Insight and Intelligence

The Insight & Intelligence Hub (I&I Hub) will be commissioned by individual Barnet Council services to conduct analysis on their behalf. We use the information provided to us by these service areas to support service areas to work collaboratively with other services within the council and to use data in supporting decision-making (this is called insight).  The use of data plays a role in designing, delivering and transforming services to improve outcomes and drive efficiencies when facing demand pressure and financial constraints. By developing data analysis and insights, it enables us to use evidence and information to inform decision-making and transform services.

The Barnet Corporate Plan which is ‘people, places and planet’ focussed, has an emphasis on ensuring the organisation does not work in silos but views problems holistically. The Insight & Intelligence Hub further support this to happen. The action of combining, comparing and/or matching data from multiple sources enables us to develop cross-cutting analysis, therefore, ensuring we have more effective responses to the needs of the residents of the borough. The outputs generated from this analysis are shared with the relevant service areas and/or council partners who will apply that intelligence to better support residents. 

In the main the data we use will be anonymised so that it is not identifiable to any individual. This anonymised data is either about households, properties or geographical areas, or it is data that may originally have had a personal component, but this has been removed, i.e. it has been anonymised. The I&I Hub may source this anonymised information from internal council data sets or from externally available sources which can be either public or private. Examples of these external sources may be other government departments and organisations such as the Office for National Statistics which makes data publicly available such as the results of the population census. Alternatively, the I&I Hub may acquire access to anonymised, proprietary data sets which provide additional population demographic information from non-government sources. 

Where identifiable data is required to provide more effective or useful analysis; a more detailed risk assessment will be completed. 

Personal information we will potentially process

The I& Hub will be commissioned by council services to conduct analysis on their behalf and will not have direct access to person level information. This person level information will be supplied to the I&I Hub by the service area requesting the analysis with the type of person level information to be shared being agreed prior to the I&I Hub starting any analytical work. The personal information that may potentially be shared with the I&I Hub are: 

• Name
• Address & contact details
• Date of birth
• Financial information
• Equalities Information
• Property information
• Criminal/Prosecution Information 
• Health/Medical Information  
• Social Services Records 
• Human Resources Records
• Other Agencies Involved 
• Education Information 
• Housing Information  
• Employment information
• Family/Relationship Information
• NHS Number
• Images in photographs or film/CCTV.

Organisations who will potentially receive analysis outputs produced by I&I Hub 

The I& Hub will be commissioned by council services to conduct analysis on their behalf and is unlikely to share personal information with anyone other than the service area that requested the analysis. Requests to share the anonymised analytical outputs further will be made by the service area that commissioned the piece of analysis. The organisations that may potentially receive any analytical outputs produced by the I&I Hub are:

• DWP 
• Police 
• Health Agencies 
• Council services (all)
• Government departments - Reports may be shared with government departments as part of our partnership work with them. 
• Professional regulatory bodies
• Council legal service
• Other local authorities
• Ofsted
• Voluntary Agencies /Third Sector
• Housing providers
• Specialist Organisations - Reports maybe shared with specialist organisations as part of our response to the problems identified.
• Home Office.

Legislation that applies

We deliver most of our services because the law says that we, as a local authority, must do so. This is where we have a legal obligation to deliver a service; where it is part of our task as a public authority; or where it is in the public interest to deliver a service. Using insight and intelligence to review our work and make a service more effective or efficient is all part of the council meeting these obligations that are listed in the many laws that drive or affect our work.

The Local Government Act 2000 allows a local authority to undertake activities which they consider likely to achieve the promotion or improvement of the wellbeing of their areas and residents. It also provides the council with the powers to do anything which is aimed to support or improve the discharge of our functions.

How long we keep your information

All data will be retained for the specified retention in the corporate retention schedule for that information type by the owning department. The Insight & Intelligence Hub team will retain data for up to 3 years from the close of a project.

This is to ensure time to re-review the data after recommendations have been implemented. If there are any exceptions to this, they will be reviewed and reflected in the retention schedule.