- broker relationships and facilitate discussions around local needs for worklessness data
- facilitate data sharing and data management to achieve better outcomes
- help identify solutions to obstacles, including ways of ensuring data security
- working with local partners, CLG and DWP to test and provide exchange protocols, data sharing principles, Memoranda of Understanding, and other tools to underpin this process
- identify lessons and good practice to be shared more widely as outcomes from the project.
The project has informed guidance on data sharing and worklessness published by DWP, and the IDeA ‘How To’ guide on Good Practice in Data Sharing ( 840KB) drafted by Educe. It has also led to DWP providing working age benefits data at very small area level (Output Areas), the smallest areas for which statistical data can be supplied.
CLG have published an evaluation of the pilots, Sharing data to improve local employment outcomes ( download on CLG site).New possibilities for data sharing have since been opened up by the Sections 130-133 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. Draft regulations have been published to extend data sharing to help identify people affected by new benefit rules, especially on housing, and families with multiple disadvantages who may require support to help turn their lives around, as part of the Government’s Troubled Families programme.