Ed worked with the Local Government Association (LGA), the representative organisation for English local government, to update their data maturity model for Local Government. The data maturity model is used by councils to understand their organisational capacity to use data. The LGA model is supported by an online tool which brings together assessments from a wide range of officers across an individual council to create a rounded picture of the organisation’s data maturity.

Ed facilitated online workshops with a cohort of English councils to gather feedback on the current tool. Following these workshops the project evolved into updating the structure and content of the underlying data maturity model to be easier to understand and reflect the current state of data use. The original model was created in 2017 following research by Nesta and the online tool was developed by Porism. As part of this update, Ed examined a number of existing data maturity models for related sectors, including the recently released Data Maturity Assessment for Government.

Culture and structure

Leadership and strategy

Data lifecycle

- Plan and design

- Collect or acquire, and ingest

- Prepare, store and maintain

- Use and process

- Share and publish

- Archive and destroy

Systems and tools

Skills and capability

Governance and compliance

- the new structure for the LGA Local Government Data Maturity Model

The updated data maturity model and assessment tool were released by the LGA in August 2023. This included an all new structure and content reflecting the development of data use in the local authority. The tool is a unique proposition in the sector, providing councils with a free and quick assessment of their organisational data maturity, allowing them to move quickly to identifying the opportunities for better use of data.

User Research

Data

Public Sector