How to: Create an integration action plan

The integration infographics along with your "Service Scorecard" found on page 5 of your authority's integration report can be used to establish a baseline of your current integration state. The below guide walks you through each of these resources:

How to assess your current state

From here, you can identify which departments and systems you'd like to focus on and specifically what aspects of the integration you'd like to improve.

There are various approaches

You can approach improving integration in a number of ways, however the overall aspiration should be to turn each system "green" across the three integration measures of:

• System reliance on the UPRN / USRN

• Currency of data

• Method of update

The graphic to the left indicates what this means in practice. The level of integration is colour-coded with green representing the optimum, desirable state for each integration measure.

Aiming for green will set you on a path to improving your integrations, making them more automated, up to date and reliant on the UPRN or USRN.

There are multiple approaches you could take. You could:

Option 1: Tackle the quick wins

Try and identify areas you know can be improved rapidly and make those changes. Collectively they will have a big impact on your overall integration picture.

For example, some departmental integrations may have a measure which is amber or red and you may well know if the ability to improve in that particular area is possible and relatively easy to achieve.

The "currency of data" measure is the easiest to improve here as it involves ensuring the system is consuming data more regularly (for example moving from quarterly updates to monthly or weekly). Often this means configuring an existing system import utility or ensuring the files are simply provided more often.

Alternatively, it could mean making a switch to using the OS Places API or the GeoPlace DataVia API because the software supplier already supports it.

Little by little these quick wins add up across the board, so do what you can where possible.

Option 2: Focus on the departments in "red"

You may want to tackle the departments coloured "red" i.e. those where integration can do with significant improvement. If this is the case then it may be easier to focus on one system at a time and move on to the next after you have made any improvements.

The reason being is that it will take a lot of fact-finding, communication, engagement and outreach to fully understand why that system is performing the way it is, what the barriers are and how to overcome them. This takes time and can be quite an involved process.

The "service scorecard" on page 5 of your authority's address integration report can help identify what system to focus on first as it lists those with the lowest integration score and colour codes and lists out those needing immediate attention in red.

Option 3: Focus on improving a single integration measure

You may want to focus on improving a single integration measure at a time (such as "method of update") out of the three and work your way through each system in turn:

• System reliance on the UPRN / USRN

• Currency of data

• Method of update

The advantage here is that focusing on one measure at a time is easier than juggling all three at the same time. It means your discussions with the various departments will all be the same, centred around the same topic and will reduce the amount of "jumping" from say "method of update" to "reliance on the UPRN / USRN" which can be quite involved and complicated to keep track of.

Once you have decided what to focus on, it's worth doing a deep dive into the departmental system you are looking to improve first.

As the information behind the integration infographics is submitted between March - May, it may be outdated. It is therefore important to confirm the integration details ensuring they are correct, and also identify potential barriers to improvement.

The below questions should be checked, just in case they have changed:

You can obtain the answers by speaking to whoever owns or administers the system. This may be;

• A System Admin

• A Super User within the department

• A Service Manager

• A Member of I.T.

• Someone who knows the system

• Your software supplier's Account Manager

• The software supplier's helpdesk

Taking things further with an integration maturity assessment

To supplement the above and gain a more in-depth view of a particular department's level of integration and use of the UPRN, you may wish to ask them to complete a UPRN integration maturity assessment.

Our assessment tool allows local authority service managers (or whoever else knows their system well enough) to ascertain how well-integrated their service area and software is with the UPRN. It takes less than 3 minutes to complete and grades the level of integration on a scale of 1 (not integrated) to 4 (Advanced integration), plus provides recommendations on how to improve and level up if need be.

UPRN integration maturity assessment

We also have an offline version of the assessment in the form of a checklist which departments can fill out at their own leisure. Aimed at service managers, this checklist summarises key action points to follow up on to help improve UPRN integration capability. Further notes on why this is important and how to go about finding out the answers are also provided.

UPRN integration checklist

Now that you've confirmed the current state of integration, the next step is to find out what the software system can actually achieve in terms of improving on the various integration measures.

Guidance on who to ask and what to ask can be found below.

Questions to ask software suppliers

For example, the system could be currently configured as the below, but your supplier may be able to support more frequent updates, a more automated update method and better adoption of the UPRN / USRN:

Address Example: Refuse collection system

Street Example: Highways asset management system

It is crucial to determine what is required in order to make the change. This may well involve a cost element, configuration work which your I.T. team need to carry out or potentially an upgrade to the system / database which in itself could have significant impacts. All of which needs to be discussed with the department who owns the system as they are ultimately the ones who use it and pay for it.

Now that you have established:

The next step is to gather the department's address / street data requirements and determine what data product best meets their needs in terms of:

When considering what data should be used to integrate with, it is easy to adopt a "one size fits all" approach, utilising the same address / street dataset as default for each system. However, the risk here is that the dataset may not meet the department's needs in some of the areas identified above.

Instead, a case-by-case, system-by-system approach should be adopted aiming to understand exactly how the department uses and relies on address / street data.

Once these requirements are understood, the next step is to evaluate the various data products available to determine which is most suitable, balanced against what is technically possible. Further information on what data products are available is listed below.

• Explore "sources of address data"

• Explore "sources of street data"

The final step is all about advising the department on what is best for them based on their address / street data requirements.

This should be balanced against how much potential change, budget, resources (time / people) they are willing to invest in order to improve their level of integration, something which is only discovered through discussions and ongoing communication.

Up until now, you have gathered all of the facts on the current state and what is required in order to improve, but now it really is up to the department to decide how to proceed. After all, it is their system, they will be paying for any system changes and they are the ones who will be having to adapt to any changes in workflows.

This step can be the most difficult. Rather than being a technical hurdle, this is often more "human-based", requiring relationships to be built, managing change, highlighting the benefits and trying to influence others on the better use of data and why they should do things differently.

Questions like the below are often raised which could be sticking points for progress:

• "Why should we do this?"

• "What are the benefits for us?"

• "Is there a cost?"

• "Do we need to amend our current address/street data if it is different from the "official version"?"

The below guide offers advice on how to answer these questions:

Gaining departmental buy-in

Once the department is in agreement with any proposed changes you have advised, then it is a matter of putting them into practice.