I recently found out about SAVVI, which stands for “a Scalable Approach to Vulnerability via Interoperability”. SAVVI, led by Tameside Council and sponsored by GMCA, aims to use data to find vulnerable people. The project is developing a catalogue of datasets, their sources and the basis on which they can be used by organisations delivering public services to identify individuals or households with particular vulnerabilities, such as for the purpose of homelessness prevention.
Having worked with local authority and publicly available secondary data for some time, often building specific analytical tools to spec, I saw the potential straight away of SAVVI to transform how organisations delivering public services use their and others’ data to improve the work they do and outcomes for the vulnerable people identified.
Vulnerability often looks different from different parts of the system, and it can be difficult to fully identify vulnerability and people’s needs from within a single service so my hope is that SAVVI brings different perspectives across the system of public services together in the form of powerful datasets that can be used to identify, and then support, those whose needs are currently invisible.
You can find out more about SAVVI here:
https://coda.io/@savvi/welcome
and watch video presentations about the project here:
Using secondary data to identify vulnerability and support needs isn’t a new idea. In 2018/19, when I was interim Business Intelligence and Performance Manager for the soon to be Somerset West and Taunton Council, I initiated a project to develop a dataset using council tax, police, and DWP data that would enable the council to better identify or even predict households for which earlier support could help to prevent council tax payment defaults.
The principle being applied was that support that meets citizens’ underlying needs is always going to be cheaper than enforcement action after things have gone wrong and will undoubtedly lead to better outcomes for all involved. The aim of the business intelligence work, under whose umbrella the project sat, was to develop a single dataset for all council held data in a GIS, which is a database for geographic data, so that any form of geographical analysis could be conducted as required.
I was fortunate to have a very skilled team but only saw the very start of the project while I was there so it’s great to see SAVVI being developed as this could open up the power of data that is already available, to address challenging population issues across the system.
If you’re interested in the power of geographic data, you might also want to have a look at HMG’s Geospatial Strategy:
