Recommendation 16

We noted that a crucial area to improving reporting is ensuring that functions can get the data they need to identify savings, and that to do this effectively data systems needed to be updated or redesigned so that data sets were comparable. The Cabinet Office explained that two types of data were key; operational data, which is used to support the delivery of public services and analytical data which informs future policy. It told us that the crucial thing was ensuring that different local data systems were able to speak to each other so that long-term patterns can be found. The Cabinet Office told us the Central Digital and Data Office had been championing better data exchange so that “when you want to access other people’s data or have data yourself, that is now entered into a kind of registry” and the terms for sharing data were according to pre-agreed, standardised Memorandums of Understanding and templates.22 Ensuring functions report their savings