The demand on public sector leaders to do more with less isn't new, but the pressure to solve the riddle of doing so only seems to grow in intensity. As Alice found out, though, interpreting the riddles can be rewarding... down the rabbit hole we go.
When Alice fell down the rabbit hole she encountered an enigmatic world of seemingly indecipherable puzzles. For those charged with setting strategy and implementing major organisational reform across the public sector, a veritable wonderland of complexities in itself, the task at hand may seem excessively complicated and impossible to disentangle.
Technology has become synonymous with efficiency. However, it is data, and what you do with it, which is the real master and key to creating more efficient, more responsive and more joined up services.
It's easy to fixate on technology because it's tangible; data on the other hand, is vast, enigmatic and, like Wonderland's Cheshire Cat, often out of reach. However, there's a parallel with Alice's attempts to get close to the disappearing Cat and unravel its mysterious clues. Achieving the long-pursued goal of meaningful interpretation of data, using new advances in analytics, could help to organise the disorganised, unmuddle the muddled and set a clear path to delivering more personalised and effective services.
This isn't as transient as the analogy, because analytics can be used to determine very real and meaningful interventions for the public sector, which is under constant pressure to do more with increasingly few resources.
Smarter data use, for example: tracking trends to predict behaviour, implement targeted spending and reduce waste; analysing variables to forecast outcomes; and identifying vulnerable areas to constrict fraud loss. These all provide genuine opportunities for the public sector to solve the riddle of better, cheaper services.
While technology is important for collecting data, more data is not beneficial unless put to good use. Organisations already store huge volumes of data and, by securely manipulating it to improve accuracy and consistency, could identify patterns and even predict outcomes to support planning.
More emphasis needs to be placed on the strength and quality of data, rather than just technological investment. Developing a better understanding of behaviours and trends is a valuable asset in helping organisations become more responsive to the changing demands of individual service users and wider economic pressures.
Correctly applied, data analytics can help Wonderland seem less chaotic and unpredictable; turning falling down the rabbit hole into a piece of the Mad Hatter's tea cake.
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