Data Maturity Assessment for Government

Foreword by the Chief Executive Officer for the Central Digital and Data Office, Megan Lee Devlin

I am pleased to introduce the Data Maturity Assessment (DMA) for Government. Data maturity - our capability, effectiveness and readiness to use data fully - is fundamental to delivering better public services and delivering policy with greater precision and impact.

Permanent Secretaries, Chief Digital and Information Officers and Chief Data Officers across government have endorsed this important tool and committed to using it in a core part of their organisation within the first year. The assessment will enable business leaders and data teams to uncover actionable insights that will help target resources on the most crucial data initiatives.

Development of the DMA has been a collaborative effort between CDDO and colleagues from all corners of government and beyond, including the Data Quality Hub at the Office for National Statistics, colleagues from departments and agencies, and recognised external experts in data maturity. The resulting assessment is comprehensive and fit for the government context.

Publication of this assessment is the first step towards delivering a rich picture of the strengths and weaknesses of our data environments, within our organisations and across government. The intelligence and insights the assessments will reveal will shape whole-of-government and department-specific interventions now and in the future. And they will ultimately ensure that we are able to fully leverage our powerful data assets, safely and securely, to realise better outcomes for the public we serve.

Message from the Chief Data Officer, Central Digital and Data Office, Sue Bateman

The Data Maturity Assessment (DMA) for Government is a robust and comprehensive framework, designed by the public sector for the public sector. The DMA represents a big step forward in our shared ambition to establish and strengthen the data foundations in government by enabling a granular view of the current status of our data environments.

The systematic and detailed picture that the DMA results provide can be used to deliver value in the data function and across the enterprise. Maturity results, and the progression behaviours/features outlined in the DMA, will be essential to reviewing and setting data strategy. DMA outputs provide a way to communicate and evidence how the data ecosystem is critical to the business. When considered in the context of organisational priorities and responsibilities, DMA outputs can assist in:

identifying and mitigating strategic risk arising from low data maturity, and where higher maturity needs to be maintained
targeting and prioritising investment in the most important data initiatives
assuring the data environment for new services and programmes

I know there is substantial appetite for the DMA for Government and I am pleased to put it in your hands. We look forward to working closely with you to learn more about data maturity good practice in delivery, validation, analysis and use, agree implementation goals and initiate design of a government-specific data maturity benchmarking model.

Understand and deliver the first-year data maturity commitments

You will need to use both Data Maturity Assessment for Government: framework and Delivering the Data Maturity Assessment: objectives and resources to carry out the commitment for all departments to use the DMA to achieve actionable data maturity insights this year.

The DMA framework is the primary document. It is a self-assessment framework and is organised around 10 topics, intersected with six themes, arranged across rows, with each row providing 5 maturity levels. An assessment is carried out by gathering evidence and information which is used to determine an organisation’s current maturity level for each row.

See Delivering the Data Maturity Assessment: objectives and resources for details about the first-year commitment. The supporting resources have been designed to assist in initiating, delivering and actioning the results of the first-year maturity assessment. The resources are deliberately light-touch. The resources include a range of options, considerations, suggestions and simple tools.

You can use these framework and other resources to:

understand the first-year data maturity goals and commitments for departments and relevant public sector organisations
learn about data maturity
understand the content and structure of the DMA for Government
understand the potential benefits and uses of a completed data maturity assessment
understand the main considerations in planning and delivering a data maturity assessment
develop a plan and deliver a data maturity assessment
record and calculate data maturity results following an assessment
connect with others working on data maturity across government

The Data Maturity Assessment framework and supporting resources were developed for government by government. The Data Maturity Assessment for Government is a part of the National Data Strategy and supports aims of the Digital and Data Roadmap 2022-2025

Get in touch

datamaturity@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk