Data Management & Integration Solutions Archives - Page 3 of 8

What do you get from your education software provider?

Posted on: 5 October 2023

The education software and integrated systems that you use to underpin your education services and processes are vital to the effective and efficient operation and oversight of your services. From early years to admissions and transfers, SEND/ALN to virtual school services, technology plays a fundamental role in efficient, effective and fair educational services to meet increasingly complex objectives. But what are your services getting from your software providers? From initial training through to ongoing support and maintenance, your providers play an important role themselves in sustaining your services.

Selecting the right technology means selecting the right partner. It’s not simply a case of buying a system and then switching it on. There’s an implementation to be planned and programmed, data to be exported, cleansed and imported. Then there are ongoing support needs and updates required over time to keep the system secure, compliant and supporting your evolving needs.

Getting started with your education software

Once a decision has been made, how are you going to get your team up to speed with your new education software? Ensuring that training is included in the procurement process is essential. So too is agreeing costs for any extra sessions, such as training and development.

Running parallel to this is ensuring that the configuration of local process covers everything you need. We’ve seen many cases where authorities have purchased the minimum viable product to meet procurement thresholds. They’ve then found layer upon layer of additional cost once they’ve gone live. These costs cover anything from additional infrastructure to third party licence agreements in order to get the system working.

Understanding these hidden extras can greatly help in gaining a more accurate cost of your education software. Building upon minimum viable products can be timely as well as expensive. Mapping this all out can minimise friction and disruption upon implementation. Better still, identifying a partner which has the experience and capability to work with local issues out of the box brings everything into scope upfront. Understanding how ongoing changes will be managed further helps to achieve your objectives over time.

How will your education software be updated?

Another issue we see repeatedly is the downtime associated with upgrades and maintenance. This covers everything from enhancements to the software to critical security patches. Standalone systems can help with this. They can help in greatly reducing the time your software is unavailable for. Any necessary work can also be conducted at times that best suit you.

Where your education software is linked to another piece of software within the same suite of products, updating one facet requires the downtime of everything else, too. So, for example, if your education software provider needs to update another system that is entirely unrelated to education and the work you do, but sits on the same architecture, it will mean that your software will be unavailable whilst their systems are updated.

IMPULSE Nexus – what you see is what you get

CACI has designed its IMPULSE Nexus education software to suit the needs of local authorities like yours. It is modular by design, so you can pick up and plug in the parts that you need. This means you’re free to use as much or as little of IMPULSE Nexus as your needs require.

All our pricing is upfront and transparent. You don’t have to pay for the bits of the software that you don’t need. This helps you manage your overarching software ecosystem that can use IMPULSE Nexus as part, or the heart of it.

Like everyone else, we do conduct upgrade work to IMPULSE Nexus. As a standalone system, however, we can work with you on the best time to conduct these. There are three every year, so there’s always advance warning and time to make arrangements. We also offer a hosting solution which means that we can carry out these upgrades for you as a fully managed service. This further reduces friction and minimises downtime.

Furthermore, as IMPULSE Nexus is a standalone system, any upgrade work won’t impact your integrated systems.

Where you need further support from the team at CACI, our costs are transparent and upfront. Our annual advisory service (AAS) days are bookable in advance or as and when you need them. These are designed to help you with everything from project management to additional training. You can find out more here.

IMPULSE Nexus is used by authorities across the UK, including Birmingham City Council. You can find out more about how it uses IMPULSE Nexus to handle its admissions process here.

If you would like more information on IMPULSE Nexus, please visit our website here.

SEND safety valve funding and the aim of inclusivity and integration

Posted on: 11 September 2023

Government bailouts to the tune of £1bn are ensuring that councils across England can cut their deficits. In return for this SEND safety valve funding, a focus on inclusivity of educational services to children with identified special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is demanded. The move is designed to move councils away from a reliance on costly special measures educations. With inclusivity, it is expected that children with SEND will be reintegrated into mainstream school settings. Those who have been previously excluded, will be reintegrated into the mainstream setting.

The packages and fine print are different for each council, but these are the overarching themes. Councils are expected to work towards inclusion and integration, whilst being more accountable for their processes. How can councils achieve this?

The role of technology in supporting SEND safety valve funding

In creating transparency and accountability, technology will be fundamental to councils. As part of many of the safety valve funding bailouts, the government expects to see results. Maintaining manual systems of spreadsheets or paper-based notes is inefficient and ineffective. Being able to call upon robust digital records with every course of action mapped will save time and create much needed transparency.

Education, health and care plans (EHCPs) are also central to the SEND safety valve funding aims. It is important that each child who needs one receives one. One complaint across the board has been the inconsistency of the provision of this service across England. It has become something of a postcode lottery. Reshaping EHCPs was a central component of the SEND Review in 2022. The safety valve funding provides another opportunity to meet this challenge.

An aspect of this is early intervention. Many children go with unmet needs for a long period of time. This can result in behavioural challenges, exclusions and even entry into the youth justice system. A study by the National Institute for Health Research in 2021 found that 60% of children entering a youth justice service had an undiagnosed developmental language disorder (DLD).

Applying special measures later down the line is a costly process both financially and societally. Early intervention is a vastly preferable way of handling such issues.

Technology will support councils in monitoring their work in all these areas. EHCPs require a robust and consistent thread of attainment and information that will follow the child from 0-25. How children are included and reintegrated will also require input from several touchpoints such as parents, schools and professionals. Creating a central data hub for each child will make provisioning for their education easier. It will also make evidencing action points straightforward.

How SEND safety valve funding will improve inclusion

Primarily by building capacity in mainstream schools, thereby reducing the dependency on specialist provision. The SEND safety valve funding is there to directly support this, providing additional support in mainstream schools to support children with SEND.

This can cover EHCPs, too, with identified SEND on the increase as awareness of unmet needs increases. Having the administrative capacity to oversee EHCPs for every child with SEND is a challenge. Again, this is where technology will play a crucial supporting role for councils and their educational facilities.

Of course, specialist provision will still be required in some circumstances. Rather than use it as a go-to, however, the government would like to see a reduction in this. Creating a strong base of evidence, with all of a child’s records and professional inputs, will make it easier for schools and councils when demonstrating why such a course of action has been taken.

How SEND safety valve funding will support integration

In a similar way, SEND safety valve funding will support integration and reintegration. Exclusions happen but understanding why is paramount. SEND safety valve funding won’t eradicate exclusions and there will be circumstances in which they are necessary. When a child is excluded, however, having the context around their journey can help to inform next steps. Where there is SEND and unmet needs, can a child be reintegrated into a mainstream school environment where extra provisions have been arranged?

For reintegrating previously excluded children, a robust data source is imperative. Why was the child excluded? What were the circumstances? What are the circumstances in that child’s life? Were there any unmet or undiagnosed needs? Can new arrangements satisfy their educational needs within a mainstream setting?

This is a topic we’ve explored in a previous blog. The role of councils and schools in gathering accurate and reliable data is important in understanding not only a child’s educational journey, but their circumstances beyond the school gates.

Conclusion

SEND safety valve funding offers councils and schools an opportunity to recalibrate their services. And their approach to children displaying challenging behaviours. Understanding these behaviours and enacting early intervention will help prevent exclusions and improve inclusion for children with SEND.

Deploying a robust technology ecosystem will be crucial to the success of safety valve funding and councils and schools meeting the challenges laid before them. Joining the dots between a child’s circumstances and their education will drive understanding. This, ultimately, will determine the success or failure of safety valve funding. Deploying improved SEND provisions is one thing. Evidencing their effectiveness and meeting the goals of inclusion and integration are another. A strong evidence base will further drive understanding of those measure which work and those which do not.

For more information on how IMPULSE Nexus from CACI can support your education services in meeting the challenges laid out in the safety valve funding initiative, please visit: https://www.caci.co.uk/software/impulse/

How CACI can help housing associations navigate the Social Housing Regulation Act

Posted on: 22 August 2023

On 20 July, the Social Housing Regulation Act received Royal Assent to become law. This places the social housing sector under increased scrutiny and introduces wide-ranging implications for how housing associations operate. The Act will:

Hold social housing providers responsible for new consumer standards, empowering tenants to provide the regulator stronger powers to hold landlords accountable.
Offer powers to the regulator to issue unlimited fines to rogue social landlords, creating a new risk for housing associations to manage customer engagement.
Enforce a closer working relationship between the ombudsman and the regulator. The ombudsman has emphasised the need for improved knowledge and information management across the sector and can enforce its recommendations more effectively through significant fines.

What transformational changes will housing associations need to consider implementing?

Housing Associations have several operational touchpoints with customers, ranging from complaints, repairs, arrears teams and beyond. This means that data and information are siloed across housing associations, prohibiting organisations from effectively engaging with customers or meeting their needs and falling foul to the new laws.

Housing associations will need to improve data quality across customers and assets to meet these new standards set by the regulator and avoid fines. A complete, up-to-date and actionable view of customers will be essential to effectively engage with them.

How can CACI help?

CACI can support on these key first steps for housing associations. Our work with housing associations has revealed that they are experiencing issues across the board with siloed data, gaps in customer data and complications with data foundations.

CACI can drive value for housing associations and help them become compliant with new regulations through various methods of support, including:

Assessing risks, reviewing and transforming data management in line with Knowledge and Information Management: We provide the data foundations in line with new regulations and recommendations to reduce your data risks and conduct thorough data quality and architecture assessments to do so.
Recommending technology and data roadmaps: We offer insight into the best platforms, the processes needed to adapt to support data quality initiatives for your housing association to manage data and drive value across the organisation. This will help you achieve a single, unified view of residents in the community.
Understanding customers and assets: Our wealth of consumer and asset data supplies deeper insight into customers’ demographic, vulnerability and lifestyle variables, while asset and place-based data enhance your understanding of your homes and community.
Activating actionable and accurate insights: Tailor your propositions and engagement by building a profile of customers according to key organisational issues such as complaints and arrears. Our trusted asset and consumer insights will help you offer the right services to the right people, reducing cost and resources while supporting your customers.
Driving value to improve customer satisfaction: An embedded data strategy that will improve outcomes for your customers by harnessing the power of analyses and spatial platforms.

What’s next?

CACI will be leading roundtables for housing associations to discuss approaches and best practices for data quality and insights. These sessions will offer a platform to share challenges and resources on meeting the new standards to ensure that housing associations deliver more value and improved outcomes for customers.

Please reach out to Tom Clarke or Gina Bryden for further information.

How InView regenerated Croydon Health Services’ data capabilities

Posted on: 18 August 2023

Background:

Croydon Health Services NHS Trust is a mid-sized hospital in Croydon that provides acute and community care through services and departments ranging from A&E, adult and paediatric critical care to outpatient and inpatient treatment and community services.

Prior to partnering with CACI over a decade ago, the Trust did not have their own data warehouse. Their in-house and bespoke systems were built using tools like Microsoft Access and SQL Server, which challenged their ability to load their structured data properly and time-efficiently. As a result, the Trust conducted a tender to enlist support for this, and after gauging the simplicity and ease with which CACI could help them meet their data warehouse optimisation needs, established a partnership.

Challenge:

Croydon Health Services’ entire in-house, bespoke system had been run by one person. This presented a risk to the organisation, particularly in the event of any changes made to statutory submissions or to the Healthcare Resource Group (HRG).

Husein Kermali, Head of Information Systems at Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, explained the Trust’s thinking in opting for a more organised route that would guarantee their protection by working with an organisation as opposed to an individual to oversee the entire system.

“One of our reasons we chose to go with [an organisation-led] warehouse in the first place was so things like the HRG group, the statutory submissions and anything that comes online from us from an NHS perspective would be something that we knew that warehouse would be capable of delivering.”

Solution:

The Trust implemented InView back in 2011-2012 as a one pass system. CACI created Extract, Transform & Load (ETL) processes through InView based on pre-existing system knowledge and an understanding of what Croydon Health Services endeavoured to do with their data from the point of partnership.

A few years later, in conjunction with their existing data provider, the Trust went from PIEDW extracts to Nautilus 835 extracts, which resulted in CACI taking over a significant amount of the ETL process for the Trust. The positive working relationship between the Trust and CACI built up the Trust’s confidence in the difference CACI could make for their data processing capabilities.

“We know that CACI is always there when we’ve got issues, we know that [CACI] knows the detailed processes very well. [CACI] also work for a multitude of Trusts… so they know they’ve seen all the issues that we’re having in other Trusts, and what all the Trusts are trying to do,” Husein explained. “I think with that kind of vision, [CACI] can see a lot more than we can. I think that makes CACI a great partner to be with.”

Results:

When the CDS010 was retired and 011 E CDS came online a few years ago, Husein flagged that “if [the Trust] did that in-house, that would have been a lot of work.” According to Husein, CACI had the extracts ready for this through InView, CACI’s modular data platform, easing Croydon Health Services’ involvement in the process.

“With the simple product upgrade of InView, [CACI] had all the elements within their product already. We just had to populate the fields that we needed. The output that was delivered was then ECDS 011 compliant, which saved us a lot of time,” Husein continued. “[CACI] did all the testing… we just had to make sure that we filled in the elements that we needed for the easy desk submission, so that was amazing because it saved a lot of time.”

