Improving the accessibility of government's data and information about the public finances

Lessons learned

Through our work exploring a fiscal portal solution we learned that the ‘front-end’ of the portal - the interface that enables the data to be accessed easily and provide interesting graphics or comparisons over time - can be delivered relatively easily by a team who have the necessary skills. However, in terms of the technical ‘back-end’ requirements of a portal we also learned of the critical importance of the underpinning data quality and systems. For a digital portal to be delivered and then maintained over time requires high quality data to be provided on a regular basis. For this to be delivered in a cost-effective way, the data needs to be collected in an efficient way and the feed into the portal automated. Both the alpha and beta phases of the project required significant manual input to achieve the formats required for the portal. Without improvements to our underlying data systems maintaining up-to-date data on a portal is time-consuming and further development of a portal becomes more complex and technically difficult.