Public Services Best Practice Insight Group 4

It is clear that many of the new Government’s ambitions for more streamlined, efficient and localised public services can only be met if the information we already collect and hold is managed and shared more effectively.

At the moment, there is great duplication of effort even within the same organisation, leading to ineffective processes, additional cost and, in the most extreme cases, serious harm to vulnerable citizens.

Yet the cultural, legislative and practical barriers to exploiting information more effectively seem as intractable as ever. Do a new Government and the massive constraints on public finances offer real opportunities to make progress?  

In this session we will be hearing from senior figures from both the public and private sector as a prompt for debate and experience sharing. Confirmed speakers include:

·         Michelle Whittle - Tell Us Once (TUO) programme. Information management and sharing has been at the heart of the TUO initiative and Michelle will outline the key achievements of the programme and the information challenges it will face as it develops from bereavement into areas such as change of address notification

·         Robert Hardy former Director of Improvement and Engagement at Kent County Council. Robert will draw on Kent’s own work as well as its experience as a Total Place pilot to set out an agenda for more effective information management in the future, taking into account the financial context and the new Government’s agenda

·         Nick Sawbridge, Vice President and General Manager, Unisys’s Public Sector. Nick will draw on a range of case studies from the public and private sector to illustrate how better information management can be used to improve services while reducing cost.

We will draw on practical case studies to address key issues in information management, addressing questions such as:

1.       What are the opportunities to support front line services by managing information better?

2.       What are the potential cost savings from reducing duplication and streamlining processes?

3.       What are the risks involved in greater information sharing – for instance, with the local voluntary and community groups envisaged as key players in the ‘Big Society’?

4.       To what extent will the new public service context enable us to address the barriers to better information management and use?