Croydon Health Services has also benefitted from being involved in the ETL process throughout its development by CACI. The supplementary documentation provided at the end of any piece of work with CACI has given the Trust unrestricted access to changes made through InView or ensuring that everything they wished to capture had indeed been included.

The Trust has applied their learnings from CACI’s processes to successfully implement their own data quality (DQ) reports and dashboards that highlight potential problems and look up issues through a warehouse load process. The processes followed by their Data Quality team have also ensured that when data now goes through to the data warehouse, those issues disappear.

How Synergy4 simplified the merging of two Trusts into Black Country Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

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Background:

Black Country Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is a provider of mental health, learning disability and community support services. Following the merging of the Trust with Dudley and Walsall Mental Health Trust in 2020, Black Country Healthcare Trust was tasked with combining two vastly different costing systems and strategies into a singular costing service and line reporting system. This proved to be no easy task, as Dudley and Walsall’s costing system was Synergy3, while Black Country Healthcare Trust had their own bespoke internal system. The differences between the Trusts’ costing of their services further amplified these difficulties. However, a pre-existing contract with CACI proved to be the key to streamlining this uniquely complex circumstance.

Challenge:

Merging two Trusts into one. This major change came with extensively different processes that had to be identified and differentiated. Unifying two teams also proved to be extraordinarily difficult for the Trust while keeping up with the demands of day-to-day tasks.
Learning a new system. The different systems that the Trusts were on and the necessity to quickly move to a new, singular system was a colossal change for the team, with its difficulties augmented by the substantial changes made to costing methodologies.
Adjusting cost centres within the Trust’s childhood account. This included adjusting the lengths, descriptions and meanings of the cost centres to ensure information remained correctly organised and that no information relating to either Trust was removed.
Maintaining cohesion while importing. When running imports through the Trust’s activity or costing data, ensuring all elements were executed sequentially proved to be difficult.
Meeting reporting and national costing deadlines.

Solution:

CACI equipped Black Country Healthcare Trust with Synergy4, a comprehensive patient level information and costing system specifically designed for the NHS. This system made the environment available for the Trust to work with two separate methodologies throughout the transitional merging period and securely organise pre-existing child accounts and allocation methods. Through Synergy4, the Black Country Healthcare Trust could deliver accurate patient-level costing and accurately report on findings. CACI was also tremendously understanding of the Trust’s unique merging circumstances, which simplified the complex transition of unifying two systems into one.

According to Mandip Bal, Lead Costing, Reporting and Finance Systems Accountant at Black Country Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, “The support and understanding offered by CACI was substantial, which enabled us to transition onto that new system.”

CACI supplied unwavering training and support to the Trust throughout the entire project and merger, ensuring that the Trust was well versed in Synergy4’s functions. This support was crucial for the effective translation of knowledge with consultants, which began with a paper written by CACI outlining how the costing journey would progress throughout the merger.

“Upon reading [this paper], I was in immediate agreement from our Trust,” Mandip explained. “We were able to confidently advise on the seperation and visualise how the model would merge into one following the merging of the Trusts.”

Results:

Operating two unique systems was highly complex, and the impact that CACI’s support had on the transition period and successful merging of the two Trusts did not go unnoticed by the wider business.

“Working with [CACI] is always very pleasant… The support available along with the helpdesk, especially at the project implementation stage, was helpful,” Mandip explained. “After we went live, the support desk was particularly helpful for the business. Whenever I’ve asked questions or enquired about different developments, CACI has always offered solutions or more information. I can deal with everything now through CACI, so quite a few efficiencies in terms of administrative tasks were achieved as well.”

The Trust now confidently runs a single system and has consistently met reporting and national costing deadlines as a result. Following updates made to the National Cost Collection guidance, CACI also ensured the Trust’s system was up to date to further assist with minute details amidst the transitional merging period.

Future:

Black Country Healthcare Trust is keen to explore new developments to Synergy4 as they become available and continue to receive CACI’s support to further enhance their system in the coming years.

How Tameside Council uses ChildView’s full case data exchange functionality

Posted on: 14 August 2023

Tameside Council has been using ChildView from CACI since 2014 to support its vital work in supporting vulnerable young people across its services. One specific area of functionality within ChildView that Tameside Council finds particularly useful, is the full case data exchange.

