43% of public sector organisations do not have a data strategy

Research by Hewlett Packard Enterprise has revealed that 43% of public sector organisations in the UK do not have a data strategy.

The findings are part of HPE’s House of Data report, which looked at data adoption and practices across the breadth of the UK public sector.

The programme was triggered by a Freedom of Information request in April 2023 which sought to understand challenges and barriers organisations face when implementing data initiatives.

When asked to name the biggest barriers to progress in extracting value from their organisations' data, the most common issues cited by data leaders were lack of budget, a shortage of the right skills, and difficulty in extracting data from siloes.

The research also reveals the extent to which legacy systems and processes are restricting progress. Despite the Government’s Cloud-first policy having been in place since 2013, 73% of those surveyed said they store more than half of their data on-premises.

Other key findings include:

• Up to 83% of survey respondents say they are ‘unsure’ if data management protocols exist in their organisation
• 33% of respondents say they have no specific budget for data initiatives
• 44% do not have an open data or data transparency policy.

Commenting on the biggest challenges organisations are tackling, Russell Macdonald, Chief Technology Officer for Public Sector at HPE said: “The public sector needs to be led by changing citizen expectations. Citizen interactions with government span many different departments and we’re putting the onus on citizens to work out who do I need to speak to at each part of the journey as I go through life rather than making that an easier process?

"We need to take data as a fundamental building block of reimagining the service through the lens of the service user and how can we improve that.”

You can read and download the full House of Data research report HERE. To watch the documentary film that accompanies the research, click the banner, or watch the trailer below.