It could be the case that the data needed sits across a number of data sources, or there are issues with data sharing.

And data is also critical in supporting long term planning for resilience. In the international context, Resurgence, a social enterprise with projects in Kenya and Tanzania amongst others work with stakeholders to convert data into usable information that communities can take to build longer term resilience to climate change. The current crisis throws up particular challenges for these communities where many live in densely populated communities and many are vulnerable. This is made even more challenging in cities like Nairobi where the arrival of Covid-19 coincided with the rainy season which in itself can trigger flooding and an upsurge in disease.

Improvements in data-sharing and management in the current crisis

Data sharing across systems and ensuring data is timely, necessary, and accurate, is a knotty issue and not one that can be easily resolved. Apparent in the current crisis is the need for a place based approach tailored to individual and community needs.

Particular challenges include:

• a variable picture across the system of sharing health and social care data;
• access to timely death data from local boroughs – including deaths in care homes and at homes related to Covid-19;
• a lack of consistency of across different local authorities of the data they have access to;
• different authorities having different rules and standards for data sharing; and,
• cost, with some tech suppliers charging local authorities to access their own data.

But there are also real opportunities to do things differently including:

• to improve the sharing of health and social care data within legal frameworks to ensure supports gets to where it’s needed and to avoid duplication where people currently provide similar information, sometimes on multiple occasions across different systems;
• to ensure more timely death reporting to help provide a clear assessment of how well current interventions are working including lockdown and to ensure people get the support and resources they need; and,
• to build consistency across local authorities in terms of data to support local needs, as well as enable the development of a coherent national picture of the impact of the current crisis;

Going forward, there will also be the need for different types of data. How do we embed lived experience as the situation evolves? Support community led data sharing and platforms? How do we better facilitate data sharing and open data?

Data for social and economic recovery

Data will be critical for informing longer term social and economic recovery. But how do we develop policy informed by data that gives us a clear picture of what’s happening on high streets and in communities?  

And what role will there be for open data and community led data insights? For making a wider set of tools available to a range of organisations but that sit outside but are critical to the delivery of services such as charities?

Work is going on across the system. With John Kellas, I’ve been involved with helping develop Bristol’s innovative Our Data Programme through hackathons and supporting a community conversation about the use of data and information in and around Bristol city. 

Partnerships are more important than they’ve ever been, including building new relationships across districts and boroughs. Stronger place based approaches are also important here. Linked to this is the opportunity to use good models and share good practice including open access policies such as the Open Covid Pledge.* 

Workforce capacity building

A theme touched on in all the discussions I’ve been part of on data, data analytics and insight is that there’s an ongoing need for build workforce capacity.

Essex County Council are upskilling capacity to grown and nurture talent across Essex. This also involves creating dedicated resource around health and social care analytics, focusing on a coordinated system wide approach including working with Clinical Commissioning Groups and Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships.

Connected Place have also put in place a series of data science fellowships, working with local authorities to build capacity.

And Bristol Health Partners have an ongoing Our Data Programme of work. As noted, John Kellas and I (Co-directors of This Equals), will be delivering a data analytics training event later in the year. While the focus is on South West England, engagement from further afield is welcome. Get in touch if you’d like to know more. 

*With thanks to John Kellas for flagging this point.