The full case data exchange functionality enables Tameside Council to share and receive all the data held on a young person’s case. “It was taking so long to manually input the data associated with a full case,” explains Louise Hope, data and analysis lead. “Our business support function has been getting busier, with more work in referrals meetings and taking notes, resulting in less time for admin tasks such as this. We put together a business case for using the full case data exchange functionality and implemented it.

“Essentially we wanted to save time. It has also helped us to improve the accuracy of our data; the data otherwise is only as good as the person inputting it. If they make mistakes and miss things, then our data is poorer as a result.”

The full case data exchange functionality in ChildView enables youth justice services to send and receive all the data recorded on a young person with other youth offending teams (YOTs) using ChildView. If young people move services, then their record can move with them. “We use it to send and receive cases with other YOTs,” says Louise. “We would like to use it for everything but have found that there is some confusion around the process with other YOTs, whereby they only send us the asset rather than the full case. Once other YOTs understand the process, it will improve it further.”

One of the main benefits of the functionality is to save time and improve efficiency. At a time when services are getting busier, this is a helpful facet of the full case data exchange. “Absolutely we’ve saved time through using the functionality,” says Louise. “Although it’s tough to say exactly how much time because each case is a different size. I would say, however, that we save at least a couple of hours on a standard case. Also, if the data is being input manually, we would never ask someone to add all contacts, for example; they would be attached as a pdf. So, we get a richer base of information whilst saving an average of two hours.”

A richer base of information helps YOTs to pick up information more easily and understand the context and nuance of a young person’s journey. Where information gets lost or incorrectly recorded, vital information disappears with it. “It’s certainly beneficial to have all of the information and all of the contacts,” concludes Louise. “Having a rich seam of data makes it much easier to find information, too. Then, you can see where that information has come from, with an evidence base and contacts of who recorded what. If we have any questions, it makes it very easy to follow up with that person. There’s also increased confidence in the data that we have as a result of the improved accuracy of the data being added to our system. With accuracy and a trail of contacts, it makes each young person’s journey more transparent to us.”

For more information on how ChildView supports the vital work of youth justice teams across the UK, please visit: www.caci.co.uk/childview

How learning and development can improve recruitment in transport and construction

Posted on: 3 August 2023

Learning from previous projects, mapping skills to future tasks and identifying gaps in the workforce – learning and development can inform your recruitment needs

Recruitment is a vital component of the transport and construction industries. Being able to deploy the right number of appropriately skilled personnel to any given task is essential in delivering services and projects efficiently and on time. A robust learning and development programme can help large organisations in maintaining this balance. From upskilling existing employees to demand forecasting mapped against current and future work, having oversight of core skills and competencies across your workforce is fundamental to your ability to deliver work and services. With a holistic view of your workforce you can understand where any gaps may be emerging or may exist against future work, then remedy them with accurate recruitment.

Knowing when to recruit

Mapping the existing skills and competencies of your workforce against the demand for their skills and competencies against current and future work offers insights as to what you need. If your existing workforce doesn’t cover this, then recruitment is inevitable. If there are only a few gaps, training existing employees so that they are competent for the tasks required can help to plug gaps, but where a simple case of lack of numbers is identified, bringing people in is the only solution.

So how does learning and development help? As part of your wider competency management and training efforts, the overarching learning and development umbrella is essential in gaining a complete picture of your workforce, its competencies, skills and experiences. Maintaining this central database provides insight as to the profile of employee you need to add in order to fulfil projects and tasks.

This covers every aspect of your learning and development programme. From people on the ground to fulfil the tasks required of your services, to the people who conduct assessments of your workforce and run your training programmes. During periods of growth, it will be necessary to conduct more training and more assessments in order to keep your learning and development programme on track.

Ongoing assessment work is crucial to ensure work is being conducted properly. This covers safety and the appropriate fulfilment of tasks. Having the necessary number of assessors is important to achieving this. For more information on how Transport for London (TfL) assesses its London Underground drivers, please click here.

Similarly, getting new recruits up and running is a staple of any learning and development programme. Proper inductions and any training and briefings must be conducted before they start. You can read more about how Network Rail trains its 43,000 employees here.

Maintaining a future workforce pipeline

As projects start and finish, maintaining a core workforce is essential for ongoing work. One way in which transport and construction operators can maintain a healthy pipeline of future recruits is via apprenticeships.

According to the Constructions Skills Network, an extra 225,000 construction workers will be required in the UK by 2027. Filling these roles – and in a relatively short space of time – will be essential to the efficient and timely running of construction projects, many of which will cover the UK’s transport infrastructure, too.

