Recommendation 14

All of the witnesses highlighted the importance of data in responding to the pandemic and acknowledged a key lesson from the last year was the need to improve the quality of data available to citizens and to government, including the quality and granularity of regional economic data, and improving the ability of different systems to talk to each other. Witnesses highlighted several initiatives that government is undertaking to achieve this. In addition to HMRC’s longstanding Making Tax Digital programme, government is digitising paper records, developing a new digital identity system which will include 26 Committee of Public Accounts, Challenges in using data across government, HC 2492, Session 2017–19, 25 September 2019, para 1 27 HM Treasury, Treasury Minutes: Government responses to the Committee of Public Accounts on the One Hundred and Twelfth to One Hundred and Nineteenth reports from Session 2017–19 and the First and Second reports from Session 2019, CP 210, January 2020 28 Qq 43–45 29 Qq 36–37; C&AG’s Report, paras 18, 20, 22 30 British Medical Association (Ev ILG004) Initial lessons from the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic 15 a tell-us-once service for changes of address and mobile phone number, and building a national situation centre with 24/7 data feed to support rapid decision-making.31 We asked what could be done to ensure the better use of data, whether during a pandemic or other spheres of Government. The Cabinet Office told us that it wanted to ensure that data was available in a form that could be shared, and followed appropriate processes, but also that the sharing of data was not overly inhibited by the necessary regulatory and legal requirements.32