Data sharing across government agencies

Why is exchanging data across government agencies so challenging?

Data exchange across government agencies

Governments globally are prioritizing better data exchange across agencies to improve public service delivery and meet the growing expectations of citizens. The goal is integrated digital public service delivery (ISD) to provide seamless, user-centric services by linking various government systems. Achieving this integration, however, requires overcoming significant technical and organisational challenges.

This article explores the importance of data exchange in government, drawing on examples from the UK, Estonia, and India, noting the strategies they have implemented to facilitate better data flows across public entities.

Integrated Service Delivery

It is important to firstly note why data being exchanged across government is so important. Integrated digital public service delivery (ISD) is the attempt to connect previously siloed public services into unified service chains. This might involve one-stop shops for life events or consolidated processes like combined permits. In countries like the UK, the Government Digital Service (GDS) developed common platforms and portals such as GOV.UK, simplifying access to services by consolidating information from nearly 400 departments. The use of centralised platforms demonstrates how better data exchange can directly enhance the efficiency and accessibility of public services.

Collaboration to build unified infrastructure

For successful ISD, collaboration between government agencies is crucial, though often difficult. Estonia’s digital transformation illustrates the importance of a shared vision and collaborative infrastructure. The country’s X-Road platform serves as a secure data exchange backbone, connecting various government agencies while allowing each to maintain control over its data. This decentralised but connected approach shows how strategic collaboration can enable data sharing while preserving agency autonomy, a common concern that hinders inter-organisational efforts in many countries.

Similarly, India’s Aadhaar system and the associated India Stack illustrate how shared infrastructure can support seamless data flows across multiple sectors. By developing a layered system of open APIs, India allows data to move efficiently between government agencies, businesses, and citizens. This interoperability has been instrumental in improving financial inclusion and access to services in a country with vast geographic and demographic diversity.

Barriers to effective data exchange

Data management and security: Effective data management is critical for government data initiatives. Inconsistent practices lead to data governance issues, unauthorized access, and data duplication, all of which pose significant risks. Ensuring secure data transmission and storage requires constant updates, robust encryption, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems. These measures all come with substantial costs and require continuous adaptation to evolving cyber threats, making it a challenge for resource-constrained agencies.

Regulatory and privacy compliance: Government agencies must navigate complex and stringent regulations regarding data sharing, especially when dealing with citizens’ personal information. Compliance with data protection laws like GDPR, as well as sector-specific regulations, adds layers of complexity. Agencies often struggle to balance transparency, privacy, and legal obligations, which can slow down or block data-sharing initiatives. Translating legal requirements into clear, actionable policies and maintaining audit trails can be challenging.

Data interoperability and standardisation: Government agencies often operate using diverse systems and legacy platforms, leading to significant challenges in ensuring data interoperability. Standardising data formats and adopting universal protocols are essential, but true interoperability is difficult to achieve across agencies and departments, often requiring integrations and middleware solutions that strain resources.

Data volume management: Government programs generate massive amounts of data, creating storage, transmission, and processing challenges. Identifying essential data, ensuring timely transfers, and making sense of large datasets demand advanced storage solutions, efficient data pipelines, and analytics tools, which are often limited in public sector budgets.

Data accuracy and integrity: The accuracy and integrity of shared data are critical for public policy and decision-making. Inaccurate or corrupted data can have far-reaching consequences. Establishing rigorous validation and cleansing processes is necessary but requires time, resources, and can introduce delays, particularly in inter-agency data sharing.

Security risk assessment: Many government agencies lack the resources to effectively assess the risks associated with data privacy and security. As data sources multiply, ensuring that security measures are effective becomes more challenging. Automating risk assessments and implementing consistent data masking across platforms can mitigate these risks and enable safer data sharing.

Technological and tool limitations: Different government departments often use varied cloud platforms with inconsistent data access controls, leading to fragmented policies. A centralised and standardised data security solution that operates across all platforms, automating policy enforcement and monitoring, is essential but often lacking.

Organisational silos and cultural resistance: Government agencies are frequently divided by departmental silos, making internal data sharing difficult. Resistance from stakeholders—due to fear of security breaches, legal liabilities, or changes to established processes—can further hinder collaboration. Addressing these challenges requires a shift in organizational culture, breaking down silos, and promoting cross-departmental collaboration. Adopting a “must share data” approach can help unlock data’s potential in the public sector.

Trust and inter-agency collaboration: Trust is a significant barrier when sharing data across government agencies or with external partners. Concerns about data misuse, loss of control, or jurisdictional conflicts can impede collaboration. Building clear governance frameworks and transparent data-sharing agreements are crucial for establishing trust and ensuring secure data exchanges.