Working with schools and colleges is a useful way of interacting with young people who might be interested in a career in construction. Offering them hands on experience alongside their studies provides practical experience which strengthens their skills and experience in the industry.

What happens once they start their career? Career development, once people have been recruited, helps to broaden the pool of skills and competencies available to you. Offering ongoing training courses and opportunities helps your existing workforce to be upwardly mobile, helping to address skills gaps internally without the need to recruit.

Conclusion

Joined up thinking is paramount in implementing a successful recruitment policy, feeding off the competency management and training aspects of your learning and development programme. Understanding your workforce is central to this. Where are there gaps? Who can be upskilled? This feeds into your wider project management; what current and upcoming work will require what skills and competencies?

A scattergun approach to recruitment is inefficient and expensive. Utilising the knowledge that you can create about your workforce helps you to pinpoint the skills and experience you need for current and future work, whilst creating efficiencies in your processes and accurate responses to your roadmap of work.

We have recently explored the topic of learning and development, including recruitment, in our white paper Learning and development in construction and transport: how can organisations enhance their workforce efficiently, in a data led way? You can download your free copy here.

Competency management: the heartbeat of learning and development in transport and construction

Posted on: 26 July 2023

Every employer conducts basic checks of their employees. Do they have the requisite qualifications, skills and experiences for the role for which they are being hired? Certificates, references and background research usually satisfy this. Then, to ensure that the person is actually appropriate for the job once they’ve started, a period of probation follows, supported by ongoing assessments at set intervals to keep tabs on their ongoing competence. In the transport and construction industries, however, competency management takes on far greater significance.

Forming part of a robust learning and development programme, competency management is essential to the smooth running of services and projects in these industries. Holding a qualification or a certain amount of experience is one thing, ongoing competence is quite another.

Take train drivers as an example. There are several assessments, exams and accompanied drives that must be completed before a driver is left to complete the task solo. That’s not the end of the process. In such a safety critical environment, with service users onboard as well, it is vital that ongoing competency management is in place. Taking Transport for London (TfL) as an example, they conduct regular assessments of their 4,500 London Underground drivers to ensure that they are fulfilling their role appropriately.

To manage this process, TfL utilises CACI’s Cygnum software. The system is used to schedule assessments, log their results and arrange any follow up activities. This helps TfL to maintain a holistic view of its London Underground drivers and their competencies, maintain service user safety and address any issues that arise.

A robust competency management framework, as part of your learning and development programme, is required to monitor, assess and train employees for their tasks. Having the technology in place to link everything together is essential, which is where systems such as Cygnum come in.

Where a large workforce is present with a vast array of skills, experiences and core competencies, staying on top of monitoring this, understanding it and carrying out regular assessments requires careful coordination.

From having an overview of your workforce, to linking projects to demand management and forecasting present and future projects, technology is assisting large organisations in keeping projects on track, creating efficiencies and managing the workforce. Competency management is a central component of this.

Aside from ensuring that people are fit for purpose, competency management can also help to unlock areas upon which to target workforce training. Regular assessments will reveal patterns; perhaps there is a common area in which assessments are failed, or raise red flags? This enables large organisations to data map their workforce and focus on areas for improvement. If certain tasks are regularly underperformed in, then this can feed into you training programme, helping to get ahead of the issue by highlighting it with the workforce and providing the necessary training to help alleviate the issue.

Competency management further feeds into recruitment. If you have a holistic view of your workforce, its skills, experience and competencies, then you can identify where there are gaps that need filling. This helps to refine the recruitment process by enabling you to focus on specific competencies required for projects and tasks. In larger infrastructure and construction projects, this can be linked to demand management and forecasting, helping you to have full oversight of the resources required in order to complete present and future projects.

Competency management is the backbone of learning and development. It feeds into every area of an organisation’s operations; assigning tasks to the right people, ensuring that the workforce is appropriately skilled for the tasks at hand, informing training programmes and guiding recruitment needs. Where workforce and service user safety and convenience are major considerations, failing to run a robust competency management framework as part of your larger learning and development programme isn’t an option.

Competency management further helps to realise efficiency gains by ensuring that the right people are in the right place at the right time; enabling schedulers and administrators to be able to pinpoint staff to specific tasks quickly and easily makes overarching project management easier and more transparent. A full depth of understanding of your workforce’s competencies is also useful in reassigning staff during times of strain, safe in the knowledge that they are appropriately competent for the tasks being asked of them to keep projects and services running.

We have explored this topic in our recently published white paper which focuses on learning and development, How can organisations enhance their workforce efficiently, in a data led way? It is available to download for free here.

