The Opportunity

BEIS required a centralised business register to collate business data with the potential to roll out across all Government departments. With different sponsors and stakeholders from various Government departments, there were conflicting views of the scope of the service. The new platform requirements ranged from a simple spine of information through to a full blown one stop shop for all business contact with government.

The challenge was to gain consensus of the required scope of the service and to deliver a data architecture that supported the scope whilst providing flexibility for expansion as new departments sought to utilise the new service.

Our Solution & Approach

The RedRock team, comprising an Enterprise Data Architect and a Senior Interaction Designer, was engaged to consolidate the requirements and develop a long-term strategic roadmap for the integrated business register as part of a Discovery phase. Our team conducted workshops to create and baseline an Enterprise level Governmental Business Data Model that documented entities based on user journeys created from an ongoing user research programme.

Other key activities included:

• Producing a technical design based on the creation of a BEIS canonical data model formed from a merger of existing Government data models with the NRF Arts Operational Data Model
• Using Erwin to adapt ARTS to create an enhanced single view of the customer and merge this into the ER/Studio-based canonical business register model
• Building a cloud-based data demonstrator using SQL server in an Azure environment to hold a bespoke set of anonymised data queried using Tableau and SSRS
• Scoping, proposing content for, and designing data structures for a new business register by creating a business-centric high-level Conceptual Data Model and associated data definitions. This was negotiated and agreed with senior stakeholders across all relevant departments
• Analysing existing Government API’s together with current data delivery methods and preparing proposals for improved data transportation and data integration methods based on MFT and ESB methods
• Surveying access methods and content from various data sources including: Companies House, the Insolvency service, Food Standards Agency, Office for National Statistics and Dun & Bradstreet
• Guiding BEIS, and other Government departments, staff in understanding the concepts and data approaches used during this Discovery phase. The audience included internal technical as well as non-technical staff.

The Outcome

BEIS has the data models, data structures and recommendations for developing a fully integrated business register to support all Government departments as required. In addition, the approach has been verified via the supply of a data demonstrator and clarity around effective support for other services via data APIs.

Each Government department has autonomy as to how and when to integrate with the centralised data spine and the first to adopt the solution was the Office for National Statistics.