MP306 'Alternative Self Service Data solution for Service Users'

The current process for sharing DCC reports presents some challenges to Service Users in which changes would be required in order to remedy. Some of the challenges identified are:

• The use case of some of the reports provided has changed overtime, with some Service Users using the existing reports to underpin operational processes in addition to that of reporting on backward looking positions.
• Some of the provided DCC reports are shared on a less frequent basis than others e.g. weekly or monthly. Service Users can see benefit in having Data provided on a more regular basis to support operational processes.
• The DCC requires named Service Users to access reporting Data on SharePoint. This drives significant manual effort for Service Users through the manual retrieval of reporting datasets.
• The need to ingest DCC report extracts into Service User reporting solutions from extract files introduces complexity into the ingestion process.
• The combination of SharePoint, CSV files, named Service Users and email updates on report availability combined serves to limit the operability of the solution for some Service Users. It’s either not possible or inconvenient to confirm that reporting Data is complete or has been updated
• Sharing of Data via CSV files can potentially remove useful metadata that can provide insight, and also potentially removes the ability to share relationships between datasets.

If the current process remains in place, there is likely to be continued significant manual processing of DCC reporting potentially limiting the amount of benefit a Service User can yield into operational processes.

The Proposer has identified several potential areas for improvement within the current DCC process. These are outlined below:

• Cloud-based reporting solution
• Authenticated Service User access
• Daily frequency of all DCC reporting datasets (where possible)
• Continued access to all existing DCC reporting datasets
• System to system notifications of updates to reporting datasets
• Backwards compatibility for reporting dataset updates
• Improved security through control of Data access to authorised Service Users

As part of this modification, SECAS will look to explore the possibility of implementing the criteria provided by the Proposer as part of any potential solutions.