Finance and Performance Data Integration System

Description

The Chief Secretary of the Treasury (CST) has outlined the government's ambition to rewire the state. Central to this vision is more collaboration and transparency between departments and the centre of government, requiring a greater level of sharing and harmonising of key data sets (Finance, Outcome & Performance data). HM Treasury is working to deliver that vision , as described by CST as part of his speech (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC2YXLd8slQ) to IFG (Institute for Government). Alongside this vision there is ongoing work to implement a range of shared service clusters, consolidating a fragmented landscape of Finance and HR ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. This was set out in the Shared Services Strategy for Government (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/604755c0e90e0715427736b5/Shared-Services-Strategy-for-Government-March-2021.pdf) in March 2021. The SSfG Strategy presents an opportunity to identify, extract, analyse and present departmental Finance and Performance data in near real-time. The intent is to build the necessary IT infrastructure to extract data from cluster systems (likely via Application Programming Interface-API). Government data comes from a range of sources. The expected solution will require a wide range of integrator capability options, able to extract, transform and load data from current legacy and new IT Systems, along with centrally held MS Office based datasets. Security will be paramount, as will ensuring good data governance and control is baked into the solution. While there is currently not an explicit need for the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in this requirement, HMT is exploring and is open to the use of AI capabilities, enabling the solution to be scaled up efficiently, based on an 'AI Data Ready' solution being in place. Long term flexibility and agility will be vital, to allow for new datasets to be ingested as they come online, or to expand the scope of data collection to bodies currently not included for scope for the shared service programmes (e.g. Local Government Entities or Arm's Length Bodies) Once obtained, the data will need to be translated, standardised and harmonised with other existing datasets. It will then need to be presented in a flexible and intuitive way to a wide range of users utilising wide ranging capable reporting suites. In addition, HMT will require support to deliver an effective business change process to upskill users and engage on the opportunities this new solution, approach and consolidated data sets presents. To build the business case for a scaled up solution HMT intends to undertake a small scale pilot towards the end of 2025. To inform the full business case there may be opportunities for vendors to engage in small scale, low cost pilots to demonstrate capabilities and suitability for the programme as a whole.