Dictionary Series: What do we mean when we talk about data collaboratives 'as a service'?
What is a Data Collaborative?
Alexa Steinbrück / Better Images of AI / Explainable AI / CC-BY 4.0
A data collaborative is a means of bringing together a variety of players to use and share data and methodologies to solve challenges in new and exciting ways. Data collaboratives establish multi-sector partnerships that work to solve real world challenges.
Combining different perspectives, datasets, skills and expertise can help unlock new intelligence and insight that can have long-lasting positive benefits across society. In a lot of cases, it is clear that collaborative data-driven solutions are critical to support those organisations that are working to improve their service provision, whatever this may be.
Here at the Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF, we provide the platform that brings together the right data, skills and expertise to help solve some of the most pressing challenges facing children across the globe.
Our Services
So what can the Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF offer as a service?
Well, we’re an innovative, agile and impactful organisation that seeks to enable improvement in outcomes for every child. We draw on the strength of our partners, and their networks, to bring insight and solve problems using data innovatively and responsibly.
Extending across child health, education and wellbeing, and not replicated anywhere else in the world, the DCC is a catalyst to trigger collaborative data-driven solutions to advance child rights everywhere, whilst at the same time encouraging the exchange of data and expertise for social good.
Core to our service offering are the two activities listed below. It is important to note that we have designed these to be widely transferrable and applicable to a number of challenge areas – not just on projects aimed at improving outcomes for children.
Impact Collaborations
Our Impact Collaborations are a unique way of developing and enabling collaboration. Our mission is to provide the platform that brings together the appropriate data and expertise to answer our challenge questions targeted at improving the lives of children. We work with our customers to develop a Challenge Question that looks to address an existing problem for children using innovative data science techniques or novel data sets and data linkages.
Once the question is finalised, we segment and identify the necessary skills, capabilities and competencies required for each of these. We put the Challenge Question out to the network and encourage our community to complete an Expression of Interest form that highlights their skills and gives them an opportunity to suggest how they would contribute to solving the challenge. We use these applications to pull together the best combination of individuals and organisations for the job.
Candidates are then invited to a series of design-thinking workshops, along with the customer, to start to formalise the details of the project. Most importantly, this will involve designing and building the project proposal that clearly answers the challenge question we set at the start of the process. We will then present the collaborative team’s project proposal to the board for approval.
We have launched a number of successful Impact Collaboration projects recently, and you can find more information about the Challenge Questions here.
As part of our process, we have a way of prioritising the types of projects we work on. Whilst it would be lovely to take on everything, it simply isn’t feasible! We use our True North check as a bit of a filter to make sure that any proposed work align to our values of For Every Child with Trust, Transparency & Safe Data. We think through questions such as:
What is the intended positive impact on children? Is it clear how the project will achieve this?
Where did the idea for the project come from? What is the need for the project? Is there a use case for any outputs?
How and why is data the solution to this problem? How can we evidence this?
Who is the real end user, and are they already invested in this project? Have the right people been engaged in discussions about this project?
If we are confident that the project proposal passes our True North check, we then run it through our Prioritisation Framework. This gives a project an overall score against the following categories:
Suitability
Deliverability
Impact
Scalability
Portfolio
This scoring mechanism helps our Governance Boards to have both a detailed overview of any proposed work but also a consistent means of comparing across projects to ensure that we are confident that the Data for Children Collaborative are the right people to take on this work!
You can find our True North check and Prioritisation Framework here.
Responsible Innovation Framework
Key to our way of working at the Collaborative is our Responsible Innovation framework. This is a set of steps and tools that underpin all of the Collaborative’s activity, helping us to deliver Data for Good projects both in the right way and for the right reasons, with children’s rights at the centre of everything we do. This framework ensures that ethics, safeguarding, legals and youth participation are all core to project design, rather than afterthoughts.
We see these tools not as additional paperwork, but of real value to the project teams and the projects themselves. We use these as a learning and upskilling opportunity, as well as ensuring that we are always aligned to our Compass Values: For Every Child with Trust, Transparency and Safe Data.
All of our tools are kept open source to encourage others to use these and repurpose them for their own data-driven projects.
True North Check & Prioritisation Framework
Are we best placed to answer this challenge?
All projects are scored via our Prioritisation Framework to ensure they are being proposed for the right reasons and align to the Collaborative's values and ways of working.
Project Initiation Document
Who, what, when, how does the project work?
The PID is a comprehensive document of key information about the project. This includes elements such as the data management plan and budget.
Governance Approval
Do the partner organisations support this initiative?
