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Providing performance and delivery data at GDS

Richard Sargeant talks about how his team have helped to define performance information at the Government Digital Service

There鈥檚 no point making decisions without enough hard evidence. But that鈥檚 what has been happening too often in the past, says the Government Digital Service lead on performance and delivery, Richard Sargeant.

Richard鈥檚 job is all about shining the light of meaningful data on government decision-making. Better informed decision-makers end up making better decisions. His aim is to find ways to keep those people supplied with the right information, updated at the right intervals, and presented in the right way. He says:

Government is the world鈥檚 most complicated business. In the private sector, companies like Amazon or Twitter would go bust if they didn鈥檛 focus on the needs of their customers. It鈥檚 no less important for the government to be just as responsive to our users鈥� needs.

A lot of the information now being collected is about performance. How well is a particular government service doing at the moment? How has its performance improved since the service was last updated by the technical team?

鈥淵ou wouldn鈥檛 buy a car without a dashboard,鈥� he says. The instruments on a car鈥檚 dashboard tell the driver about progress or potential problems. The same thing applies when civil servants are making decisions about services that millions of people might use.

Data is fundamental to making good decisions, but it doesn鈥檛 have a reputation for fireside reading.

His team hired specialist designers to turn hard-to-absorb raw data into something meaningful.

Too often, data is given to people in enormous quantities, and it鈥檚 much more useful to tease out from it the things that are essential, the things that are interesting.

The result was a that were both 鈥渦seful to people and beautiful to look at.鈥�

Time is short for decision-makers. Presenting data this way helps them focus on the information that matters, so they can do their job better.

The team is also working on ways to automate and standardise the data gathering process. Rather than asking analysts to manually enter their data records into circulated spreadsheets, the aim is to get online services to collate it automatically, saving a great deal of time and effort.

Richard is candid about the driving force behind his work: it鈥檚 about putting the data in the hands of the people who will use it, in the most helpful and beautiful way possible.

Richard Sargeant is Deputy Director for Performance and Delivery at the Government Digital Service.

on the GDS blog.