Iron Mountain Ltd: Unlocking digital transformation starts with better data accessibility #techUKDigitalPS
In June 2022, the UK Government published a policy paper ‘Transforming for a Digital Future’, highlighting their ambition to leverage digital technology to deliver better public services across the country. One of the missions is to improve access to high-quality data throughout the public sector.
It’s a lofty goal, given that about half of data is dark data, which means it goes unused or even forgotten about. That figure is likely a lot higher in many public sector organisations, given that they often have records spanning back decades, many of which might be stored in legacy formats including paper and microfiche.
The cross-government roadmap for digital, data, and technology, or DDaT, envisages a future where data can be easily shared without compromising on privacy, security, and compliance. For example, the lack of interoperability between medical record formats in the NHS increases risk for patients. It’s an issue that must be urgently addressed with a unified data strategy.
Many public sector organisations also maintain large archives of long obsolete formats, such as microfiche and microfilm – libraries, museums, and government ministries to name a few. Whether it’s cultural heritage or sensitive government information, all documentation must not only be preserved – it must also be accessible to those who need it.
In few areas are the twin challenges of digitisation and data accessibility more acute than they are for organisations in the public sector, where their sheer longevity means they often have vast amounts of data stored in a variety of nonstandard or legacy formats.
Prioritising the digitisation and clean-up of legacy records
For public sector organisations that have yet to migrate to interoperable digital formats, the first step is to digitise legacy records. This can be extremely challenging for nationwide public sector organisations, due to the historically widespread lack of standardisation in formats. Traditional methods, such as scanning and using optical character recognition (OCR), require a great deal of manual involvement to ensure that all necessary detail is identifiable following conversion into digital form.
Supporting public sector innovation with emerging technologies
New and emerging technologies like machine learning are fast proving vital in helping public sector organisations address the challenges of scale and accessibility. For example, Amazon Textract uses machine learning to identify and extract data from forms and documents without the need for all the manual work that comes with configuring conventional OCR software.
AI can also help with quality assurance by automatically raising an alert when it encounters a situation where it has an insufficient confidence level in its conclusion. The ability to verify data using methods like enhanced deep learning and human-in-the-loop before using it for analysis helps mitigate many of the risks that come with highly automated environments.
You can’t use, share or analyse data if you can’t readily access it. By deploying new and emerging technologies, public sector organisations can better protect their digital assets in accordance with today’s security and privacy standards, preserve their proprietary knowledge, and turn dark data into insight.
This article was written by Alice Blogg, Public Sector Strategy, Programmes and Partnerships Manager, Iron Mountain. Alice has spent seven years specialising in delivering information solutions for the Public Sector at Iron Mountain. She is passionate about improving public services through the use of technology and driving process efficiencies to free up capacity and improve outcomes. Learn more about Alice, and connect with her through LinkedIn.
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