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SAVVI Show & Tell Recap

by Shelley Heckman, Published 31 May 2023

If you missed the latest SAVVI Show and tell on 12 May 2023, the entire recording is available on the

SAVVI video webpage⁠

. However, if you do not have an hour to spare to watch the Show and Tell, this blog will recap the highlights. The Show and Tell was delivered in four parts:

Part 1: What and Why of SAVVI

Part 2: What Councils are doing with data for vulnerability

Part 3: The SAVVI Approach and Tools

Part 4: The SAVVI Movement

Part 1: What and Why of SAVVI

Paul Davison, Somerset Council (SAVVI Product Owner) opened part 1 with an introduction and a short overview of the SAVVI project. This introduction included a section on ‘why SAVVI?’ which focused on the problem that SAVVI tries to address, namely that there are often fracture points and gaps between services, which people can fall through, so that their needs are nor recognized and responded to.

Paul articulated the SAVVI project objectives, and makes the point that SAVVI is not a product. SAVVI is about data and standards, to hopefully create the environment and conditions so that products and services can join up. Where an organisation is succeeding, SAVVI would like to share those successes, so that others can repeat it. A key part of SAVVI objectives is to unlock access to data so that it can be used to find vulnerable people. Paul explained that SAVVI is working with local authorities, suppliers and Government to do their respective parts in delivering a SAVVI approach to data to identify and support vulnerable people and families.

Part one also included a brief introduction to the

SAVVI playbook ⁠

where you can find the SAVVI process, the SAVVI standards, the SAVVI catalogue and the SAVVI IG framework. A

‘deep dive video⁠

’ is a great resource for those that would like an in-depth introduction to the SAVVI standards.

Paul concluded with an explanation of the concept of ‘vulnerability attributes’. Vulnerability attributes are the ‘risk factors’ or ‘individual facts’ that could be an indicator of a vulnerability. For example: lost job, being in arrears, recently bereaved, over the age of 70 are four separate attributes that could be an indicator of an individual being vulnerable to financial distress. Many attributes by themselves may not be an indicator of vulnerability, but when attributes are put together, they may indicate potential vulnerability in individuals and households.

Part 2: What Councils are Doing with Data for Vulnerability

This section of the Show and Tell is about the pilot projects that SAVVI is developing. Andrew Humphreys, as the SAVVI Engagement Team lead, led part 2 of the Show and Tell. He opened the section by introducing the SAVVI engagement team:

Andrew Humphreys, SAVVI Coach

Nailah Ukaidi, SAVVI Information Government Expert

Mike Thacker, SAVVI Tech Support

The SAVVI phase 3 pilot projects focus on: rural child poverty; civil emergencies; and supporting families. Each project has a key question about finding vulnerable people:

Which children living in rural areas are experiencing poverty?

Who is vulnerable in an emergency such as a flood?

Which families need support to improve education, health and economic outcomes?

On the face of it, these are three separate projects that do not relate to each other but SAVVI are using the same process to help answer these key questions on who is vulnerable in a local context. Some of the questions that the SAVVI process asks include:

What facts or information will help us find those who need the most help or support?

Which data sources can provide those facts?

Is there a legal, ethical and transparent way to re-use data from those sources?

How do we blend data together to prioritise individuals?

Andrew asked the audience to keep this in mind as they are introduced to each of the the three projects that are adopting SAVVI:

Project 1: Understanding Child Poverty in Remote, Rural and Island areas (Improvement Service, Scotland)

Miriam McKenna from Improvement Service Scotland explained that local authorities in Scotland want to find households where there is a risk of child poverty so that they can coordinate support services to improve outcomes. The rural nature of some local authorities in Scotland means that just identifying localities is ineffective, therefore finding individual households is needed.

The problem is that some of this data is originally collected and controlled within a local authority, and would be reused for this new purpose. Other data is held by a third party - national/UK scale which adds to the complexity of data sharing and reuse. The information is personal data, which requires considerations of data protection regulations and ethics. Furthermore, across the group of councils, there is a range of opinions about the feasibility and approach to establishing legal, ethical and transparent data reuse and sharing.

Three rural, remote or island authorities will work with SAVVI to explore the ways that data can be legally and securely used to identify and target families either experiencing or at risk of experiencing child poverty.

SAVVI is also supporting the group to continue their discussion with Scottish Government/ Social Security Scotland about whether Scottish Child Payment data could be shared with Councils to enable them to cross check with those receiving local benefits which could lead to:

passporting of benefits

engaging directly with families to offer them support

reduction of stigma associated with admitting financially struggling

Better outcomes for children

You can access a clip from the SAVVI Show and Tell of Miriam explaining about the Scottish Rural Child Poverty project via this

link.⁠

⁠

Project 2: Identifying vulnerable people in an emergency (Wigan Council)

Jeanette Rycroft, Wigan Council explained that vulnerable people may be less able to help themselves in an emergency than self reliant people . Therefore, Wigan council would like to identify vulnerable individuals/households/addresses quickly so that emergency responders can prioritise these addresses in order to provide the appropriate support they require in a timely manner.

Using SAVVI standards and the config tool, identifying vulnerable individuals and households at risk during a flood emergency was their first focus. This was a journey of discovery for Wigan council with regards to information governance. As part of this work, Wigan has created a tool which they have tested. As part of their project, they have developed a pre-emergency process to identify Vulnerable People and Risk locations, created a database view using data that they currently hold as a Council, created a GIS layer that identifies vulnerable people and their addresses, all of which is stored in a secure environment with restricted and auditable access.

