Iain Garrow, Business Development Officer in our Digital Public Services team, writes about his journey in becoming an expert with Data Hub and reflecting on the platform's evolution to what it is today.
When I first joined the Digital Public Services team, I was assigned the task of becoming an expert in Data Hub to provide effective training to new and existing users. This required me to immerse myself in the platform and gain advanced knowledge to meet the needs of users struggling to complete tasks or projects.
The development of Data Hub began in 2016 when millions of expired National Entitlement Cards (NEC) used for free bus travel in Scotland required urgent replacement. Transport Scotland and Scottish local authorities faced the challenge of ensuring one million new cards reached the right people on time without:
- Inconvenience and cost for customers: expired cards would stop working, causing disruption, and a rise in demand for the organisations dealing with affected customers.
- Damage to reputation: delays or errors with replacement cards could affect public trust in the scheme and government officials.
- Fraudulent activity: sending cards to outdated addresses could lead to misuse.
The key hurdle was outdated and inaccurate cardholder data, as many people had changed addresses without notifying their council.
It was crucial to validate and cleanse the data before sending new cards to ensure they were delivered to the correct recipients. This required matching cardholder data with records held by Transport Scotland and local authorities.
It was anticipated that the project would take six months to complete, but we completed the task in half that time.
Partners took away valuable lessons from the project. Having improved access to real-time information, it helped Transport Scotland understand customer behaviour, analytics, and improved internal processes. The project highlighted Data Hub's potential to support strategic planning and act as a crucial component in local authorities' master data management strategies.
Since then, Data Hub has become a valuable tool for twenty-nine Scottish local authorities. In addition to Scottish local authorities, nine public sector organisations have also come on board. Within these organisations, different departments have seen value in using Data Hub and have, in turn, signed up for their access, which brings the total to twelve distinct public sector departments using Data Hub.
The online platform went live as a self-service platform in early 2018, meaning it was put into the hands of users for the first time to carry out their data matching and seeding projects. Since then, just over 95 million records have been processed through Data Hub using seven distinct programs.
Our Address Matching Program is the most used, having processed over 51 million records, with one organisation processing a staggering 27.8 million records.
The popularity of this program could be down to improvements made to it since it was introduced as a replacement for our old Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) Seeding Program. Each matched address is now categorised, allowing the user to accept, delete or find a new matching address using integration with the Improvement Service’s flagship dataset, One Scotland Gazetteer (OSG). Results can be exported using a selection of templates or can be fully customised.
The Unique Citizen Number (UCRN) Seeding Program is our second most popular, with 11.6 million records processed. Available to Scottish local authorities only, its popularity lies in the output records as they not only seed missing UCRNs or match ones entered in the input file, but if there is a date of death, it will be provided. This information is invaluable to local authorities for identifying individuals who may still be receiving benefits or services after death, and it is exclusively available for their use.
In 2024 we helped Energy Savings Trust (EST) with a requirement to process a very large list of addresses, and it was clear that Data Hub was the perfect choice for them.
Our team at EST has found Data Hub’s address matching tool to be speedy and accurate in matching large lists of addresses. In particular, we found that the integrated map (OSG) and address search function that is available to resolve multiple/unmatched addresses is invaluable – it simplifies what would have otherwise been a tedious manual task. The Improvement Service staff have also been reliable and quick to resolve any initial issues. Overall, Data Hub has matched our expectations, and we will continue to use it in our work supporting Scottish Government.
Public Health Scotland is an established and consistent user of Data Hub, using the system to identify people eligible for certain vaccinations and anti-viral treatments and schedule appointments. It has also enabled them to create an accurate record of care home residents, which can then be used to measure vaccination uptake in this population.
In terms of functionality, we think Data Hub is easy to use, meets our expectations and we particularly like that the system sends an email as the various parts of the process complete. As the address matching can be quite time consuming, this allows us to set it up and continue with other tasks while it runs.
Overall, Data Hub has been a valuable resource to improve the accuracy of vaccination cohorts used by the Scottish Vaccination and Immunisation Programme. These cohorts are essential in public health surveillance of vaccination coverage and uptake, a vital aspect of protecting health for Scotland’s citizens.
I’m looking forward to collaborating with more local authorities and public sector organisations in the future, to demonstrate the capabilities of Data Hub and identify new opportunities for its use.
I also look forward to contributing my expertise and knowledge to this collaboration and am eager to see how Data Hub can support our partners' endeavours.