Policy paper

DWP Data Strategy 2023 to 2030

Published 29 January 2026

Foreword to DWP Data Strategy 

The scale of data in DWP is huge.  

We have more than 20 million customers, many of whom interact with us regularly, often providing deeply personal data.  

It’s our responsibility to keep this information secure, well-managed and properly governed. 

In the past, DWP kept its data in silos. 

We are now entering a new era where we are breaking down those barriers, understanding more clearly the value of the data we hold. 

The DWP Data Strategy sets out our roadmap for this cultural change. 

It’s a fresh, departmental-wide approach to managing data, aligned with DWP’s 2030 vision and supporting the goal to reduce costs by 20% over the next five years. 

The benefits of this strategy go beyond efficiency alone. 

When fully adopted, the Data Strategy will: 

• make it easier for our customers to access services, reducing delays and streamlining processes

• enable us to deliver more precise, tailored support for the complex and varied needs of our customers

• improve agility, with speedier access to analytics helping to inform real-time decision-making

• free up our colleagues from tedious repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus more on the needs of our customers

• move us away from legacy systems to modern platforms that are more advanced and cost-effective. This is all part of a wider digital transformation across government, some of it powered by innovative Artificial Intelligence technologies

But Artificial Intelligence is only as good as the data it learns from. It’s all about the quality of data, managed, governed, secured and shared with the right teams in the right way. 

This is why the DWP Data Strategy is vital. 

In the future, 

• our data won’t sit in silos. Instead, we’ll manage it in line with the industry standard FAIR principles which means our data will be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable

• our data will be fit for purpose and well managed

• every individual within every team across DWP will understand the power of data like never before

 Together we’re on a challenging but exciting journey. 

It’s time to grasp this once-in-a generation opportunity to unlock the potential of data and improve the lives of our customers, colleagues and taxpayers. 

Helen Wylie, Digital and Transformation Director 

Paul Francis, Chief Data Officer.

Introduction 

Data is a cornerstone of all Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) services; it is likely that every citizen in the UK will entrust DWP with their data at some point in their lives. 

It is incumbent on every person in DWP who captures and uses data to do so in a responsible, professional way, that gives citizens confidence in how we use their data. 

As we transform our services, we have a huge opportunity to improve the quality of our data, and to make better use of it to deliver outcomes for our customers and a better experience for our agents. 

Good data enables us to make informed decisions at the touch of a button, it enables us to use real-time information where necessary, and, to have insight into everything we do to assist in making the right choice on every action we take. 

We’ve set out to create a renewed transparency of what Digital and Transformation Group can deliver and give clarity on how we solve the problems that our colleagues and customers face every day. One of our five strategic goals is to transform the use of data and analytics to bring insight to departmental decision making and deliver improved outcomes. The DWP Data Strategy sets us on a course to seize the full potential of our data and describes how we will harness its power in a considered way across DWP and wider government. 

By 2030, we want Digital and Transformation Group to have blazed a trail in how we use data to make positive changes in citizens lives, sharing and joining up data across government and with the wider social welfare system so that every person receives a frictionless and insightful service based on their needs. 

We also want to offer excellent digital services to our colleagues who will be able to access real-time information and customer and performance insight data that will enable them to make faster, more accurate decisions, and will prompt them to ask questions they did not previously think of. Providing modern tooling and building the skills needed to optimise the use of data is a priority for use as a department. 

Our DWP Data Strategy will be a key part of the DWP Digital Strategy which was published in 2024 and sets our trajectory until 2030. 

The Chief Data Officer is responsible for how DWP models, transforms, manages and securely uses data across DWP and wider government. 

Data is more than just numbers and information. Data underpins the delivery of services to citizens in their time of need through how it shapes their experience of our services. Without data, we would not have the functional information to deliver real value for the public purse as it ensures quality, protects us against fraud and enhances our productivity. We can use it to provide us with insight about our services and drive continuous improvement across DWP. It also enables citizens to access social welfare services across the UK such as an NHS Free Prescription or support with the cost of living. It is, therefore, crucial that we are cognisant of where we are on our data journey and where we are going. Our DWP Data Strategy plots our direction into the future so that we mobilise our data to get the best from it for our colleagues and customers. 

