Data has been compared to water; both are essential for life and necessary to survive and thrive. In local authorities and public bodies, leaders and officials rely on multiple sources of data every day to make more informed decisions and direct increasingly tight resources.

In the National Data Strategy published in 2020, the UK Government set out its vision for leveraging data to ‘improve a range of public services'. And it doubled-down on this ambition in its Levelling Up White Paper, giving data something of a starring role.