Policy paper

Call for evidence and roundtable engagement summaries

Updated 9 December 2020

1. National Data Strategy call for evidence summary

Methodology

A review of evidence and evidence gaps was commissioned to the government’s Policy Lab in early 2019, with further, more targeted desk-based research carried out by DCMS. This work highlighted a range of evidence gaps. Given the innovative research area and large proportion of grey literature, an open call for evidence was launched.

There were 54 questions, covering a wide thematic area grouped into three overall themes: People, Government and Economy. The questions for the call for evidence are available here. The call for evidence was open to responses from 10 June to 14 July 2019.

Responses were read, triaged and thematically analysed – that is, the individual points made were labeled with a theme, and these themes were iteratively refined to give a final list that summarised the content of all the responses. Greater insight on the respondents was gained by categorising them as business and type of business, an individual, etc.

Results and findings

105 responses were submitted to the call for evidence. Two-thirds of responses came from businesses, with most of the remainder from public or educational organisations, or individuals.

These submissions were very rich, covering a broad range of topics as well as differences of opinion within topics. They highlighted many pieces of research, case studies, articles, and grey literature.

Themes and topics covered by the submissions include:

• the ‘foundations’ of data use – that is the types of technical processes – and skills needed for effective data use; their current scope, scale and deployment within organisations and the public; and ways this can and should change
• views on the overarching ‘data ecosystem’ (defined as the range of actors involved in creating and maintaining practices for data use), and the roles that central coordination, transparency, legislation and ethics, cybersecurity and privacy have, and ways these can and should change
• novel uses of data or data-dependent technologies – including blockchain, cloud computing, digital twins – and implications for their wider adoption
• the value and potential that data has – for example, as a business asset, or as a driver of economic and environmental change
• the effect data has on the economy and markets – for example, on productivity, competition, growth and innovation
• the types of practices organisations have used – public, private and non-profit – and specifically how these are seen to undermine public trust, such as data breaches, selling data on to third parties or lack of transparency in the ways data is processed
• themes that relate specifically to different types of users (SMEs, government, health, education and heritage organisations etc.), and different types of data (such as administrative, personal, geospatial and reference data)
• the interface between a data-driven marketplace and the public, such as having a workforce that is not generally highly ‘data-literate’, and issues around the workforce that is currently data-literate (such as lack of diversity)
• the impact data has on the public, and issues such as bias in data leading to poor decisions (for example, predictive policing) and groups disproportionately impacted by data processes (for example, BAME groups, and the ‘digitally left behind community’)
• the role that data does and could play within national critical infrastructure
• the environmental impact of data use

Across each of these themes are a variety of views, as well as examples of perceived good practice (for example, the UK Biobank has a framework for making data available for research, with protocols on who can use it and when) and proposals for how particular existing barriers could be shifted (for example, a suggestion for investment in data funds within particular sectors that are currently slow to adopt data use across the board).

Conclusions from call for evidence analysis

Looking across the responses it is possible to make a number of broad conclusions:

• there is an interconnected ecosystem of data, users, and those affected by both
• there are many component parts to the ‘how’ of using data, but there is not yet an established consensus on best practice. There does not appear to be a broad consensus across a range of parts of the data ecosystem – for example, on definitions or terminology, or on what are/are not ‘data skills’ etc
• beyond these, views vary markedly on a range of broader questions based on different perspectives – for example, on legislation, burdens on business, burdens on the public, privacy and trust, the roles of players in the ecosystem for setting standards etc, and there is unlikely to be ‘right’ answer on these questions, or their solutions
• trade-offs between objectives will be inevitable – for example, the benefits of making data open and the costs of maintaining it
• there is wide disparity in engagement with issues around data across the economy and society, with many industries not responding to the call for evidence nor being discussed by those who did – for example, data issues in manufacturing did not feature.

Lessons learned and next steps

The findings from the call for evidence have influenced the direction of the National Data Strategy by informing its scope, potential interventions, and by helping to develop a robust evidence base.

We are continuing to interrogate the evidence highlighted by the responses, to use these to inform more detailed options for policy interventions, and to develop a grounded and robust evidence base to support, inform and prioritise National Data Strategy interventions.

2. National Data Strategy roundtable engagement summary

Overview

Throughout Summer 2019, the government held 22 roundtables, inviting guests from across central and local government, academia, civil society, the tech industry and the wider economy to discuss the proposed, pre-publication framework of the National Data Strategy.

The events, hosted by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Department for International Trade, were held in multiple locations across the UK. DCMS would like to extend its gratitude to a number of external organisations who agreed to host events and convene key stakeholders over this period.

The roundtables provided us with extremely valuable, face-to-face insights from across society. A key consensus was that data is not currently being harnessed to its full potential, and that a number of barriers needed to be addressed before this could happen. Commonly cited barriers were:

• a lack of governance and senior leadership buy-in on data issues
• a lack of agreed standards and poor data quality impacting the effective use and interoperability of data
• a data skills gap, both specialist and baseline, in the workforce
• a fear of privacy issues and negative thinking leading to datasets being ‘closed by default’
• a lack of clarity on data access rights
• legacy infrastructure and software
• a culture of ‘working in silos’ with data across both the public and private sectors

Summary of roundtable locations

External

Date	Location	Attendees	Theme
12 July 2019	London	Tech businesses	Data and the tech industry
17 July 2019	London	Media/Tech businesses	Data and the media/tech industry
18 July 2019	London	Professional and consumer businesses	People and productivity
19 July 2019	Newcastle	SMEs	Data and SMEs
19 July 2019	Newcastle	Charities/civil society groups	Data and civil society
22 July 2019	London	National academies	Data and academia
22 July 2019	London	Think tanks, academics and charities associated with health data	Data and the health sector
22 July 2019	Cardiff	Welsh public bodies	Data and the public sector
22 July 2019	Cardiff	SMEs	Data and SMEs
22 July 2019	London	Academic bodies	Data science for public good/data and academia
23 July 2019	Manchester	Professional and consumer businesses	People and productivity
24 July 2019	London	Civil society groups and public bodies	Data and civil society/public sector data use
24 July 2019	London	Social enterprises	Data and social enterprises
24 July 2019	Leeds	Professional and consumer businesses	People and productivity
26 July 2019	London	SMEs, start-ups and tech entrepreneurs	Data and SMEs/tech start-ups
31 July 2019	Bristol	Professional and consumer businesses	People and productivity
20 August 2019	Edinburgh	Professional and consumer businesses	People and productivity
28 August 2019	Belfast	Professional and consumer businesses	People and productivity
9 September 2019	London	Think tanks, data specialists, ethics boards	Testing the National Data Strategy framework

Internal/cross-government

Date	Host	Location	Subject
11 July 2019	DCMS	London	Open data/Value of data
25 July 2019	DCMS	London	Data management across government
14 August 2019	BEIS/DCMS	London	Smart Data

Following these roundtables, a secondary period of engagement took place with over 200 civil servants across government focusing on the vision and ambitions of the National Data Strategy.

Lessons learned and next steps

These issues were key considerations in our policy formation. The actions we have outlined in this strategy have been taken to address the potential barriers discussed at these events; they will be key to developing our approach to both the government’s own use of data and increasing data availability to drive growth and innovation across the economy.

The government is continuing to work with stakeholders to further discuss the scope, ambition and current proposals within the strategy, beginning with a process of open consultation for 13 weeks from 9 September 2020.