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Improving your department’s ability to share data is a team effort. It requires support from department executives to allocate program, technical, and security resources. This Play provides general guidance on obtaining executive support by creating a business case for improving data-sharing. This Play focuses on creating a business case for data-sharing improvements that support department and program objectives by defining:
- Benefits to your department
- Required staff resources
- Required technology resources (e.g., Data Catalog, Metadata Repository)
- High-level implementation plan
We recommend positioning an incremental effort to minimize the department’s upfront investment and deliver benefits to sustain continued executive support. As the value of data- sharing is demonstrated, it becomes easier to gain executive support to improve sharing capabilities for additional datasets.
It’s incredibly supportive to have a coach to help create and communicate your business case. It is crucial that your coach is integrated into business operations and can help you communicate data-related concepts in a manner that is relatable to executive management. Your coach may also be a source of historical data-sharing efforts and benefits to bolster your business case.
Your coach is a sounding board to help you link the data-sharing benefits to the department’s objectives and ensure the business case is clear. Depending on their position, your coach can advocate for investment in data-sharing with executive management to further support data- sharing improvement. Your coach may also be willing to review your business case presentation to suggest improvements.
Ideal candidates are members of program management who understand the benefits of data- sharing or information technology staff with solid program knowledge and data expertise. Your coach may end up being a team of coworkers filling a specific role.
Sally has never created a business case before and is feeling overwhelmed. During the effort to inventory the CDW datasets, Ann, the Healthy Habits program specialist, provided significant insights into data-sharing's importance in realizing departmental objectives. Sally decides to ask Ann if she will be her coach while creating the business case to improve data sharing. Ann agrees and will help Sally identify benefits and review the business case before presentation to CDW executive management.
Ann provides Sally with some useful information on how the effort will help the department and the Healthy Habits program including:
- Healthy Habits would like to establish an inter-department data-sharing from the Walk 2 Work program to determine outcomes and new services to participants in both programs.
- The Healthy Habits data analysts have noted that it’s difficult to understand the system’s data which impedes creating analytics needed to optimize the program.
- The CalHHS IT and Data Strategic Plan embraces data-sharing as a facilitator of its strategic objectives.
Sally takes notes on her conversation with Ann for inclusion in the data-sharing improvement business case.
Improving data-sharing is an incremental effort that will take time and resources. This Play supplements the CalHHS Data Playbook, Play 1: Define Goals and Objectives, by guiding how to create a business case for investment in data-sharing capabilities. The first step in creating the business case is identifying some high-level benefits created by an investment in data sharing.
The BUCP tracking repository you created in Play 1: Establish Data-Sharing Metrics and BUCP Tracking is a source of department-specific information for your business case. Review the BUCP tracking repository to identify the following to include your business case:
- Departmental and program benefits from previous data-sharing efforts
- Impediments to data-sharing that are resolved by the investment in data-sharing improvements.
- Pending BUCPs under approval that will benefit from the data-sharing improvement effort.
Your department might already have an established data-sharing initiative. If so, you can link your resource request to the existing initiative. The remaining portion of this Play can help you elaborate on an existing data-sharing initiative with specific benefits to your department’s objectives. If your department doesn’t have a directly stated initiative to improve data-sharing, there are potentially indirect references in department and program objectives and plans. For example, cross-program coordination indicates a need for data-sharing.
Sally begins her research to capture the benefits of data sharing. Sally reviews the strategic plan for the department and its three main programs. She learns that there is an initiative to expand cross-program services for the Walk 2 Work and Your Environment participants. This initiative indicates that improving data-sharing capabilities will benefit these two programs.
She also reviews the CDW BUCP tracking system to identify benefits and outcomes from past data-sharing efforts. She identifies an example of how the Your Environment program used data from the Department of Volunteer Services for marketing and outreach, creating a five percent expansion in program participation over six months. This provides a quantifiable demonstration of the value of data sharing.
Sally adds these examples of data-sharing benefits to her business case and supporting presentation.
