Public sector innovation: smarter systems making life easier for everyone

Progressive companies are leading the way when it comes to embracing Enterprise Cloud Data Management to streamline processes, save time and money, and facilitate better business decision making.

But the public sector is also gaining momentum with digital innovation – recognising the potential for smart platforms to make managing their incredible breadth and depth of customer data faster and simpler.

 And why not? Who doesn’t want faster, more agile and more efficient government systems? They free up time so public servants can focus on higher level tasks, and make it easy to compile accurate and more complete customer profiles (thereby reducing errors that can have painful consequences for the department and the public) while still respecting all relevant privacy regulations.

This is particularly useful in departments that, by their nature, need to manage a lot of customer or identity data – such as the ATO, Human Services (which administers Centrelink, Medicare and family support payments), the AFP and ACIC, among others.

Instead of disparate records, a single source of truth now allows for the compilation of accurate, consistent and complete customer profiles. I.e.: rather than having a bit of Bob’s information here, and a bit of Bob’s information there, we can get a fuller picture of who Bob is – allowing us to deliver services to Bob quickly and efficiently.

We can also provide Bob with access to clever self-service systems that make it easier for him to get accurate information on his own (i.e.: Bob can now find out where all of his superannuation is held, so that he can roll it all into a single fund).

Having operated with siloed, legacy systems for so long, it’s almost inspiring to see what can be achieved when proper master data management is implemented in the public sector and a single source of truth is created.

However, the beauty of a single source of truth is that it is, in fact, truthful. And when it comes to mass amounts of data from disparate sources, getting to that truth requires more than your average data matching implementation.

Compiling truly accurate customer data

Manually verifying customer data is painstaking and time consuming.

Therefore, you must be able to trust that your data management platform has performed its own checks and measures (smart data matching) for relevance, accuracy, and completeness. This includes knowing that the system has peered across all customer touchpoints and records to present the most correct, current customer profile. 

In the public sector, this could mean collating disparate records from inside the same department, across multiple departments, or across the department and an external provider (such as a financial institution).

Put simply, data must be clean and unduplicated, or we can never completely trust it.

This assuredness of accuracy is a crucial step in all new data platform implementations, but will be especially crucial for government departments moving forward. Their single source of truth must be exactly that – with every expectation of veracity and entirety.

Excitingly, support is now available for smart data matching technology to operate fully within big data environments, such as Cloudera Hadoop. This means that every interaction with a customer (en masse) can help in forming a complete and accurate picture – rather than being some abstract record that does little to benefit the department or the individual.

Delving deeper

I will be discussing smart data matching in significantly more depth at a roundtable discussion during Cloudera’s upcoming Government Forum in Canberra on December 4, 2018.

As a consultant on identity systems, I will be sharing:

• Big data strategies for managing large volumes of customer data
• How the ATO is using smart data matching to better serve their customers
• How Informatica has been maturing its Identity Resolution technology to serve its array of public sector clients
• Why relationship mapping between data elements is essential and how it can be automated
• How identity data matching is being used by public sector clients on the global stage
• Plus much more

If this is an area of special interest to you, I hope to see you there! If you need more info, feel free to PM me. 

Cloudera Government Forum: Transform your agency with data

December 4, 2018

QT Hotel Canberra