Data strategy

The effective use of data to inform our activities and decision making can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our services, the quality of outputs and ultimately improve community outcomes.

Our ambition

Our data strategy supports our ambition to be an outstanding fire and rescue service in the following ways:

By becoming more data-led and performance focused, across all areas of the Service, ensuring the most effective and targeted use of resources and best community outcomes
By building trust and confidence in the data reporting, through ensuring the accuracy and reliability of data sources
Establishing a single source of truth for all data items which will enable data-informed decision making at all levels of the organisation
By providing greater transparency through more frequent publication of more information about our activities and performance, enabling appropriate levels of scrutiny and meeting the expectations of external stakeholders

Where we want to be

During the life of this strategy, we aim to:

Improve our data management and governance capabilities to deliver better data quality and a single source of truth, and ensure all data is captured, stored, processed, retained and accessed in accordance with relevant legislation and industry best practice
Improve levels of data literacy across the organisation, ensuring staff have the appropriate skills and knowledge to be able to effectively access and utilise the data and information they need to fulfil their roles
Develop a more proactive and strategic business intelligence function able to provide insights to departments, highlighting risks and supporting proactive management decisions
Move towards a greater level of self-service for internal information requests, empowering staff to scrutinise their own data
Review stakeholder reporting and adopt a consistent means of reporting
Improve availability and access to information and performance reporting across the organisation, and externally to the public, to encourage greater levels of engagement and provide increased transparency

Operating context

We collect and use data across the whole service as part of daily activities, involving a wide range of systems. Our collection, management and use of data is subject to legislation including the Data Protection Act (2018) and the Freedom of Information Act (2000). Information governance and data security are key considerations in every procurement process, contract and data sharing agreement.

To ensure we fully comply with the legislation, we need to complete the work already underway to compile a full record of processing activity (ROPA) and implement processes to maintain it. We also aim to be fully compliant with the Data Management fire standard and to adopt best practice using guidance developed by the NFCC Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) team, including the NFCC Data Methodology Framework. The NFCC DDaT strategy and roadmap has established priorities and outlines the national vision for improvement, aligned to the national Fit for the Future objectives.

Access to our systems and data is secured through access rights determined by role, to ensure colleagues have access to the systems and data they need to be able to perform their duties. User profiles and some access rights are managed by the ICT team using Active Directory. The current process requires manual intervention and relies to a degree on subject matter expertise and individual knowledge and experience. The responsibility for managing access to some systems is devolved to system administrators. We aim to develop the control and governance systems to mitigate the 'key person' risks and ensure that this process is managed more effectively.

Across the service, we use many discrete systems to collect and process data. Whilst training is typically provided to all users when a new system is implemented, the training for people taking on new roles can be more ad-hoe, sometimes provided by colleagues rather than subject matter experts. The approach to providing training when systems are incrementally improved or developed varies. As a result, there is attrition in the knowledge and understanding of systems across the user base which in turn can lead to inefficient use of systems and issues with data quality. This is a particular issue with CFRMIS, our system for capturing risk information about people and premises and recording activities untaken in relation to those risks. Over the life of this strategy, we will make significant investment in addressing issues with data quality, usability and user knowledge, to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of activities which rely on this system.

Interoperability between core systems is limited which leads in some cases to duplication of data entry, issues with data quality and impacts on productivity and effectiveness. Over the next five years, a number of these systems are coming to the end of their contracts, providing a significant opportunity for a strategic review of business requirements, including the requirements for interoperability, integration and data sharing.

PowerBI is our main platform for reporting and analysing data, for the purposes of performance management and decision making.

Many of our systems feed data into the underlying data warehouse. Our aim is to integrate data feeds from most systems used across the service. Currently, there are separate reporting capabilities within our finance and HR systems which are managed by the systems administrators or support teams in those areas.

As well as meeting internal reporting requirements, we collate and provide data to several external stakeholders, most notably the Fire Authority, the Home Office and HMICFRS who require regular data returns. Reporting cycles are not aligned and the processes for report generation require a degree of manual intervention and, in some cases, data manipulation. This results in inefficiencies in report production, and differences in the data reported, which in turn can cause confusion and undermine confidence in the outputs. There is a need to develop a single source of truth for all data, and a common set of data definitions, to eliminate misunderstandings and promote trust and confidence in reporting. Synchronising reporting cycles and automating report production as far as possible will improve efficiency and will release capacity within the Business Intelligence Hub to develop more advanced analytics capabilities.

Resources/ delivery model

The statutory role of Information Governance Officer oversees day to day compliance with data protection laws and is the central point of contact for all freedom of information and subject access requests. We have a robust data protection impact assessment process, that ensures data requirements are fully considered whenever new ways of working, activities or projects are considered.

The Business Intelligence Hub is responsible for the development and delivery of management information reporting and dashboards within Power BI, supporting strategic and tactical risk-based targeting of service delivery, maintaining community and operational risk profiles, and supporting key systems including CFRMIS, IRS, PowerBI, SharePoint and WebGIS.

Financial reporting and much of the HR reporting is produced by subject matter experts within our Finance and People teams, who also act as systems administrators for their respective systems.

Delivering the strategy

Over the life of this strategy, we will deliver the following:

Year 1	Support the development of tools for risk profiling, including the pilot of the CEDFRAC tool developed in collaboration with NTU for understanding communities and targeting DICE activities Support the staged implementation of the new mobilising system through integration of systems and provision of reporting Complete the migration of all existing reports into the PowerBl.com environment Develop repeatable processes for maintaining accuracy and consistency of reports and dashboards as requirements change Develop and implement data quality management best practice guidance to ensure the accuracy, completeness and reliability of data in line with the Data Management Fire Standard & NFCC Data Methodology Framework Define clear roles and responsibilities for data management and capture all our datasets via the implementation of a ROPA (Record of processing activities) Complete data cleansing, implement data retention policies and develop a methodology for tracking data quality within CFRMIS Integrate the gazetteer into CFRMIS Deliver the user training plan for CFRMIS to ensure correct system use Support and where appropriate adopt the recommendations from the digital maturity assessment
Year 2	Review the requirement for the further development of data dashboards across the organisation Explore the use of geospatial analysis tools to map incidents and activity data to support a data-led approach to service delivery Support the roll-out of FarDaP, the replacement system for IRS Develop the methodology for external reporting of performance Continue to support and where appropriate adopt the recommendations from the digital maturity assessment
Year 3	Investigate the use of data cleansing and validation tools to maintain high data standards Develop up-to-date reporting of incident data and key prevention and protection activities, available on the website and on the intranet Implement a refined reporting process, that synergises current reporting into single adopted metrics across all data users

Outcomes

The successful delivery of this strategy will result in:

Increased confidence in data & reporting mechanisms
Proactive provision of management information
Increased use of data to support evidenced led decision making
Greater transparency of data and self-service capability for internal and external stakeholders
Improved efficiencies from self-service access to key data areas
Improved data quality - via governance and clearly defined data quality processes & quality assurance
A move towards automation and efficiency in data access for key reporting internally. i.e. SDEAG and externally i.e. Fire Authority, HMICFRS and Home Office returns
Compliance with statute with regards to ROPA and GDPR