Improving your ability to share and receive data requires staff support from multiple teams within your department. Your effort requires support from the following internal teams:
- Information Technology
- Business Analysts and Other Program Staff
- Information Security
- Legal and Legislative Analysis
Obtaining their buy-in is a critical success factor for your data-sharing improvement effort. Your data-sharing improvement effort benefits your department, incentivizing the required staff teams to participate. Your business case also helps secure support from executive management to engage the needed staff resources.
The Guidebook’s supplemental section, Benefits to Your Department from Executing the Plays, explains the departmental benefits of executing Data-Sharing Plays. You can use the supplement as a starting point to identify benefits for your department for inclusion in your business case and garner support from the teams required for your data-sharing improvement effort.
A summary of the internal benefits to the department and teams required for the effort include:
- Internal data sharing within the department.
- Improving the quality of the department’s analytics by further understanding of the department’s data.
- Additional visibility for the information security team of the department’s data classifications for risk assessments and refinement of security controls.
Include the benefits to internal department teams in your business case to secure support from required teams and approval from executive management.
You may want to schedule short meetings with leadership from the required teams to provide a brief overview of the effort and benefits to obtain preliminary support ahead of your presentation to executive management.
Sally summarizes the department benefits to the CDW in her business case and supporting PowerPoint presentation. She summarizes these benefits using the Guidebook’s supplemental section Benefits to Your Department from Executing the Plays as a starting point. Sally creates the following summary of the benefits identified during her research:
- The Healthy Habits and Your Community programs are interested in establishing an inter-department data-sharing agreement to obtain data from the Walk 2 Work program. Like a BUCP with another department, the effort will help with data-sharing within the CDW.
- Other departments frequently request data from the Healthy Habits program. The CDW data team spends significant time supporting these data-sharing agreements. Additionally, once data is shared, the CDW data analysts spend time answering data recipient questions.
- The Healthy Habits system was developed in the early 2000s. The system’s database has been enhanced for over 20 years, but the data architecture documentation is outdated. The data-sharing effort will resolve difficulties in making database and application changes and make report creation more efficient.
- The Your Environment team is starting an effort to create a de-identified (masked dataset) to expand the pool of staff available for testing. The metadata and security classifications will help build the business rules for this effort.
Later in Play 4: Prioritize Your Data, Sally and the team will identify additional benefits as they learn more about the department’s data and initiatives.
The data-sharing improvement effort requires support from teams across your department. Your business case should have a resource plan that provides management with the information needed to approve the initiative. Identifying resources ahead of your effort also allows you to proactively engage supporting teams to develop a resource plan and schedule that accommodates regular job duties.
Data Prioritization Staff Resources
The Plays provide an iterative approach to incrementally improve data-sharing through a prioritization process. Further described in Play 4: Prioritize Your Data, you will need to work with staff members with decision-making authority to provide input into a rubric to prioritize your department’s data.
Your resource plan should include staff to support the prioritization effort. You can read Play 4: Prioritize Your Data to learn more about the recommended data prioritization approach to create a staff request in your business plan.
Data-Sharing Improvement Staff Resources
After selecting your priority datasets, in Play 6: Describe Your Data, you will improve data understanding and the ability to process BUCP security and privacy requirements by enriching dataset descriptions (i.e., Metadata). Describing the priority datasets is a multidisciplinary effort that requires the following staff support:
- Access to data subject matter experts to enrich your dataset’s business definitions.
- Time from information security to mark data with security classifications.
- Support from information technology to store the department’s data catalog.
- Access to your department’s legal team to identify statutes that govern data sharing.
Technology Investments
In addition to staff resources, your effort may require technology investments. For example, using a metadata repository tool reduces staff time to collect and maintain your department's data inventory and descriptions. Data catalog tools also provide the capability to maintain description and metadata on datasets beyond those stored in your database, including API and analytics-based datasets. The benefits provided by metadata repository tools are further described in the Guidebook’s supplemental section Example Metadata Repository Tools.
