A case study in the use of personal data stores: improving equality and citizen empowerment through the provision of person-centred energy advice services

This paper reports on a proof-of-concept project that is utilising cloud-based personal data stores to empower citizens of Renfrewshire by working with them to co-design, test and deliver local, digitally-enabled, person-centred energy advice services.

There is a recognised and consistent set of generic issues around the transfer of personal data between consumers of public services and organisations. The Scottish Government Data Management Board proposes a Data Vision for Scotland in 2020 where “data are used to support the delivery of outstanding public services; citizens feel confident that personal data are being shared responsibly to create better and more responsive services which meet their individual needs; citizens readily know
how to and can access personal information held about them, allowing them to confirm accuracy and to choose, if they wish, to create their own personal data store”. A recent SCDI report – Smart Citizens, Smart City Regions: Delivering Digital Public Services in Scotland – acknowledges that the “Scottish public sector must build a relationship of trust with citizens that will underpin faster rollout of digital public services and put citizens in control of their digital lives. The development of a trusted ‘data bank’ mechanism that covers data collection, sharing and storage of personal data of citizens will require top-level leadership”.

This proof-of-concept project involves collaboration between a number of stakeholder organisations and citizen groups in the Renfrewshire area. The project aims to show that a switch in design to person-centred services realises benefits for citizens and that the use of cloud-based personal data stores and secure data exchange increases trust, convenience, responsiveness, accuracy and security. This applies to the provision of public services in areas such as energy, health and care, employability
and employment, education, social services and any other areas of service that involve people, data and organisations. The proof-of-concept project is easily scalable to other citizens and person centred services in Renfrewshire, and to local authorities, housing associations and other public bodies at a national level. As such, this research project has implications for all UK local authorities and other providers of public services.

This paper explores the use of cloud-based personal data stores as a means of providing for more effective and more secure delivery of local public services and reports on progress to date on the proof-of-concept project, discusses the research design and practitioner’s perspective, and presents initial findings.