Supporting Tai Calon to develop their new data strategy
Part of the Welsh Government’s Cymraeg 2050 initiative
Project: Tai Calon Community Housing
Date: April 2021 – July 2022
Work: Data strategy development and implementation
Tai Calon
Tai Calon is a housing association based in Blaenau Gwent in Wales. The organisation had set a clear ambition to radically improve customer satisfaction and wanted to ensure that its data infrastructure would support this ambition.
In 2021 they asked Data Orchard CIC to work with them to develop a data strategy. We:
undertook an organisational Data Maturity Assessment
held several workshops with senior leaders, IT staff and trades staff
conducted semi-structured interviews with a cross-section of staff
reviewed key internal documentation, plans and strategies
prepared a data strategy that aligned closely with the organisation’s 2020-2025 corporate plan and IT strategy and presented the key points of this to senior managers.
Data Strategy
Tai Calon’s first ever data strategy was successful adopted by the leadership team at the end of 2021. In 2022 resources were deployed to oversee its implementation with lead responsibility assigned to the digital team. Since then, the organisation has begun to roll out PowerBI dashboards and focus on the quality of the data it collects and holds. In early 2022 Data Orchard was invited to support some aspects of the 2022-2025 data strategy implementation. We:
assisted with the formation of the ‘Data Improvement Group’ including training in data governance and data quality, definition of the group’s purpose and creation of its formal ‘Terms of Reference’.
co-created a data assets register with mapped visualisations of tenant, staff and property assets and relationships across data owners/departments.
facilitated a review of data quality, security, availability and useability in relation to the assets’ value and importance to business continuity and strategic plan.
supported the Data Improvement Group to identify a list of twelve potential data improvement projects with an analysis of impact and effort to support prioritisation.
created a ‘Training Resource Pack’ for current and future members of the Data Improvement Group including learning materials and workshop plans on data governance and data types, data quality, data journey mapping, and data analysis and visualisation.
Mark Davies, Head of Business Improvement and IT at Tai Calon said:
“Data (and specifically data quality) has become an integral part of transformation projects. Staff have received training in data governance and data quality and several working groups have been created. When data quality issues are identified they are addressed by the business. As a result of this process, improvements have been made to both correct inaccurate data and to ensure that any new data collected is accurate and easily accessible.
“Through 2022 we have:
Identified errors in the information we held about our customers. We have updated our records and adjusted our systems to prevent this from happening in future
Improved our reporting. We have started producing reports using Microsoft Power BI. These will be deployed across the organisation to increase the visibility of the data. Through 2023 we will be producing more reports and connecting more systems. We will also be delivering better insight by producing dashboards from multiple sources of data.
Discovered that the same information was being stored in two different places on our housing database. We’ve now adjusted our working practices so that everyone is using the system in the same way and the data is only held in one location.”