A technical discovery phase to identify where to store housing management data and manage migration DISCOVERY

Project details:

Organisation London Borough of Hackney
Department Housing
Collaboration Level Open To Conversation
Budget £0K > £50K
Key Contact Nic Teeman
Phase start 01 October 2018
Phase Estimated end 30 November 2018

Tags

Description

Why the work is being done

Hackney has been developing self-service apps and REST APIs to reduce dependency on Universal Housing (UH). However, writing to UH isn’t easy. To replace this legacy system, we need to start to master data outside of UH with a strategy that improves and protects data quality while continuing to support day-to-day business operations. Ideally, we would create a vision and pattern that is easy for any of our teams, suppliers or partners to join. Any recommendations from Discovery are likely to require a procurement justification, so the solution will need to be assessed against the Technology Code of Practice.

Problem to be solved

New digital services are being developed incrementally and the transformation programme to replace UH has reached a point where we need a collaborative approach to how and where we will read and write data in the future (e.g. for repairs). We also want to ensure that we will be able to link and share data across housing, particularly people and properties. We need a solution that meets the Technology Code of Practice, at an affordable price which can be maintained by the existing Hackney team.

Who the users are and what they need to do

  • As a tenant or leaseholder, I need to know the council has a record of my requests
  • As a digital developer, I need to easily discover and integrate with single authoritative data sources so that I can build a service that meets user needs
  • As a member of staff, I need a single source of the truth that doesn’t create data conflicts or confusion, so I have an accurate, current record of requests and properties
  • As an applications manager I need the skills to maintain the database so I can support the needs of the service

Any work that’s already been done

  • HACT has developed a data standard to support housing management.
  • We have explored writing data to Dynamics 365 so that residents can use self-service apps
  • A number of services have been developed to support self-service, and the code is documented in GitHub
  • We are beginning a Discovery phase to understand the user need for our existing Citizen Index

Existing team

  1. Individual product teams that have, or are, developing self-service applications
  2. The Master Data team - part of Hackney’s Data and Insight team (including LLPG and Citizen Index)
  3. Applications Manager for Universal Housing, responsible for maintenance of the new services and databases

People

Watchers

Contributors

Status Updates

20 March 2019

20 March 2019

  • Output from Discovery - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bP2Ke_3jn5VS9SBU5PDptCfZ-2DXXGTozOeI-N789zM/edit?usp=sharing

12 October 2018

  • We have awarded the contract to Madetech.com and are in the process of organising a kick-off.