Analytics
Leadership – Driving Government Transformation, an exclusive Breakfast Insights
Session, was held in Wellington, New Zealand on 22 May 2018.

OpenGov
Asia, in collaboration with SAS, featured Ms Karen Harfield, General Manager of
the Information, Debt and Appeals Division, Department of Human Services, as a
keynote speaker coming from Australia, who shared her experience of analytics from
an international perspective.

In attendance
at the event were senior technology leaders from a range of public sector
agencies in New Zealand.

Mr Mohit Sagar, Managing
Director and Editor-in-Chief of OpenGov Asia, opened the session by explaining
his job to attendees. He spoke of helping the government transform itself and
offering attendees the chance to ask hard questions.

He shared that although
several countries in the regions – including Singapore, Thailand, the
Philippines and New Zealand – are transforming themselves, there are others that
face challenges in the region.

Mr Sagar encouraged
government officials to share their experiences because this is where the
learning begins.

Certain buzzwords
causing noise in the region are business analytics, data science and security.
Governments are still figuring out who is considered a data scientist. They are
also burdened with having collected a lot of data and not yet knowing what to
do with it.

Mr
Sagar also spoke about Artificial Intelligence (AI), highlighting that although
it seems to be a recent trend, it has been around for quite some time. It has
evolved from AI to machine learning to deep learning. He pointed out that
governments without experience in the use of AI now have the advantage of
leapfrogging through decades of technology development, moving directly to deep
learning platforms capable of providing real value.

“Smart Nation in
Singapore really began twenty years ago,” he said. “But then, every person has
a different definition to what Smart Nation really is. A lot of effort has been
done for the people, in terms of becoming a Smart Nation, and yet they [Singaporean
citizens] do not know what to do with it. For instance, IoT devices were placed
in Singaporean houses for their safety but they did not want it because they
did not know what the devices were for.”     

Mr Kroshlen Moodley, the
Government Industry Lead for SAS New Zealand, opened his welcoming address by
noting, “The only constant in the analytics leadership journey has been that of
constant change.” He said this to emphasise the change of organisational focus
on analytics from being traditionally technology-centric to more
information-centric.

He added that the
structured control models used in analytics governance will change and instead
be replaced with transparent trust-based models. This change in governance will
introduce analytics leaders to new issues concerning security, privacy and
ethics.

Analytics is no longer
an IT-based function, and is now an immediate priority for business leaders –
analytics is a leadership commitment.

Mr Moodley shared the 6
market forces that shape analytics today. They are:

(1) Cloud, which is a commodity that has changed the way that analytics is being consumed.
Cloud has also contributed to flexible pricing and on-demand analytics-based
models.

(2) “Everybody
wants to be a data scientist.”   A data
scientist is highly trained in data, science or mathematics but may lack
general domain knowledge.  The citizen
data scientist on the other hand is usually someone (typically a data warehouse
programmer or analyst) who has tremendous experience in the business and the
current data structures and can build the reports required by the business.

(3) The
data landscape, which changed because of the move from using legacy structured
systems and data to using text, images, streaming data and social media
content.

(4) Open-source technology, which creates the challenge in managing multiple types
of tools and technologies.

(5) Analytics of things, which is driving the demand to analyse data at the source,
and at the edge on devices where the analytics is required, as compared to
traditionally running analytics only on the central data warehouse.

(6) Machine Learning and AI, which he said have been around for years and that it
is the increase in compute and processing power that has changed. He described
the processing speed as the ability to handle large data volumes and run
algorithms faster.

Invited keynote
speaker Ms Karen Harfield is the General Manager of Information, Debt and
Appeals Division, Department of Human Services in Australia.

In Ms Harfield’s
experience, it is important to recognise that no matter how good an
organisation thinks it is, there is usually a lot further to go on their
journey.

She shared that the
Department had a lot of system developments that were designed to make
payments, but they were not specifically designed to extract information about
their customers in a way that easily supports analysis for decision support.
Most of the data they had was on payments made and types of payments, which had
limited re-use opportunities.

The Department used to encounter difficulties with
linkages but lately, she shared, that the information they have is linked and has
shown how their customers move through the journey of payments.

She said that their
customers have a lifelong relationship with the department and having
information about their customers allows them to know about their
vulnerabilities.

Ms Harfield shared
that they have encountered issues on publishing, wherein they do not share data
with each other. But on the one hand, she said that although years ago no one
was really interested in data, now it is considered powerful and that data
owners (within DHS and other government-wide stakeholders) want to maintain
visability of use.  She added, “Everyone
is quite nervous at what people might do with it.” But there are significant
opportunities for policy and decision support whilst improving the customers experience.

After the speakers, Mr
Sagar took the floor again to open the polling and discussion session.

For the question, “How
would you rate your organisation’s use of data and data analytic tools for
decision making?” Most respondents answered that it was ‘Fair’ and that they
use their data in decision-making processes, but analysis is primarily a manual
process.

Moreover, the problem,
they shared, was a people-challenge. Education is not leveraged by people and
so they cannot use the information they have at hand. Add to that is the
problem of having a business owner that is not tech-savvy and sees IT as an
expense rather than as a tool or weapon that they could maximise.

‘Disconnect between IT and Business’ was cited by most
attendees as the biggest barrier to progress in an organisation’s data journey.
Bias
is the explanation given behind the disconnect. Often, business owners are
pushing back on data because they do not like what they are seeing.

This echoes experience from previous events where
business leaders are often highlighted as a key stumbling block. A frequent comment was
that business leaders would be receptive to change after attending conferences,
but often revert to a ‘business as usual’ approach on returning to work.

55% answered ‘Poor
quality of data’ as the “most important data-related challenge to integrating
more analytics into your day-to-day decision-making.” Participants explained that the information being
retained is not the most important data. What often tends to be missing is the
data where you can add real value.

For the question, “What
are the greatest concerns you face when using analytics software or tools?” the
top answers were ‘Data governance concerns’, ‘Software licenses’ and ‘Expensive
maintenance’.

Mr Kroshlen Moodley
closed the event with saying that, “Chief Analytics officers should own the
change, be inspirational and get the organisation excited about using analytics
– make analytics your leadership commitment.”