How the UK Uses Data Analytics Services to Improve its Economy and Public Confidence
Data analytics services in the UK have an upper hand to place the country at the vanguard of data innovation. According to the UK’s government, it is legal to use personal data as per the Data Protection Act 1998, which has driven the public services transformation, business growth, and democratic engagement. The country’s research community is equipped with world-class data scientists and speedy computing services that has empowered the innovation environment fostering several successful data-driven establishments. Many of them utilise open data freely provided by the government sector as their raw material.
Supporting the Data Economy
The government of the UK motivates private and public sectors to utilise every bit of raw data to create a robust data infrastructure. This will also boost regulatory compliance, development of a data-literate workforce, and growth of folks with advanced data skills. Data infrastructure denotes the technology, assets, processes, and organisations that not only create data but also to open and allow other people to make the best use of it. The process involves software tools, facilities, cyber-security systems, networks, and data management platforms. The main aim is to create and work with the market-changing new products and healthier public services. It also includes enhancements of the smart cities, connected and autonomous vehicles, and the IoT-backed services.
Citymapper: The Biggest Example
Developed in London and launched in 2012, Citymapper is a smartphone app that utilises transport data released by the Greater London Authority public data platforms and the UK’s government. The app helps in guiding people by giving a sophisticated view of how to travel and reach their desired destination by merging multiple information sources from London’s transport. The app is made with the vision that people make travel choices based on the entire journey environment, thus provides information on diverse transport modes (bus, taxi, tube, walking, and cycling) and external factors (travel duration, real-time delays, weather, and prices.)
Data-driven Businesses Benefits Data Economy
According to Digital Catapult and productivity report, better utilisation of data can develop £66 billion of new business and innovation opportunities in the UK. The businesses that are efficiently using data not only reap lucrative benefits but also boosting the economy. To motivate the sectors to work with data-driven models, the UK government is closely working with Open Data Institute to develop such an environment that is opened up to customers’ data across multiple sectors with the help of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). This has helped to develop innovative applications like dashboards that could automatically shift consumers to the low-priced energy deal based on their preferences and actual consumption. The country is also working on the world’s first-ever Open Banking API that utilises data to deliver helpful information to consumers while using banking services.
The exponential growth in the use of social media and the adoption of surging technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) is producing massive amounts of data sets than ever before. In the meantime, lower costs of collection, analysing, storage, and processing, when amalgamated with high-tech computing power, is creating these huge data sets into a rich raw material to unlock new possibilities. Utilisation of data sets has driven new opportunities for every business regardless of the sector, altering the business model, process, market, and sell and consume products and services. The aim is to ease travel congestion while enabling affordable insurance, increase the development of new medicines, and reduce crime through data.
