Hertfordshire County Council has established a collaborative regional data hub for children’s services, enabling secure data sharing and analysis across eleven councils. By leveraging shared digital tools and a robust data sharing agreement, the councils improved regional decision-making and resource allocation for vulnerable children and families, addressing data protection and technical challenges.
Background
Hertfordshire County Council, in collaboration with councils across the East of England, is leading a transformative approach to data sharing aimed at improving outcomes for children, young people and families. This long-standing partnership is built on a foundation of collaboration and strategic investment.
In 2020, Hertfordshire secured funding from the Department of Levelling Up (now the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government), which enabled the development of a regional data hub. The hub is an online analysis and benchmarking tool that makes use of Power BI.
Councils in the region upload their data for comparison and benchmarking. In addition to this, the tool enhances the usability of child and placement level data already submitted to the Department of Education by allowing segmentation and deeper analysis – turning raw data into actionable insights.
Approach to data
This work sits within the context of Hertfordshire’s Digital and Technology Strategy, which also covers the council’s use of data. The strategy aims to enable frictionless data sharing, improved data collection and informed decision-making.
A key enabler for the regional data hub is the regional Data Sharing Agreement (DSA).
The DSA has been shared here to help support local authorities who are considering producing something similar, however organisations should take the usual steps necessary to ensure their own legal and data protection colleagues are satisfied with the wording for their own specific context.
The DSA is supported by a clear process for updates and changes. The changes are shared with the signees from each council (usually the lead data protection officer) for agreement, with a final copy recirculated for sign off. Annexes can be added for new data sets without having to re-do the entire agreement. The performance manager network, which meets bi-monthly, ensures ongoing alignment and operational continuity.
Aims and future plans
The regional data hub aims to enable better regional analysis and decision-making that improves outcomes for vulnerable children and families.
Eleven councils came together to work on this and have all signed the DSA. They share specific data sets including children looked after and child in need data and have a shared analysis tool/dashboard for children looked after. They are also developing tools to analyse child in need data.
Looking ahead, the tool will help councils identify children placed in neighbouring authorities, move toward a ‘closer to home’ placements approach and to better understand and allocate resources across the region.
Challenges
One of the biggest challenges was the time taken to finalise and gain signatures to the DSA. Hertfordshire’s advice on tackling this would be:
- early identification of data protection leads in each council
- one-on-one engagement with data protection leads before convening the full group
- clear articulation of the project’s value and security measures, especially since data protection leads often sit outside of children’s services.
Another challenge was being able to share the data through system access, for example allowing external councils to view Hertfordshire’s Power BI. This required adjusting access permissions as well as close collaboration with IT to ensure secure and seamless sharing. External user access is agreed with performance leads in each council and is only given to named officers and linked to their council email address.
Top tips
Hertfordshire’s advice for councils considering a regional data hub:
- talk to those who have done it – peer learning is invaluable
- use common platforms to reduce duplication
- address concerns early, especially around data protection
- work closely with IT to enable external sharing
- understand Power BI (or similar software) capabilities before starting – knowing what’s possible will shape your approach.
For further insights or collaboration, please reach out to Paul Dryden at [email protected]