How a single data platform brought the Welsh public sector together to deal with Covid-19

Responding to the Covid-19 pandemic required all parts of the public sector to work together. But to successfully collaborate and to protect the public, access to up-to-date data became a top priority.

Time was of the essence at the beginning of the pandemic and the Welsh Government needed to make sure that their specialists were analysing data, not spending valuable time collating and cleaning it from a wide number of sources. There were some individual dashboards and data sets in Wales, but there was nothing that brought the Welsh landscape together.

So, the Welsh Government created the Covid 19 Strategic Data Visualisation Platform, a browser-based tool that drew in and shared data from Welsh public bodies and other important data resources so that this important information could be accessed in one place.

Fliss Bennée, Co-Chair of the Technical Advisory Group at the Welsh Government had only been in her role for six months when the world was thrown into a pandemic and international lockdown. Leaders in the Welsh Government, local authorities, NHS trusts and the emergency services needed an ability to understand where the balance of harm would be greatest in Wales, and whether the NHS would become overwhelmed by demand. The authorities also needed to know when the protective measures they put in place were working.

This is where Armakuni came in. The Welsh Government needed a secure platform that all accredited members of the public sector could access but the in-house teams in the government and NHS were overwhelmed with the demands of the pandemic so couldn’t create something.

Armakuni was chosen for its expertise in developing data tools and for enabling organisations to adopt Agile working methods. We could understand the architecture of bringing all these different data sources together and were able to test and deploy at speed. It was also important for us to bring a culture of agile work and delivery to the teams on the frontline, not just a data platform.

Developing this platform led to one of the most significant changes to the working culture seen within the Welsh Government. For many this was the first time they had worked alongside agile software developers. In a short time, Welsh Government officials were able to create their own cross functional teams and began using agile methodologies for looking at scientific output as a minimum viable product. In addition, these teams then began to look at their backlogs and blockers and deal with them.

The Covid 19 Platform now provides a centralised, easy to access solution for both the Welsh Government and related public sector bodies.

But, it was important that application programming interfaces (API) are used so that the data remained on its original host platform, a local authority or police service, for example and accredited users across the public sector could access what they need using single-sign-on.

The Platform provides the Welsh public sector with four distinct information panels dedicated to: risk, data visualisation, scientific modelling and during the worst of the pandemic the ability to support those self-isolating.

Together the elements of the platform allowed all areas of the Welsh public sector to respond to the pandemic collaboratively. Still in heavy use today, Fliss Bennée says “Politicians need to offer certainty. Science is built on the acceptance of uncertainty, but with data, we can get closer and closer to certainty.

“All of the team at Armakuni were keen to make a contribution to the Covid-19 emergency and this gave the team the ideal platform to apply their super-powers”. Ben Dodd Co-Founder and CTO of Armakuni.