Each project must complete a project summary template that we present to our governance boards for approval. This is a high level summary of the project scope, plan, timeline, budget and intended impacts.
Legals at a Glance
What have we all signed up to?
Legal contracts can often be difficult to understand - that's why we create a summary sheet of key legal information the project team should be aware of. We circulate this across the whole project team.
Safeguarding Training
What are our responsibilities towards every child?
All project teams must sign our safeguarding statement as standard. We also have bespoke training, created with UNICEFF UK, for our more complex projects.
Ethical Assessment
Are we doing the right thing in the right way?
Our ethical assessment has been designed to capture the ethical challenges of working on data science projects for children. Each project will complete three ethical check-ins at relevant points throughout the project lifecycle.
Youth Participation
How do we meaningfully engage young people?
It is important to us that each project considers the value of youth participation. We have created a workbook that will guide a team through the necessary steps to decide if youth participation is appropriate for the project, and how to develop a plan to ensure it is carried out in a meaningful way.
Impact Statement
What did the project achieve, and what lessons have we learned?
At the end of a project, we will work with the team to create an impact statement that details the project's achievements, lessons learned and any next steps to action.
Why are these services valuable?
So now you have some idea of what we can offer, the real question is what makes these services valuable. Why come to the DCC to access the benefits of data collaboration?
Well the Data for Children Collaborative, by design, is able to create, foster, support and nurture collaborative working. It’s in our DNA!
On the surface, the offering is obvious. We are able to bring together the right people, at the right time, to answer the right questions that can help solve problems for children globally. Having launched seven Impact Collaboration Challenges, we are confident that our methodology leads to success. But it’s not only our methods that can benefit others.
Let’s look under the bonnet at what makes us different. You’ve heard about “THE WHAT” above, so now we can address “THE HOW” and “THE WHY.”
THE “HOW”
We are able to recognise what makes a ‘good’ collaboration, and put the right pieces in place to achieve this.
We lean on the strengths of different parts of the community
Private Sector– ambitious targets
Public Sector – a strong and inclusive mission statement
Academia – robust and rigorous research
We spend time on getting the question right
Working with the end user from the get-go to ensure that whatever outputs are generated are both needed and will land well with the intended audience and users
Tailor a Challenge Question to be both broad enough to encourage truly multi-disciplinary and collaborative work, but not too broad that the question will no longer have clarity over its intended outputs
We are able to take the complexity of user needs and distil them down into a tangible project
We take on projects that are impact-led and challenge-driven
All of our projects are driven by a clear need and use case, and we work with the customer right from the initial stages to ensure that this remains a core focus
Our Prioritisation Framework helps us to ensure that all of our projects have a clear objective and intended output. We like to think about it this way - what is going to land on someone’s desk as a result of this project to help them do their job more effectively?
We think about the right combinations, not the right specifics
We recognise that co-creation is the key in order to achieve the best results
No one organisation or individual has the answer to every problem!
We carefully curate bespoke teams that have complementary skillsets that can ensure a project is not only completed, but can have a real impact
Diversity of voices enables unique approaches to problem solving
We make sure to bring people along at the appropriate level
We dedicate time to carefully mapping the stakeholders involved in a project against a RACI Matrix (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) to ensure that the right people are receiving the right level of interaction with a project at the right time
Not everyone needs to be in every meeting -but it is important to us that we are aware of the people who need to be engaged to ensure that any outputs can be used effectively
We provide the platform for co-creation and design thinking
We offer a safe space to try new things!
We encourage innovation and agility in both our external and internal projects
Our workshop process allows all collaborators to contribute to, and influence, the design of a project
THE “WHY”
We are the people who can bring experts together, who understand intersections and connections, who can thoughtfully combine cultures, values and perspectives to achieve results. Collaboration is key. We know we can’t do this alone!
We need both depth and width in equal measure in order to succeed – one cannot thrive without the other. That is exactly the role we play –we are the ‘generalists’ who bring together the right ‘specialists’ for the job in an agile, responsible and supportive way. We never claim to be the experts of any one field. Instead, we lean on the people with the right skills and expertise and let them show what they can do. It’s all about getting the right people in the room and able to contribute to the conversation.
Our values-led approach enables us to collaborate with like-minded organisations and individuals who have a genuine interest in using their skills in new ways to improve outcomes for children. Building these values into our work from pre-project conception, and using them to frame all of our conversations, creates a safe, encouraging and open workplace for us all.
Want to find out more?
Want to find out more about any of our services?
Drop us a line: Hello@dataforchildren.ed.ac.uk