What is InView?

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InView is CACI’s data platform that is specifically designed for the NHS. It is modular by design with over 30 modules out of the box, and makes data sharing for ICS simple and efficient through its standardisation and safety in data management. The flexibility, maintenance and content provided by a standard data platform built in-house can only go so far. Considering the many pressures faced by NHS Trusts daily, they need a data platform that supports—rather than hinders– them.

InView empowers NHS Trusts nationwide to enhance their reporting and unlock the potential of their data by ensuring that all data reporting is correct, consistent and complete within a singular integrated solution that will transform patient care outcomes.

But how exactly does InView work? And what makes it so beneficial for the NHS? This blog will dive into everything you need to know about InView so you can make informed decisions about your own data platform.

How does InView work?

To meet the high volume of mandated statutory changes and local reporting requirements, your Trust should be equipped with a solid data platform that is easy to use and fully maintained. InView is risk-free*, robust and easily maintained, ensuring that you and your Trust can meet these requirements by providing all key statutory outputs and fully maintaining them in line with NHS change notifications as part of core product releases.

Designed and built in a way that promotes rapid implementation of a solution within a Trust, InView secures you with plenty of pre-built content from all disparate data sources in one unified, trustworthy solution. Each of InView’s 30 modules is built from a sophisticated, layered design that will keep future maintenance costs down and future proofing up. Its layers include:

Acquisition Layer: This layer accepts the data from incoming data sources and is designed to accept data in a raw format prior to any data checking.
Integration Layer: As the middle ground between the Acquisition layer and the upcoming Translation layer, this layer moves data from one source to the other and performs matching between data sources. Trust-specific business rules are implemented and dictate how incoming data affects the information stored in the data warehouse.
Translation Area: Data quality and integrity checking are carried out during this layer. This part of the processing also restructures data into a “star schema” model.
Data Model: The aforementioned “star-schema” model is created at this layer, which is optimised for ad-hoc querying and historical data storage. It supports the historical storage of fact data, manages changes to dimensional data and hierarchical structures and ensures historical reporting is conducted effectively.
Serving Layer: This layer interacts with the InView user graphical user interface (GUI) to simplify configuration. Database views can be created at this layer to support reporting with minimal effort required from the end user. Real time data can also be presented at this layer, and non-InView data can also be combined to supplement any data you need to report on.
Compliance Layer: This layer is where all statutory outputs are maintained and released to the Trust.

Where can InView be deployed?

InView can be deployed either on premise, in the Cloud, or hosted in CACI’s HSCN environment. Once deployed, our highly skilled technical experts forming the Managed Services team will work alongside you to ensure that you and your Trust are constantly supported after InView goes live. We will support you throughout the entire project implementation through fully transferring the necessary skills that will help you and your Trust feel more self-sufficient when using InView.

Benefits of using InView

NHS Trusts need accurate, reliable and readily available data for critical reporting and decision making. While this is crucial, it can be one of the biggest challenges for data professionals across the NHS to overcome. InView’s range of benefits can help you and your Trust overcome these challenges through its:

Consistency: As a proven in-house solution that promotes a single version of the truth
Availability: As a maintained product that can supply end-to-end reporting and can be implemented with all local rules correctly applied to incoming data
Efficiency: As a partner that is committed to continuously enhancing its solution
Flexibility: As an easy-to-use, extendable solution that is tailored to your Trust’s requirements and ensures your Trust will adapt to changes quickly
Reliability: As a modern, interactive solution that allows for sharing not only within your organisation, but with ICS partners and NHSE too.
Volume: As a solution that reduces the onus of statutory changes on the Trust
Low cost of ownership: As a low total cost of ownership solution with maintained product content and changes that a Trust can action themselves.

InView use cases

InView produces a single, governed version of the truth that will drive consistent numbers that will enhance decision making, financial measurement, forecasting and information sharing across your Trust. By leveraging InView, you can present data for all purposes from one cohesive source to your Trust’s existing BI Toolset, which will simplify the reporting process and minimise the training needed for your Trust’s analysts.

To get a sense of just how streamlined these processes within your Trust can be, take a look at some our of client case studies:

CACI as your InView provider

CACI has been providing Trusts with a solution that evolves and meets the demands of NHS reporting for over 20 years. Our very own data platform, InView, integrates all disparate source systems to optimise reporting across your Trust. By removing the statutory maintenance burden and time-consuming running of mandated reporting datasets, you and your Trust can focus on achieving priorities while meeting requirements and responding to any ad-hoc or urgent changes as they arise. To top it off, you will gain access to a user community for collaborative content and idea generation and learn how you can further enhance your own InView experience through other users’ takeaways.

