Digital, Data and Technology Strategy

Investing in the right Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) solutions can act as real enablers, not only speeding up our processes but also insight richer insight into many areas thereby allowing more evidence-based decisions to be made about where best to utilise our limited resources to the greatest effect. For us, digital transformation means the integration of digital technology into all areas of an organisation, fundamentally changing how we operate and deliver value to our customers. Our DDaT strategy underpins all BFRS business from front-line response to the targeting of our community interventions; from how we manage risk to how we look after our most important asset, our people. We aim to be a digital by design organisation also known as Digital First.

Our DDaT priorities are to:

• Become a ‘fast follower’, adopting industry noteworthy practices in key areas through collaboration, whilst building capacity to be a public service leader
• Improve overall staff engagement and digital literacy to enable our workforce to be more productive and use modern and effective digital tools
• We will agree data standards and implement them to further improve our community analysis
• Alignment with the Fire Standard on data management
• We will improve our data governance to improve our data quality
• Create a paper-lite workforce, eradicating re-keying of data to central systems
• Build a more visible brand with the creation of digital services and new website
• Enable better public access to data and performance insight
• Support the environmental aims of BFRS with green ICT initiatives

Our approach will be to:

• Capture and exploit the rich datasets all around us using the “collect once, use numerous times” (COUNT) principle in line with our information governance policies and service value of Every Contact Counts
• Invest in Technology, which is secure, reliable, intuitive and supports agile working
  • Understand and align with the Fire Standard for data management.
  • Integrate our systems effectively to enable record once, use many so we have a single version of working documents
  • Develop our approach to understanding, and utilising, open data
  • Expand our data analysis capabilities, collaborating within and across sectors
  • Use more benchmarking data across fire and rescue services and partners to support service delivery
  • Ensure our digital transformation is underpinned by strong governance and effective cyber security procedures
  • Influence and support delivery of the national DDaT Strategy; and
  • Encourage the use of green ICT by reducing energy consumption, disposing of the equipment responsibly and switching to greener solutions with dynamic power switching