- The Government Property Agency (GPA) is an executive agency charged with transforming the way the Civil Service works by managing improvements to their place of work. With a stock of property valued in hundreds of billions, data has a clear role to play in maximising this estate so that is works for government. Managing government properties requires data-led decisions, but more than this, GPA needed that data to be standardised and accurate.
Challenge
- With a massive portfolio of property and an evolving workforce, it is important that the GPA are able to accurately plan accommodation usage. A key difficulty the team faced was inconsistent information deriving from data being passed from user to user, each with their own standards. Each manual data movement created the potential for human error and the dual threat of inconsistent information and ineffective use of employee time. The lack of standardisation increased the risk of inaccuracy in the data at GPA’s disposal.
Solution
- GPA turned to Hippo, leveraging an existing partnership stemming from Hippo’s involvement in their Business Intelligence programme. The Hippo team set out a multidisciplinary approach to address GPA’s data challenges.
- Hippo’s services encompassed:
- Programme Structure and Strategy: Crafting a roadmap to guide GPA’s data transformation journey.
- Technical Architecture Design: Developing the foundational infrastructure to support data integrations.
- Solution Design for Bespoke Integrations: Creating tailored solutions to meet GPA’s specific needs.
- Business Process Discovery: Identifying processes that required data enhancement.
- Data Mapping: Uncovering hidden insights and connections within the datasets.
- Development of Data Integrations: Building bridges between disparate data systems for cohesive insights.
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT) Management: Ensuring seamless integration and addressing (and corrections of) defects.
- Live Integration Management: Overseeing real-time data flows.
- Development of Additional Features: Continuously enhancing the system’s capabilities.
- A range of technologies, including AWS (Event Bridge, Cloudwatch, AWS Inspector), Grafana, GitHub, Python, Redshift, and Quicksight were used to bring everything together
- Hippo’s initial team of developers, business analysts, delivery managers, and technical architects expanded over time to include additional developers, a dedicated technical architect, and additional business analysts. This ability to quickly deploy our in-house talent was a key success driver.
- That team delivered a solution that first standardised the data and then removed the likelihood of human error by accurately integrating systems with effective data bridges between systems and therefore users. The newly cohesive datasets then provided more reliable insights that drove estate management via data-driven decisions, ultimately leading to reduced costs and increased productivity.
Outcome
- Installing rock-solid integrations reduced the manual work required by civil servants when data is transferred between systems. Three immediate benefits result from this:
- Reduced manual data entry reduced human error and led to improved data quality.
- More reliable data systems led to superior decision-making.
- Less time spent on manual data management freed up civil servants to undertake higher value tasks, focussing on analysis and action.
- Hippo’s agile team made a positive impact and as a result grew from three developers and a technical architect, to a team of 23 professionals across the project.
- The solution is scalable and flexible, with the potential to expand on generic solutions as the requirement evolves. Every effort is focussed on freeing up civil servants to concentrate on value-add tasks across the GPA estate.
- More importantly, the solution is driving better decisions through better data.
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