Data Discovery to De-risk the In-housing of a Citizen-facing Service

Challenge

‍A UK government department required a specialist discovery assessment to facilitate the in-housing of a critical citizen-facing service used by millions of people.

The primary hurdle was a lack of visibility of user journeys, as no performance tracking capability was in place. While limited high-level metrics existed, the department lacked the strategic intelligence to map how technical latencies in data synchronisation between internal and external systems impacted user outcomes.

Bridging this gap was essential to ensure that moving the service in-house would not disrupt service delivery or compromise data integrity for vulnerable users.

Solution ‍

Butterfly Data and a prime delivery partner used SQL to interrogate and rationalise legacy databases, joining disparate datasets to map end-to-end user journeys and identify system latencies. The team also audited existing data providers and access points, identifying where permanent permissions would be required post in-housing.

A strategic performance framework was developed, suggesting options for data representation, including dashboards in Splunk and Grafana to visualise real-time service performance.

Working closely with User Research and Service Design, the team aligned these technical metrics to human-centred outcomes, resulting in a strategy detailing required improvements to data collation and optimal data storage for the in-house operating model.

Impact

‍The discovery phase delivered a clear, data-driven blueprint that de-risked the in-housing of the service. By establishing a strategic performance framework, the department moved from fragmented legacy reporting to a single, coherent view of service health.

The identified improvements in data collation and representation empowered stakeholders to make confident, evidence-based scaling decisions. This safeguarded the accuracy of a critical service for millions of users and provided a repeatable, scalable model for future in-housing initiatives involving citizen-facing services.