DWP has over 85,000 colleagues, 750 data analysts, and 9,000 dashboard users exploiting and interacting with 1 petabyte of data and 30 million digital events per day. We want to improve outcomes for citizens, improve customer service whilst reducing costs and quickly identify fraud and error. Data is fundamental to this, and our strategy supports both our departmental strategic outcomes, making a difference to our customers lives.  

DWP also has a key part to play in supporting more joined up services across government; this means improving how we share our data to help secure better outcomes for citizens and improving access to external sources of data.  

As a Chief Data Office, we support how DWP governs, manages and securely uses data to access DWP and wider government. 

We, as DWP, constantly strive to improve the service we offer to customers, focussing on efficiency and support while protecting taxpayers’ money. 

The DWP Data Strategy is a chapter of the forthcoming DWP Digital Strategy and is a key enabler in helping the department deliver its digital missions. 

We know that one of the best things we can do to accelerate our efforts in the area is to improve our ability to re-use data. Good data can help us understand the environment we operate in and the way we operate within it, the needs of the citizens who come to us, and impact our services have. 

DWP has a lot of data, approximately one petabyte. This is the equivalent of 20 million tall filling cabinets. 

We use data in almost all aspects of DWP work. Between us, we carry out 30 million digital events every day. This includes data analysis, usage of data dashboards, and the production of statistics. We also use data as a source of insight into our services and to identify opportunities for continuous improvement. 

Data enables citizens to access DWP services. For example, it enables the NHS to identify patients who are entitled to free prescriptions, and citizens planning their retirement to access key information via pensions dashboards. 

Our DWP Data Strategy outlines how we can all use data to support DWP’s departmental strategic objectives and do so in a way that is worthy of public trust. It recognises data as an enabler in all that we do to deliver improved outcomes for citizens.  

– Chief Data Office

DWP Data Strategy 2023 to 2030  

In alignment with our Business and Digital strategies, DWP Data Strategy includes:  

• a vision for DWP as a data-driven organisation

• seven strategic priorities to become a data-driven department

• a new operating and governance model for data

Our Vision for Data:  

Collectively, we will transform DWP into a dynamic data-driven organisation, enabling all colleagues to use data efficiently, responsibly, lawfully and at scale to continuously improve our performance for people who use services within and beyond DWP.  Improved data capabilities will help a wide community of users. 

• Citizen – I need DWP to understand my specific circumstance, so I can get the right support when I need it

• Agent – I need a complete picture of my customers, so I can quickly address their request about any service

• Parliament and Policy Group – I need to understand the cost and impact of Policy, so I know what is working and can challenge if necessary

• Business Leader and Service Design – I need to track customer digital journeys, so I can remove frictions along it

• Expert Data User – I need good data tools, so I can quickly build data products that solve business problems

• Other Government Departments and third parties – I need to fluidly share data with DWP, so we can manually provide a better public service

• Data Governance Manager – I need to set data policies and standards that will ensure the data caters to the needs of a wider community of users

Improve citizen outcomes and experiences, whilst reducing cost-to-serve and fraud and error.

What it will feel like to be a data driven DWP: 

1. Data embedded in decisions, interactions, and processes.

Better data will enable continuous performance improvement, including through the creation of personalised and segmented customer journeys. It will provide an improved colleague and customer experience. 

2. Data processed and delivered on time.

Real-time data will unlock new opportunities to automate processes, reducing errors caused by poor data quality and accessibility. Faster insights will enable better, faster decisions to be made. 

3. Embedded data operations.

To enable fast, agile, and business-led continuous improvement, data assets are organised as products created and supported by dedicated teams able to embed data security, evolve data engineering (for example, to integrate a new data source), or implement self-serve access. 

