SAVVI Leadership Group

by Shelley Heckman, Published 03 November 2022

In recent months, the SAVVI Leadership Group has been established to bring together cross-sector support around the challenges that the Scalable Approach to Vulnerability Via Interoperability (SAVVI) project seeks to address. Chaired by Phil Swan, GMCA (SAVVI Project Sponsor), the membership of the leadership group is made up of key individuals from: DLUHC Local Digital, DWP, Ministry of Justice, CDDO Data Standards Authority, Department for Education, CDDO , NHS England, Scottish Improvement Service, Local Government Association, Wigan Council, Sedgemoor Council, techUK, Lancashire & Cumbria ICB, and Digital Cabinet office.

Discussing the challenges

The leadership group first met in June 2022. At that meeting, the group discussed the various challenges facing us collectively, such as the significant public sector funding spent on a small proportion of the population, how difficult it is to know who we need to target in order to offer effective support particularly because data is incredibly fragmented and difficult to join up. Some of the key points raised by the group include:

- issues with access to the data sets to identity vulnerable people

- lack of common processes, common procedures, understanding around information asset registers and resources to do the job

- understanding what information we have just within our own organisations

SAVVI was tasked to develop a proposition to help focus the sector to address the challenges.

Developing the Proposition

The SAVVI Leadership Group met again last month, on 7th October 2022, where we met to discuss the SAVVI Declaration. The SAVVI Declaration was developed as a response to the challenges discussed at the first SAVVI Leadership Group meeting. It is a document that is in three parts and sets out:

- the problem statement, - what the opportunity is, - an ambition to work together

Individuals on the SAVVI Leadership group are in the process of committing their organisations and departments to the declaration. We are keen to get as many people behind this declaration and are looking for your organisations to sign up to the declaration which we will be launching publicly soon.

Beyond Life as a Project: SAVVI Early Thinking

Beyond developing the SAVVI declaration, we are also starting to think about life for SAVVI beyond being a project. As part of this, SAVVI is considering what transitioning into a sustainable offer looks like. This early thinking was shared with the SAVVI Leadership Group and will likely be developed further to present to the group at the next meeting. Below is a flavour of what we have looked at; please keep in mind that we are still in the early stages of considering this. Most of our thinking so far falls into four areas:

The roles for a SAVVI vehicle.

We are building a catalogue of data shares, vulnerability definitions, outcomes frameworks and other assets. We are asking ourselves would these need to be maintained and improved? Do we need to consider certifying and accrediting SAVVI expertise? Or be a licenser of SAVVI tools?

Potential Delivery models.

We have brainstormed & discussed potential delivery models from building a vehicle with its own legal entity, to becoming a hosted service, to being absorbed by a Government Department to deliver as a national service.

Required Capabilities

We have also asked ourselves what capabilities would a SAVVI service need to possess? A lot of what we’ve come up with is very much what any new start-up or service would need. But there may be some SAVVI specific capabilities such as catalogue content moderation, and software hosting & maintenance. We are starting to define the SAVVI offer for services and how this can be rolled out more widely.

Funding Mechanisms

Finally, we’ve been considering what are the possible funding or income mechanisms for a sustainable future. We plan to appoint some external capability to help us think through some of this, but there are a number of possible options we could look into.

Find Out More:

If you are interested in learning more about the SAVVI Leadership Group, the SAVVI Declaration, or our thoughts about future sustainability, please do not hesitate to get in touch. You can reach us at

info@savviuk.org⁠