Tackling Covid with data
In 2020 Medway Council successfully bid for funding from Kent Connect to identify individuals and communities that have been negatively affected by Covid-19.
This was an invest to save eight-week concept project on a much longer journey to prove what you can achieve when you join data up.
The project initially joined data sets from Public Health, Housing (Academy), Revenues and Benefits (iWorld), mapping and publicly available central government data. The data was joined together by the development of a Microsoft Azure data lake.
By completing this project, it proved that:
- We can tackle COVID with data (delivering relevant services to those that need it)
- Give front lines services the insights they need when they need it.
- The aim was to reduce costs for the Council whilst providing an enhanced proactive service to customers before their needs are realised.
Medway Council are now using the data lake to assist with homelessness prevention, debt advice, benefit assessment, health screening, employment, and training opportunities etc This work will assist in the development of the Local Welfare Project being managed by the Revenue & Benefits Service and Business Change Team.
Medway have shared their learning with Kent County Council and the Kent Districts. The next steps will be to work with Kent Connects, KCC and Kent Districts in establishing data lakes and data sharing across Kent and Medway for the benefit of all its residents, customers, and stakeholders.