4. Enablement of new data products.

Moving data to the cloud will mean more flexibility in organising our data, so we can produce new data products quick when they are needed. Improvements to data fundamentals will enable us to make best use of modern technologies such as artificial intelligence. 

5. Data shaping policy.

In partnership with business teams, data experts incubate new analytics products and ideate new ways of using data that shape the enterprise Data and Business Strategies. 

6. Fluid data exchange is the norm.

Data ecosystems enable the exchange of data with third parties, enabling users to bring together various data sources in a way that the value generated is greater than the sum of its parts safely and legally. 

7. Data governance becomes a value driver.

Data privacy, ethics, and security are areas of required competency in a context of data being accessible to all whilst ensuring our data stays safe, secure and controlled.  

8. Data Confidence.

Increased data literacy means that everyone is confident, empowered and able to extract, interpret, and act on insights.

Becoming data-driven means data will play a key part in the transformation of our department into a continuously learning and improving organisation. 

‘Continuous improvement’ between, ‘Frontline services (supported by business applications)’ and ‘Timely, actionable insights, will result in ‘quality, rich, interoperable data.’

The data value chain: 

We extract value from our data through five key functional steps – the data ‘value chain’: 

• our business applications collect and create data to support daily transactions

• we augment it with valuable external data

• we ingest and prepare it for insight generation

• we extract insights from it

• we act on insights

To achieve our ambition, we need to improve our data capabilities at each step of the ‘value chain’ and connect them across steps.

Our seven strategic priorities to improve and connect the data value chain:  

1. Build modern business applications with quality, interoperable data. 

• our business applications collect and create data to support daily transactions 

2. Make data access and sharing with other government departments and third parties seamless and governed. 

• we augment it with valuable external data 

3. Provide prompt and efficiently rich insight datasets accessible in self-service.  

• we ingest and prepare it for insight generation 

4. Deploy insight teams to cover all dimensions of business performance. 

• we extract insights from it

5. Embed data capabilities into business owned multi-disciplinary product teams.  

• we act on insights 

6. Deploy DWP-wide tools to boost collaboration, productivity, and enable effective data governance.  

7. Embed a data culture, drive data literacy, and build data capabilities throughout DWP.

Adopt a new operating model and governance for data:

To remove ambiguity, boost our ability to arrange data initiatives and govern data throughout its lifecycle and across organisational boundaries, we will formalise data roles and responsibilities into a DWP-wide federated hub and spoke model. 

This model will replace the current hybrid, informal model and builds on learning from the organic development of spokes in Universal Credit (UC), Counter Fraud Compliance and Debt’s (CFCD) Integrated Risk and Intelligence Service (IRIS) and across the Analytical Community, as well as from industry where this model is widely adopted by multi-service organisations with a data maturity like that of DWP. 

The hub

A set of central teams or centres of excellence – will work with the spoke’s business domain teams. The hub will set the policies and standards guaranteeing quality, inter-operability, and adequate data security and governance. It will also deploy and run the enterprise-wide capabilities (teams, platforms, tooling) and will guide and support the business spokes where needed. 

The spokes

Will handle local data decisions and activities, including the development of their own insights and data products, as well as for the governance of their ‘data domain’ through formal data roles and responsibilities following the governance framework set out by the hub. 

A DWP-wide Data Community of Practice will support all colleagues working in data roles and ensure consistency and quality of data activity across the department.

Hub: Chief Data Office, Data Architecture, Data Protection Office, Security, Digital, Digital Design Authority, Tech Services, Insights Performance Excellence, Data and Analytics, Data Practice. 

Spokes: Disability, Standard of Living, Later Life, Fraud and Error, People and Capability, Finance Group, Labour Market.