You may also find that technology investments are needed to improve your BUCP tracking, and document repository created in Play 1: Establish Data-Sharing Metrics and BUCP Tracking. Include software and infrastructure costs required for the data-sharing improvement effort in your business plan.
With the benefits of her proposal defined, Sally creates a high-level resource plan. Sally works with Carlos to identify the staff resources she will need for the effort.
Sally requests access to the following staff to prioritize the CDW’s datasets. These CDW staff members support the execution of Play 4: Prioritize Your Data. She asks executive management to select a set of stakeholders with decision-making authority to create the method used to prioritize datasets. She also denotes the need for access to program and business analysis staff to gather information to rank the priority of the department’s datasets.
Once the dataset priority is established, the effort will need access to a broader set of staff to execute Play 6: Describe Your Data. She summarizes resource needs from the business analysis, program, information security, legal, and technology teams. The high-level plan denotes that specific staff and tooling resource requests will be made once the first dataset is selected for data-sharing improvements.
Sally and Carlos also created the business case to invest in a technology platform to collect and provide web-based access to the resulting data descriptions. The technology platform reduces the project's effort and improves the resulting benefits to internal data consumers.
Sally includes these resource needs in her business case. After the data-sharing initiative is approved, she will work with the supporting teams to develop a schedule that accommodates regular staff duties and commitments.
Now that you have your data-sharing benefits identified, and approach to improve data-sharing and resource plan, you are ready to seek approval to start the dataset prioritization effort.
Create a presentation of your plan to improve data sharing to review with your department’s leadership.
A sample outline of a presentation to management is provided below:
- Definition of Data Sharing: Describe data-sharing using terms that are relatable to executive management.
- Benefits of Data Sharing: Summarize the findings from your initial research on the benefits of data sharing.
- Direct Benefits to the Department: The Guidebook’s supplemental section Benefits to Your Department from Executing the Plays provides a detailed description of benefits you can include in your business case.
- High-Level Plan: Summarize the iterative approach described in Play 3.4: Creation a High-Level Plan and Resource Request.
- Deliverable: Describe the data inventory and prioritization. Regardless of whether the initiative moves forward, the department will better understand its data.
- Request for Staff Support: List the staff resources for the effort to prioritize the department datasets.
- Approval to Develop a Prioritization Rubric: Obtain approval and access to department data stakeholders to create a standard mechanism to prioritize data-sharing improvements.
If you have concerns about delivering the presentation, you can practice with your coach or a co-worker to get feedback and build your confidence with the business case content, and to anticipate questions an audience is likely to raise.
Sally creates a presentation of the plan to improve the CDW’s data-sharing capabilities using the notes captured while creating the CDW data inventory in Play 2: Identify Your Datasets. She also reviews the CDW BUCP repository created in Play 1: Establish Data-Sharing Metrics and BUCP Tracking to identify benefits from past data exchanges.
Sally meets with Ann to review her presentation and get her feedback. Ann provides a specific example of an internal data-sharing effort between the Walk 2 Work and Your Environment programs. Ann also suggests adding how the effort supports key objectives of the 2024 CalHHS IT and Data Strategic Plan, including:
- Data-informed insights
- Person-centered solution strategies
- Continuous improvement through data analysis
Sally incorporates the feedback and schedules a meeting with executive management to present the business case and request resources. Ann will be attending the presentation to CDW leadership to help reinforce the benefits and importance of the data-sharing improvement effort.
Sally reviews her presentation with management and summarizes the following topics:
- Benefits of Data-Sharing
- Direct Benefits to the Department
- High-Level Plan
- Required Resources
After reviewing the business case presentation, the CDW executives approve the effort to prioritize the department’s data. Further resources will be approved once a detailed plan is provided to improve the priority dataset that is identified later in Play 4: Prioritize Your Data. Unfortunately, funding for a data catalog platform is unavailable this fiscal year. Sally will work with Carlos and the CDW IT Team to create a data catalog using existing technology assets.