Cost considerations: Data sharing in government involves substantial costs related to infrastructure, data preparation, security, and compliance measures. Agencies must manage these costs while ensuring high-quality and secure data sharing, all within limited budgets and often under political scrutiny.

In India, initiatives like Platform as a Service (PaaS) have been introduced to address technological fragmentation and high costs by providing centralised cloud hosting for websites, portals, and applications, streamlining the development and deployment process for government entities. By offering standardised hosting services to government agencies, duplication has been reduced and this helps facilitate smoother data flows.

Digital capability is also an underlying issue in many countries. In Estonia, early investments in digital education and a national culture of trust have been essential for overcoming resistance to data sharing between citizens and government. Comprehensive IT education and high digital literacy rates ensure widespread public and institutional buy-in. India has faced challenges related to digital literacy, especially in rural areas. Despite these hurdles, India’s approach of prioritizing interoperability and consent-driven data sharing has been largely successful in promoting participation.

Data sharing vs. data exchange

Effective ISD depends on understanding the difference between data sharing and data exchange. Data sharing is a broad process involving legal, organisational, and technological frameworks that govern how data is accessed and used. For instance, Estonia’s e-ID system allows citizens to securely authenticate themselves and share data across services, facilitated by agreements that define data use and protection.

Data exchange, however, focuses on the technical aspect of transforming data from one format to another. India’s systems, like e-KYC and UPI, automate much of this data exchange, ensuring seamless integration while maintaining data accuracy. This distinction is critical because it highlights that while data sharing involves broader governance issues, data exchange is about ensuring that data can move correctly and consistently between systems.

Aligning data sharing and data exchange

Countries that have succeeded in ISD, like the UK, Estonia, and India, demonstrate that aligning data sharing and exchange processes is key. The UK’s GOV.UK Registers, which provide standardized government data in real-time, showcase how aligning these processes reduces complexity and lowers costs. Estonia’s decentralised model, powered by X-Road, balances organisational autonomy with efficient data flows, while India’s India Stack integrates data-sharing agreements with robust technical solutions.

These examples show that successful ISD requires more than just technical solutions—it involves fostering a collaborative culture, building trust, and implementing legal frameworks that support long-term cooperation.

Conclusion - towards Integrated Digital Services

Governments aiming for integrated digital public service delivery must prioritize effective data exchange across agencies. While the challenges are significant, examples from the UK, Estonia, and India offer valuable insights into how these hurdles can be overcome. Whether through centralised platforms, decentralised infrastructure, or layered data-sharing models, these countries demonstrate that with the right mix of technology, governance, and collaboration, governments can deliver seamless and efficient public services that meet the needs of today’s digital citizens.

Integrated digital public service delivery (ISD) is an important but challenging goal for public administrations. ISD involves connecting previously separate public services into seamless service chains through shared interfaces and common systems, like identity management and centralised portals. Examples include combined permits or one-stop shops for life events.

ISD often requires collaboration among diverse public organisations across various sectors and regions, forming loosely connected networks that work together to deliver integrated services.

Inter-organisational collaboration is crucial for building the technical infrastructure, integrating back-office systems, and encouraging user adoption. However, this collaboration is difficult due to the diversity of participants, conflicting objectives, and the complexities of developing shared infrastructure. Public entities may be hesitant to compromise their autonomy in favour of shared goals, leading to challenges in achieving ISD.

While a significant body of research focuses on collaboration in digital government, most studies emphasise information exchange and integration. Lessons from different jurisdictions highlights factors that either promote or hinder collaboration, include trust, shared goals, and the lack of funding. In the end, small actionable steps are required to drive the long-term goals of integrated service delivery through sustained inter-organisational collaboration.

References

Jussen, I., Schweihoff, J., Dahms, V., Möller, F., & Otto, B. (2023). Data sharing fundamentals: characteristics and definition. In Proceedings of the 56th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Rukanova, B., Van Engelenburg, S., Ubacht, J., Tan, Y. H., Geurts, M., Sies, M., ... & Van Dijk, D. (2023). Public value creation through voluntary business to government information sharing enabled by digital infrastructure innovations: a framework for analysis. Government Information Quarterly, 40(2), 101786.

Wouters, S., Janssen, M., Lember, V., & Crompvoets, J. (2023). Strategies to advance the dream of integrated digital public service delivery in inter-organizational collaboration networks. Government Information Quarterly, 40(1), 101779.