This hub and spoke organisation will: 

• guarantee data quality and inter-operability within DWP and with Other Government Departments (OGDs)

• put initiatives at the heart of the business and maximises agility around organisational outcomes

• provide the business with the right support via Centre of Excellence and the availability of deployable specialist teams

• ensure end-to-end data governance within a pragmatic ownership model

• maximise economies of scale and the re-use of capabilities

• end ambiguity, gaps, and duplication of activities 

• comply with and drive the National Data Strategy

Strategic governance: 

The Chief Data Officer (CDO) handles setting the DWP Data Strategy and Data Governance Framework for the department and plays a key role in driving the implementation of the strategy on behalf of DWP. 

The governance of data across its lifecycle and across organisational boundaries is complex, we need to be able to look across the landscape of data related improvement, understand co-dependencies and risk, prioritise and remove barriers to ensure outcomes are delivered for DWP. 

The Chief Data Officer and the senior leadership team will act as a singular place to oversee an integrated delivery plan centred around departmental priorities. 

The Chief Data Office will: 

• provide support and guidance

• understand and help address challenges

• identify and frame opportunities

• continuously engage with hub functions, business areas (spokes) and change programmes

The DWP The Chief Data Officer and the senior leadership team will: 

• provide strategic steer across the collective effort

• formalise the delivery of this strategy with a detailed integrated implementation plan centred around departmental policies

• refresh its terms of reference to ensure a clear remit and ways of working

• retain its oversight of Data Protection Compliance and Assurance

Delivering our DWP Data Strategy 

The foundations for our DWP Data Strategy are in place. 

We have agreed our data principles, created the Chief Data Office (CDO) and have started to modernise some of our data capabilities, we have designed and started the delivery of seminal transformation initiatives such as the Strategic Reference Architecture (SRA), Service Modernisation, Data Modernisation, or Insight and Performance Excellence, and we are now ready to accelerate. Besides the projects already being delivered, many meaningful steps can be taken at once. 

Success in getting our data right is a collective undertaking requiring focus and co-ordination. 

Implementation is a multi-year journey, with value unlocked incrementally.  

It will require some actions from all of us, not just from Digital and Transformation Group or Data and Analytics as some of the key levers are firmly in the hands of the business.  

Each step along the way will take use closer to being a data-driven organisation. We are ready to accelerate and scale.

We are ready to accelerate and scale. 

FY 2019 to 2023 – Foundational work: Awareness and Blueprints 

Achievements  

• published Data Principles in 2019

• set-up the Chief Data Office

• started modernisation of foundation capabilities

• designed and started the delivery of seminal transformational programmes (SRA, IPE, Service Modernisation (SM)

• built and operationalised the Data Reference Architecture

• provide the concept of the Hub and Spoke Model for Data in UC and FED IRI

Outcomes 

• major design investments made

• value of data now commonly understood

• awareness of data at Executive Team (ET) assured

FY 2023 to 2024 – Next chapter: Purposeful and Joined-Up 

Actions 

• deliver the Seven Strategic Priorities outlined in this strategy

• adopt the Hub-and-Spoke operating and governance model

Outcomes 

• shared narrative and direction, common vocabulary

• hands-on piloting and end-to-end orchestration

• delivering measurable business value

2017	2023	2025	2030
Cottage Industry - Manual and inefficient, Flying blind.	Seizing Control - Blueprint and governance, Clear direction for data	Activated - Emerging intelligence, Data tells a story	Data Driven - Transformed DWP, Data is culture
Awareness - Silos, shadow teams, Frustrated	-	-	-

Our Seven Strategic Priorities

Strategic Priority One 

Build modern business applications with good quality, inter-operable data. 

How we will do it and what will it deliver? 

Most of our data is collected or created by our business applications, whether front-line or back-office – this is where data is born into DWP.  

To become a data-driven organisation delivering a quality, efficient, fraud and error free service and an excellent customer experience, we must pursue the modernisation – in some instances the complete re-design – of our business applications, doing so following the SRA.  

