The case for a National Social Housing Database

We need a National Social Housing Database, combining Open Data with Technology Standards. Sector wide, and government-led, this would be the cheapest and fastest way to drive improvement in social housing, transforming the customer experience while reducing costs.

This is not just a technology solution. It is a multi-level good governance opportunity.
Regulator-set data standards would force social housing providers to provide fully comparable information to reach unprecedented levels of transparency for their residents, the RSH, Elected and HA Board Members and others, and would accelerate collaboration, with suppliers having to update their commercial offerings to keep up.

Most Housing Associations and Local Authority Housing departments are at capacity. They are reducing new home building to carry out repairs, safety improvements and insulation. Yet, everything they do is hampered by a lack of reliable data – primarily on the quality and quantity of their homes; and on the needs and preferences of residents. In addition, their ability to make rational spending decisions, strategic changes, or to evaluate strategic initiatives is limited by the age, quality and arrangement of their data. Both Regulator of Social Housing and Ombudsman have acknowledged that the lack of reliable data undermines their ability to regulate effectively, but more importantly, tenants suffer from confusion and delay in their interactions with their landlords. Everybody knows that reliable, real-time data is key to ensuring that homes are safe, decent and well maintained.

Much of our data has been piling up for 60 years input by thousands of people, and on many different platforms, including WhatsApp, texts, emails and paper, and does not begin to match modern requirements. We rely on spreadsheets, cardboard folders, email trails, and the memory of managers. When the government demands a list of homes over 18 metres, or a database of properties with damp and mould, even the biggest and best HAs have to send someone out to measure buildings or scour their databases for any mention of mould. Several weeks later they have an approximate answer. This would be like Spotify having someone at the end of a telephone, putting a record on a turntable and playing it for you.

Each of our existing systems has immense value, but few “talk to each other” (they are incompatible), and they don’t allow data to move from one platform or system to the other, which stops HAs and LAs being able to provide frictionless services, prevents senior managers and Boards from making wise and rational data-based decisions, and complicates audit and regulation.

A single, simple, limited in scope database would force a universal data structure, common formats and connectivity standards making it easier to share data between platforms, and organisations. We suggest that the specification of the technology we require is done together with the RSH and government (enlisting the experience and expertise of ONS and GDS). This one standard must become obligatory for all. The private sector will always adapt to providing what the regulator mandates and the sector must procure. HACT has already provided the ground work, but there is more to be done.

A database by definition is a structured collection of data organised in a way that enables efficient access, management, and updating. Modern principles would require it to be near real-time, cloud-based and updated through API, federation, and automatic file ingestion. The high-level results would be published though a website and internal stakeholders could subscribe to more detailed insights through an easy-to-use online business intelligence application. The scope would be on low risk GDPR property data covering the outcomes (not detailed processes). It could replace and simplify some existing RSH annual data collections.

Ownership is important in terms of design and delivery. The most important thing is that the Government give a lead. It must mandate all social housing providers to work together to agree adequate data standards and then procure technology to deliver hyper transparent data which can be compared, interrogated, evidenced and shared with ease to improve outcomes for social tenants.

While this concept may be novel to the social housing sector, the necessary technology has a proven track record, and datasets are emergent based on the specific solution. The financial sector and government (DVLA, DWP, Passport Office, GDS, Covid-19) have paved the way for successful open data initiatives. The hardest part is getting competing organisations to do the same thing, rather than insisting that “we are different!”