The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has announced a new data improvement roadmap for the next three years.
Since launching its Data Strategy in August 2022, the department has been making progress to deliver critical data improvement work. The new strategy, outlined in a blogpost by Deputy director Sarah Blake, involves three phases that focus on improving the quality of its data, access to data and the data skills of staff.
The first phase is the development of prototypes of processes and tools to improve the quality of, access to and skills around data. A new MoJ Data Board will ensure senior stakeholder input into the work.
The second phase is learning by doing which will involve building up the department’s improvement toolkit, by testing their ideas with more partners.
The final step is to support teams to lead within their own area, alongside advisory and consultancy support, to solve problems for themselves. MoJ said this phase will start in mid-2025.
Deputy director Sarah Blake said: “Data underpins our work in delivering justice outcomes. It helps us measure the impact of policy interventions, gives us operational insight into prisons and probation, and deliver better services for our users – along with so much more. Yet too often, our data is fragmented, hard to share and not exploited to its fullest extent.”
The three-step roadmap is intended to fix that, building the foundations to be able to deliver the data-driven insight the MoJ relies on.