This modern architecture will create a modular, joined-up set of applications which will bring significant benefits to our business and customers, in part through game-changing data improvements: 

• The Data Reference Architecture (DRA) will drive the adoption consistent data standards (including quality standards) across all our services, thereby enabling the inter-operability of quality data ‘by design’ straight from the point of collection. It will also produce consistent data security and protection standards. 

• In combination with the DRA, the Application Reference Architecture (ARA) will allow us to remove data silos and seamlessly share data across applications and services, meaning we will be able to collect data once and always know the single source of truth for it. 

• Our modernised business applications will also collect the data needed by our insight generating teams (and be able to accommodate their future requirements), enabling them to produce ever more relevant and actionable insights. 

• In turn, the modular architecture of our business applications will make them much easier to continuously improve with the benefit of insights.

Who will do it? 

The SRA blueprint has been published and is constantly being improved by Digital and Transformation Group in consultation with stakeholders. Its core DWP-wide applications are being delivered by Digital and Transformation Group. 

The modernisation of our business applications will be delivered by our lines of business with the support of Digital and Transformation Group – Service Modernisation is currently the main delivery vehicle and will drive the modernisation of ten of our largest services, and our Health Transformation Programme will modernise Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Health Assessment Service (HAS) service applications. Over the coming years, we will seek to modernise and converge all our other business applications as part of the DWP Data and Digital Strategy to 2030.

Strategic Priority Two 

Make data access and sharing with Other Government Departments and third parties seamless and governed, ensuring DWP is seen as best-in-class. 

How we will do it and what will it deliver? 

The exchange of data with OGDs is essential to our performance and to that of our counterparts, enabling us to piece information together and to triangulate it, for example to tackle fraud.  

To progress towards seamless data sharing we will deliver in four areas: 

• Streamline processes

We will standardise and signpost our data sharing processes to significantly cut the time it takes to set up a new data share, and make it easier to manage as a portfolio, including through the identification and consolidation of redundant data shares. 

• Integrate technically

We will continue rationalising the technical solutions used to exchange data, cutting them from dozens to a handful. For instance, our SRA applications are designed to enable data sharing ‘at the flick of a button.’ Further integration will enable real-time streaming which will unlock new possibilities for our live business applications. 

• Align across-government

We are playing a leading role in developing the common standards and tools necessary to seamless exchange with other government departments. This will include making our data mutually discoverable through the establishment of data catalogues. We are also engaging bilaterally with our main cross-government partners to remove barriers to data sharing. 

• Formalise and strengthen governance

We are deploying the governance framework – including through the formal appointment Data Owners – that will enable the appropriate risks management, data protection and ultimately level of trust in our custodianship without which data sharing cannot take place.

Who will do it? 

The CDO has recently published the DWP Data Sharing Policy and has started the roll-out of a formal Data Sharing Ownership Model which will see the appointment of Data Owners throughout the department to govern our 1,500 data shares and ensure future data shares confirm with governance and performance standards. 

Digital and Transformation Group is driving the technical integration with a particular focus on the new SRA applications and data. The CDO is engaging across government, including through the Cabinet Office, to create the conditions and incentives to support seamless data sharing.

Strategic Priority Three 

Provide timely and efficiently rich insight datasets with good quality data accessible in self-service. 

How we will do it and what will it deliver? 

The data collected and created by our live business applications needs to undergo several transformations and aggregations steps before it can be used for its second purpose: the generation of insights. This is the role of DWP-wide data platforms such as the data warehouse. To make our insight data accessible, useable and governed, we must modernise our data platforms and the tools and services to manage and exploit them.

We will: 

• Streamline the process through which we capture and transform data into datasets exploitable for insight generation. This process will be accessible in self-service by the insight teams that need these datasets, wherever they are and whatever they purpose is (analysis, Management Information (MI), analytics, statistics), thereby removing the reliance on a central team with limited capacity. 