To learn more about InView and how our data warehouse solution could help your organisation, visit our InView page.

*Risk-free for mandated statutory requirements

Five reasons learning and development are so important in transport and construction

Posted on: 17 July 2023

The technological landscape is rapidly evolving, something being experienced across the transport and construction industries. New technologies bring about new ways of working which in turn mean that large organisations need to have robust learning and development programmes in place to keep up. Learning and development extends beyond the frontline too. Whilst there is an obvious focus on engineers and operators in the transport and construction industries, back-office staff are also realising more effective and efficient ways of working as new technology is introduced.

This blog will take a closer look at five key areas in which learning and development can be best utilised across the transport and construction industries to deliver high quality, efficient and safe services for all. For a deeper dive into this topic, our recently published white paper, How can organisations enhance their workforce efficiently, in a data led way? Is available to download for free.

1. Workforce and end user safety

From health and safety protocols to simply using equipment correctly, ensuring that your workforce is operating within defined regulatory standards and your own internal business rules is essential. Frontline workers in both industries are often performing safety critical tasks that carry some form of jeopardy to themselves, their co-workers and end service users, such as passengers on a train. Learning and development is essential in ensuring that your workforce is equipped with the necessary training, experience and knowledge to perform tasks correctly and safely.

This extends to schedulers and administrators in ensuring that tasks are correctly assigned to members of staff. New systems can help large organisations in scheduling tasks, with aspects such as auto-scheduling easing the administrative burden by matching skills, competencies and experience to tasks and reducing the element of human error in doing so.

A robust learning and development programme will help ensure that all staff are competent and trained for the tasks they are being asked to undertake.

2. Ensuring the highest quality of work and standards

In a similar vein to ensuring the safety of all staff and end users, learning and development plays a central role in ensuring that work is carried out to the highest possible standards. By continuing with learning and development programmes across your workforce, you can expose staff to the latest ways of working as well as providing ongoing opportunities to maintain and expand their professional skillset.

Having a team of highly competent, highly trained operators is a great way of meeting high standards across your projects. The better the competency of your workforce, the more likely you are to deliver projects on time and in budget, owing to a reduction in errors and repeating work. The final delivery is also likely to meet the desired outcomes of a project. In transport, it is crucial that skilled operators are performing service delivery tasks competently to ensure the safety of end users and the smooth running of timetables.

3. Keeping up with evolving technologies

Innovation has been a constant in the 21^st Century and shows no sign of abating. New and improved versions of old tools and systems are constantly emerging, which poses a challenge to large organisations in not only obtaining the right tools for the job, but keeping the workforce abreast of such developments and appropriately trained to operate them. The same goes for emerging processes and practices; how can the latest technology and thinking be deployed to realise upticks in efficiency and quality of output?

Needless to say, learning and development is central to staying ahead of industry trends and technologies. Exposing your workforce to ongoing training opportunities helps them to develop their skills and experiences within your organisation, thereby helping them to enhance their careers with you.

4. Improving staff retention

Career development is crucial to staff retention. Your learning and development programme can play a significant role in staff morale. If training and career development opportunities are presented to staff, it means that they can progress within your organisation, rather than seeking new opportunities elsewhere.

This can have a knock-on effect in regard to recruitment too. Persuading staff to join your organisation is made easier if you can demonstrate career progression pathways to potential employees.

5. A more efficient workforce

A robust learning and development programme will help to ensure that your workforce is competent and appropriately trained. If you can be sure that each staff member is the right fit for their role, it makes assigning tasks far easier and enhances your chances of projects and tasks being completely properly and on time. Whilst learning and development cannot eradicate human error – mistakes are inevitable at times – it can help to minimise it and its impact.

Avoiding delays and poor workmanship means that fewer tasks need to be repeated, leading to a more efficient process overall in terms of time and cost committed to projects and tasks.

A robust learning and development programme carries myriad benefits for large organisations, notably in the transport and construction industries. With so many moving parts, having a competent and skilled workforce is essential. Failing to conduct training and to create an overview of skills, qualifications and experiences makes the task of assigning tasks incredibly complicated and wide open to error. In understanding your workforce and appropriately managing it, learning and development is essential.

How can organisations enhance their workforce efficiently, in a data led way? It is available to download for free here.