Data Marketplace alpha reassessment report

Service Standard reassessment report Data Marketplace 26/09/2023

From:
Central Digital and Data Office
Published
11 November 2024
Assessment date:
26 September 2023
Result:
Met
Stage:
Alpha

Service Standard reassessment report

Data Marketplace

From: Cabinet Office
Assessment date: 26/09/2023
Stage: Alpha
Result: Met
Service provider: CDDO

Previous assessment reports

Service description

The overarching vision for the Data Marketplace is to discover, access and share data across government in a legal, ethical and trusted way.

A ministerial commitment has been agreed together CDOs from central departments stating ‘all departments will have access to a Data Marketplace (including a Data Catalogue, standards and governance models) to rival best practice across public and private sector’

The Data Marketplace includes key service viewpoints:

  • discover: publishing, finding, and assessing data to the aims of a project of service.
  • share: making and agreeing and managing data shares easier, faster, and compliant.
  • deliver: creating interoperable and reusable data services
  • guide: accessing support, guidance, standards, and documentation for data use and sharing

Service users

Primary users (direct users of the service):

  • discover: Non-technical acquirer of data; Technical acquirer of data; Supplier of data information asset owner; Supplier of data department catalogue owner
  • share: Acquirer share lead; Supplier share lead
  • deliver: Supplier developer; Supplier technical architect

Secondary users (influence how primary users use the service):

  • Expert advisers; Governance; Data Marketplace operations

1. Understand users and their needs

Decision

The service met point 1 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the quality and volume of user research work completed by the team in a short space of time is extremely impressive and represents a huge improvement from the last assessment
  • it was clear how they had arrived at there personas and how the personas related to the needs of the users they had conducted research with
  • the team articulated how the fragmented data landscape across government linked through to the three problem spaces and and user research
  • the team’s research into users’ risk aversion and the need for a cultural shift in sharing of government data was very well communicated and clear. It showed how the team had successfully understood how organisations with different levels of data sharing maturity and individual users experience will impact the service.
  • great research with data suppliers and clear definition of how the user needs and goals differ from a data acquirer
  • great use of digital and data inclusion scale

What the team needs to explore

Before the next assessment, the team needs to:

  • show how their user research with a diverse set of users have influenced the design and the service as a whole. They specifically need to show how the service meets the needs of users with accessibility needs
  • greater evidence on how different designs have been tested with users especially how users with different digital and data skills interact with the service
  • continually update the personas, user needs and goals as they continue to conduct research in Beta
  • it will be good to see how the Data Marketplace service scores on both the digital and data inclusion scales in a beta assessment
  • consider learning about the experience of people with maths anxiety and low numeracy
  • consider doing user research with more neurodivergent people, including dyslexics and dyscalculics. There are now guidelines about designing for people with low numeracy and dyscalculia.
  • demonstrate how user research is influencing design and language in future iterations of the service

2. Solve a whole problem for users

Decision

The service met point 2 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the three problem statements relating to data sharing have been validated as accurate through research. These are: Discover (the difficulty to find out what kind of data is available); Share (the sharing process can take a long time, due to different standards and processes); Deliver (the data received by acquirers is not often what was expected).
  • the team pivoted their approach to focus on the ‘Publish’ part of the Discover stage. This was to try and understand the impact of adopting a metadata model when publishing data that will influence the downstream Find, Share and Deliver journeys.
  • the team methodically established barriers to users using the Data Marketplace, and started to focus on what may be potential solutions to overcome these barriers
  • the team identified organisational culture as an overwhelming barrier to a departmental attitudes to sharing data. Departmental willingness and the capability to share data is fundamental to the success of the Data Marketplace.
  • the team have modelled key areas of cultural shift that need to be addressed to move from a culture of withholding data to a culture of sharing data. This includes, technical capability, data share standardisation and policy, metadata creation and exposure, and communication and audit trail.
  • the team have done extensive work identifying barriers that could prevent suppliers sharing data. Specific risks have emerged, including, the risk of poor data quality, the risk that the right standards or legal requirements are understood, and the risk of standards not being followed.
  • the team have worked with departments to identify other barriers that need to be de-risked. This includes security, workload, and technical platform. To address these barriers, the team have designed an appropriate security model, formalised approvals for the share agreements process, and designed alternative approaches for metadata publications.
  • the team have continued to focus on the learning aspect of the Data Marketplace to increase capability in the data community. This includes the launch of a Data Maturity Assessment, testing of a Data Ownership model and engagement with the ICO on the legal and policy expertise needed.
  • the team have created a detailed landscape map based on the original high-level journeys identified in alpha, Learn, Discover, Share, Deliver, which has been iterated over time. The landscape map has helped define the Data Marketplace enterprise architecture and high-level design and vision for the Data Marketplace which has been approved by the X-gov Data and Technical Architecture Design Authority.
  • the team have satisfactorily explored the wider policy landscape, and people in government will continue to work to comply with privacy by design principles and existing data protection legal bases when finding data across government and creating data sharing arrangements. Developments are being closely monitored by CDDO.

What the team needs to explore

Before the next assessment, the team needs to:

  • have a strategy in place tackling culture-shift related to Data Marketplace. Culture-shift in government is difficult and not easy to implement. Remain focussed on required cultural changes specifically related to data sharing and acquisition of data aligned to the overarching vision.
  • explore and test more ways of measuring performance of the service, and linking it in to user needs and goals already identified
  • use the performance framework to measure against specific hypothesis, for example is there a way to measure how the digital marketplace is improving users data confidence or simplifying the governments fragmented data estate via ongoing surveys
  • further evidence for how the Data Marketplace is simplifying the fragmented map of data sharing across government
  • further evidence of how the team through the work on Data Marketplace are contributing to cross government working groups on improving capability across government
  • It will be good to see how the Data Marketplace service scores on both the digital and data inclusion scales in a beta assessment
  • share work with CDDO spend team managing development of the red lines, specifically ‘Better Data to Power Decision Making’. These include: ‘Access data for quality issues’; ‘Make datasets available through APIs’; and ‘Make datasets findable through a catalogue’.

Next Steps

This service can now move into a private beta phase, subject to implementing the recommendations outlined in the report and getting approval from the CDDO spend control team. The service must meet the standard at beta assessment before launching public beta.

To get the service ready to launch on GOV.UK the team needs to:

Updates to this page

Published 11 November 2024
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