• Modernise our data-platforms through cloud-based environments, opening new possibilities in terms of data exploitation while better managing costs – and decommission our legacy data warehouse. 

• Adopt modern technologies to enable the exploitation of unstructured data (for example, video, voice) and in real-time. 

• Deploy modern analytics and visualisation tools to make insight generation accessible to most of our colleagues. 

• Create the governance framework to increase our ability to protect our data from internal and external threats – a corollary of the democratisation of access to data. 

These initiatives will boost the productivity of our insight generating colleagues who will find it quicker and easier to search, find, and assess datasets, manipulate them and assemble them into the products they need to carry out their work and improve the performance of our department.

Who will do it? 

The modernisation of our insight data platforms and associated tools and services is primarily delivered by Digital and Transformation Group and Data and Analytics through the Data Modernisation programme. 

Work will be carried out in close collaboration with the spokes via the change programme and Insight and Performance Excellence (IPE) function, which will identify and prioritise user needs.

Strategic Priority Four 

Deploy insight teams to cover all dimensions of business performance. 

How we will do it and what will it deliver? 

At DWP our need for insights covers three key dimensions: policy analysis, risk (including fraud and error), and operations or service delivery. Our capabilities to generate Policy and Risk insights are already mature with a strong and well deployed Analytical Community as well as with expert data capabilities in Counter Fraud, Compliance and Debt (CFCD’s) IRIS, Finance Group’s Cyber Resilience Centre (CRC), or DWP Security and Data Protection. To better understand and drive Service Delivery performance we must deploy insights teams to focus on operations performance across all our key lines of business/outcome pillars.

To do so we must continue to: 

• Create standardised performance insights Key Performance Indicator (KPI) dashboards – providing a baseline for performance improvement and enabling objective, cross-service comparison and benchmarking aligned with DWP’s performance framework. 

• Focus on operations performance insights – with the deployment of multidisciplinary Service Analytics teams able to find the root cause of a performance issue and recommend corrective actions. 

• Embed these Service Analytics teams within each business area – for increased responsiveness and initiative, focused on business priorities. 

• Support the development of DWP-wide or cross-service insights – with well-resourced Customer Experience and Digital Performance Analytics teams able to track and improve end-to-end and cross-services customer journeys. 

These insight capabilities will provide leaders and decision makers with robust management information, a stream of insights on what drives and hinders performance, as well as recommendations on how to fix or improve service delivery. 

Who will do it? 

The main delivery vehicle is the IPE function, which will roll-out the creation of standardised insights and deploy Service Analytics capabilities in our fifteen largest lines of business. KPI dashboards will be created and maintained with the support of DWP MI (Digital and Transformation Group), while the Service Analytics teams will leverage the capabilities of Operational Performance, Resourcing and Analysis (OPRA) Analytical Community (AC) and Operation Advanced Analytics (OpAA) (Data and Analytics). This roll-out will be carried out as part of SM for those in-scope benefits.

Strategic Priority Five 

Embed data capabilities into business owned multi-disciplinary product teams. 

How we will do it and what will it deliver? 

To translate insights into business value we must act, and we recognise that with the increasing digitisation of our business, we must equip leaders and decisions makers with new capabilities to act on insight.  

Within each business spoke – we will develop the capabilities to build data products, embed them within business processes and digital applications, support them, and continuously improve them. These capabilities – in the form of data analysts, data engineers, performance analysts, data ethicists, – will work as part of multi-disciplinary service or product teams tackling multi-faceted business challenges. 

Supported by such capabilities, leaders and decision makers will have the levers to act on insight with maximum responsiveness, autonomy, and empowerment. They will be able to direct product or service teams to improve digital processes and/or create and embed new data products that increase service quality, improve customer experience and outcomes, improve delivery efficiency, and reduce fraud and error. 

Who will do it? 

Business spokes will develop and embed their own data capabilities, through a combination of upskilling, transfer or embedding of existing capabilities, and of external recruitment. 

