Civil Service Data Challenge announces longlist of ideas to improve data use
Summary
These include automating Vehicle Excise Duty discounts and driving licence approvals for PIP (Personal Independence Payment) claimants, gathering better statistics on the distribution of UK citizens abroad, and deploying artificial intelligence to protect and enhance peatlands. The final judges will include Cabinet Office non-executive board member Henry de Zoete, an entrepreneur who in 2018 won Dragon’s Den with his partner Will Hodson – securing the best cash-to-equity deal in the show’s history for their business, Look After My Bills. Alongside de Zoete, the final will be judged by Chisholm, Lopez and Vicki Chauhan, Head of Public Sector at NTT DATA UK. Chisholm said: “The competition so far has clearly demonstrated how valuable our civil servants’ ideas are and highlights the importance of bringing different minds together to explore how current business practices can be improved. We are looking forward to working with the judges and civil servant teams to help these ideas realise the potential of data within government.” Other ideas on the shortlist are: creating a Civil Service “geographical capability map”, tracking medicines stocks and movements to safeguard future supplies, improving levels of prisoner social contact to support rehabilitation, using synthetic data applications to improve policy-making and service planning, and improving detection of benefit and tax fraud through richer data exchange between the Department for Work and Pensions, HM Revenue and Customs and UK Visas and Immigration.