Hello PPMA members and friends

Yvonne Skingle, Director, Executive Search at Penna and Tom Baker, Business Development Direct at BT Global Services both believe that customer and staff information needs to be more closely aligned in an era where data is more important than ever and in our blog post this week, they share their views with us.

“Open data, data sharing, use of data for smarter outcome based commissioning are part of the rhetoric and debate that surround the future of local public service.

Knowing what communities want from the public sector and understanding more about our service outcomes and workforce have to be top priority as we move towards the adoption of new models of public service delivery.

It is the view of many that public sector HR hasn’t had the greatest of track records of being the ‘top of the league’ for using data for decision making. HR needs to build understanding about the increasing role that data, its use and application will have in shaping our workforce and their skills.

There is an acceptance that there is a need for a stronger focus on evidence based commissioning but what  could this mean in terms of the public sector workforce? Our need to be certain in the decisions we make has never been more acute, either in terms of organisational models or the delivery of integrated care.

Recently we debated the linkage between data, information and the workforce, talking about data and its use, how we share it within the public sector and beyond and what this could mean for the shape of things to come.

When there is a focus on cost, evidence is key and understanding outcomes is imperative. In a sector like ours where people are our primary cost is now the time for HR to embrace the data revolution?”

Yvonne Skingle             Tom Baker