Council celebrate their win for best practice in recognition of being at the leading edge with their data strategy

LONDON, 3rd November  2009 – Initiate Systems, Inc., a leader in data management solutions that enable information sharing and improve data quality, announced today that its customer, Brent Council  was awarded the Best Use of Data in Public Sector at the Data Strategy Awards, held in London on 22nd October 2009.  The Council won the award thanks to its work with the Initiate Master Data Service® to implement a Client Index System, creating a ‘golden view’ of its 270,000 residents and connect nine disparate sources of data relating to people living in the council’s catchment area.

The awards recognise the achievements of the best data practitioners in the UK and the judging panel made up of data industry experts awarded the Best Use of Data in Public Sector prize to Brent as a result of the council’s ability to demonstrate this year’s most effective data strategy in local authority, local or national Government.  The deployment enabled the Council to improve the service delivered to citizens and has played an integral role in generating new council revenue. 

The London Borough of Brent, one of London’s 32 municipal authorities, uses the Initiate Master Data Service® platform to keep its client index up-to-date, while meeting the strict data protection requirements of the British Government. Brent is an ethnic majority borough of 270,000 people and is the home of the English National Stadium at Wembley. The area has an estimated 30 percent turnover in population, and Initiate helped Brent create a “single point of change” for residents records of benefits, housing, council tax, children services, electoral register and library services.

“This is a fantastic result recognising the hard work that Tony Ellis, the CIO of Brent Council has put into this deployment.  It was a pioneering project and now forms a framework for other councils to save money and become more efficient, while providing a better service to residents,” commented David Macmillan, vice president at Initiate Systems EMEA.