You can access the clip from the SAVVI Show and Tell of Jeanette explaining about the Wigan project to identify vulnerable people in an emergency via this

link.⁠

⁠

Project 3: The Greater Manchester Distributed Data Mesh (Greater Manchester Combined Authority)

Kieran Smith, GMCA provided an overview of the Greater Manchester Distributed Data Mesh programme, specifically looking at the Supporting Families use case. He described Greater Manchester’s ambition to accelerate the use of digital capabilities to better access and use data to respond to complex needs and service improvements across the region.

The data mesh is an architectural approach that aims to solve advanced data security challenges through distributed decentralised ownership. A data mesh architecture effectively unites disparate sources and links them together through centrally managed data sharing and governance guidelines. Organisations can maintain control over how shared data is accessed, who access it, and in what format(s) it is accessed.

The Supporting Families project is the first use case for the data mesh architecture. Greater Manchester undertook a Troubled Families discovery back in 2020 which has led to the current work they are doing as part of the Supporting Families programme. The Supporting families programme has multiple data sources that must be integrated for reporting and analytics, both at a locality level and a regional level.

As part of implementing Supporting Families over the data mesh, GMCA is working with four GM local authorities, SAVVI and their technology partner.

Find out more by accessing the clip from the SAVVI show and Tell of Kieran explaining about the GM Data Mesh project

via this link⁠

Part 3: The SAVVI Approach and Tools

⁠

Part three of the SAVVI Show and Tell⁠

was a showcase of the tools that we are developing to make better use of some of the existing assets in the SAVVI playbook. These tools are: the SAVVI config tool, and the navigable processes for the SAVVI IG Framework.

The SAVVI config tool was built to allow a council or supplier to represent what they are doing (in their vulnerability project) using the language of SAVVI. The prototype tool has been used to map out the Supporting Families Outcomes Framework to the SAVVI model. It has also been used to represent one of the Wigan data uses. Key to the config tool is that each of the terms defined in the tool is given a URI which means it can be looked up as data - therefore that URI can then be used in a data message when data is shared between products or organisations. SAVVI will soon be asking who can build a production version of this for us. A video introducing the

SAVVI config tool⁠

can be found on the SAVVI Website.

The SAVVI IG Framework, developed in phase 2 of SAVVI project, recommends the steps to take so that data is reused legally, ethically and transparently. In doing so, we worked through the authoritative guidance and picked out the parts that are particularly relevant to re-using operational data to find vulnerable people. This

IG framework⁠

is set out as a document which you can find on the SAVVI web site. In phase three, we are transforming the document into a set of navigable processes that will eventually help the user to build a series of documents that get produced as they follow the process.

Part 4: The SAVVI Movement

Part four of the show and tell is about the wider SAVVI Movement:

How SAVVI is mobilising the sector

How SAVVI is designing national data standards for vulnerability

The SAVVI Declaration

Mobilising the sector: the thing about making a success of standards, shared methodology and interoperability is that it is no good doing it in isolation. SAVVI is keen for everyone to come on the journey with us, and therefore we have been trying to mobilise the sector in a number of ways.

Firstly we have the SAVVI data enablers group. This is a group for public sector IG professionals and data analysts to get together to discuss data re-use with other councils.

We also have a group for engaging with industry, through the SAVVI Tech working group, for which techUK is the secretariat. Through these groups, we are starting to build communities of practice.

Designing National Data Standards: SAVVI has also had the ambition of getting national adoption of SAVVI standards. We approached the Data Standards Authority (DSA) at CDDO a few months ago, to see if we could put the SAVVI standards through the process of national adoption. From that conversation, Firoze Salim from the Data Standards Authority (DSA) at Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) has encouraged us to think even bigger, and he was invited to the Show and Tell to

explain the wider ambition for getting data standards for vulnerability adopted⁠

across Government.

In the Show and Tell, Firoze Salim explained that the DSA is supportive of the work being delivered by the SAVVI project and that addressing vulnerability is a priority area for the CDDO. Part of the work of the DSA is to improve the cross-government coordination of work on data standards. Working with SAVVI, but led by CDDO, Firoze is establishing a cross-government working group to: define the problem statement, and identify and develop the standards. The cross-Government working group will look at specific vulnerability scenarios and map the user journeys and attributes.

Firoze explained that the CDDO does not underestimate the challenge. They will work with colleagues from the SAVVI project to bring representatives from the key departments and other parts of the public sector to develop and agree standards to support vulnerability initiatives.

The SAVVI Declaration: Phil Swan, GMCA (SAVVI Project Sponsor) explained that we have developed, with the SAVVI Leadership Group, a SAVVI Declaration. This SAVVI Declaration defines a collective ambition to tackle vulnerability in the UK through improvements in data sharing and consistent adoption of good practice. It sets out a Challenge, the Opportunity, and a Shared Ambition. We invite all councils, Government departments, community partners and suppliers in industry to be signatories of the SAVVI Declaration.

Find out more & Get Involved

We work in the open and there are several ways you can keep up to date with our progress:

SAVVI mailing list⁠

to receive our monthly newsletters

Take a look at the

‘News’⁠

page on the SAVVI website.

You can get involved with SAVVI in a number of ways:

Have a 1-2-1 with us to tell us how you re-use/share data that we can add to the catalogue

Join our

SAVVI Data Enablers Group⁠

to discuss data re-use with other councils

Join the

SAVVI Tech Working Group⁠

through techUK

Sign your organisation up to the

SAVVI Declaration⁠

⁠