The Data Practice will play a key role in ensuring continuous professional development, dissemination of good practice and consistency of ways of working by extending membership to cover all DWP. It will also perform recruitment as and when instructed, selecting and assessing candidates and ensuring consistency of capabilities throughout the department.

Strategic Priority Six 

Deploy DWP-wide tools to boost collaboration, productivity, and enable effective data governance. 

How we will do it and what will it deliver? 

As multiple teams will interact with the same piece of data at various stages of the value chain, we need to create the tools to enable efficient collaboration and data governance across teams. We will deploy – and as proper, mandate – the use of a suite of enterprise-wide tools such as 

• A data catalogue with advanced search functions, which will cut discovery time from sometimes months to only hours. The “find my data” application will list, describe, and find data and associated metadata, it will also include an assessment of the quality and reliability of the catalogued datasets so that users do not have to assess this multiple times over for themselves. 

• A data lineage capability will provide users with an instant and complete view of where the data comes from (upstream traceability, for consumers), and who and for what purpose it is used (downstream traceability, for data owners). 

• Reference datasets which will make it easy for disparate users to use a single source of truth for our most common and ‘universal’ datasets (for example, list of open Jobcentre Plus (JCP), customer titles nomenclature and genders). Reference datasets will be accessible via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and will be governed by a formally appointed owner with authority to maintain the dataset. 

• Automatic digital quality assessment will be made widely available (through the catalogue) to allow users to quickly understand the quality, reliability but also potential issues with a dataset. 

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) applications will be in place so that access rights are managed efficiently, ensuring the right person accesses the right data for the right purpose – A ‘business audit’ application will check potentially fraudulent internal access. 

Who will do it? 

The suite of DWP-wide data tools is being and will continue to be deployed by the data hub functions of Digital and Transformation Group, which is deploying DWP’s Data Catalogue and will then incorporate the metadata, lineage, data quality, and access control and RBAC capabilities. Data and Analytics will roll out and manage the Reference Data Service and DWP Business Audit.  

The Chief Data Office will publish the policies associated with the usage of these tools. 

Spoke data teams will be required to use these tools where appropriate, for example it will be mandated to catalogue any new dataset collected by a new business application.

Strategic Priority Seven 

Embed a data culture, drive data literacy, and build data capability throughout DWP. 

How we will do it and what will it deliver? 

Data literacy and culture: 

• through the IPE culture and coaching capability, we will effect a step-change in the ability of our colleagues to understand how to interpret business data and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), how to ask the right questions, and how data can be used to tackle business problems 

• the CDO will offer ‘data masterclasses’ to the senior levels and at the demand of specific teams as appropriate 

• leadership initiatives will also be run to ensure decision makers are able to understand the high level yet end-to-end functioning of data at DWP so that they are able to play their part in our gradual transformation into a data-driven organisation 

Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) capabilities: 

The data capabilities we need include at minimum the roles of data analyst, data engineer, data ethicist, data governance manager, data scientist, and performance analyst (as per government’s DDaT nomenclature). 

In a challenging job market for these roles, we will gradually address the capability gap through a multi-pronged approach: 

• support and play our part in the cross-government efforts to improve the attractiveness of DDaT roles 

• develop apprenticeship programmes and create a Data Academy run by the Data Practice

• enable the targeted upskilling of colleagues who have the ability and interest 

• make a better use of our existing DDaT capabilities by freeing them up from low value adding tasks, with productivity tools, clearer data roles and responsibilities, and a more performing data ecosystem to exploit 

Who will do it? 

Data culture and literacy will be primarily driven by the Chief Data Office, the IPE function and the Data Practice. It will require the active support of senior leadership to mandate and drive colleagues’ participation in data literacy initiatives, such as this year’s One Big Thing. 

The approach to DDaT talent recruitment and upskilling will continue to be driven by Digital and Transformation Group and the Data Practice. Going forward, a growing proportion of new recruits should join business spokes (rather than data hub functions).