Yorkshire Water: Open Data Compliance Industry Leader

The challenge: Publishing Open Data in utilities

Yorkshire Water, which serves over five million people, was expected to embrace Open Data as part of an industry-wide push. The regulator, Ofwat, had set out clear expectations for water companies to open up their data including publishing priority datasets and an Open Data roadmap. With this new regulatory pressure, each of the UK’s water utilities companies faced several key challenges.

Creating a plan

Ofwat’s expectations around Open Data required immediate action. Yorkshire Water needed a roadmap, vision, and target operating model to lead the way.

Alignment with industry standards

The water sector’s collaborative platform, Stream, provides a common approach to Open Data. Translating these emerging standards into Yorkshire Water’s internal context was essential for success.

Resource constraints and uncertainty

Yorkshire Water required clear ownership to drive Open Data, direct the flow of work, and manage the required capabilities in a logical order. Oakland Everything Data provided clarity on where effort needed to be focused and how to balance value and risk.

Lack of governance

As this was the first time the industry had been asked to publish Open Data, a repeatable governance process was needed to prevent ad-hoc publication or reliance on tacit knowledge of individuals. Clear governance meant concerns about data quality, security, and confidentiality when releasing information externally could be alleviated.

In summary, Yorkshire Water’s data team and executives were asking: How do we safely meet Ofwat’s Open Data requirements and publish our data for public use?

The company needed a way to comply quickly and, ideally, turn this compliance effort into an opportunity to lead in Open Data.

The approach: Developing an Open Data strategy (dual-track delivery)

Oakland Everything Data was engaged as a partner to help Yorkshire Water establish a way forward. We understood that a multi-pronged approach across people, process, data, and technology was necessary, demonstrating value early while driving cultural change. The approach had two parallel tracks – the do and the design:

Immediate delivery (“the do”)

We began by delivering Open Data releases via Stream to demonstrate quick wins and test the end-to-end business process for robustness.

These tangible projects built confidence within Yorkshire Water that Open Data could be delivered safely and with visible benefit.

Strategic foundation (“the design”)

In parallel, we developed a comprehensive Open Data Strategy and governance framework. This involved mapping the end-to-end process for publishing data securely, identifying stakeholders, and defining the required approvals.

Oakland collaborated with Yorkshire Water’s data governance team to establish policies, principles, and standards specific to Open Data. The framework included a value model to prioritise datasets, balancing innovation opportunities against business value and risk, and clearly defined governance roles such as data owners, stewards, and approvers.

How we did it

Throughout, Oakland facilitated broad stakeholder engagement. Teams from IT, Data Governance, Communications, and Customer Service were included to ensure alignment and shared understanding. Even the Environmental Information Requests team was engaged to inform the Open Data use case backlog.

By adjusting frameworks based on feedback and providing training along the way, Oakland Everything Data nurtured buy-in across the business and a people-centric approach that proved crucial to creating a governance framework the organisation would adopt.

In essence, the approach combined strategy and execution. Rather than completing a strategy document before acting, Oakland delivered immediate outcomes to build momentum and prove value while simultaneously architecting the long-term Open Data programme.

“Open Data has real value when people can confidently use it. Our work with Yorkshire Water and Stream is about making data easier to share, understand and build on, giving people across the sector the foundations to collaborate and tackle challenges that no single water company can solve alone.”

Zoe Shaughnassy – Senior Business Analyst at Oakland Everything Data

What we delivered

Open Data governance framework and strategic tools

Over the course of the engagement, Oakland Everything Data delivered a comprehensive suite of outputs to position Yorkshire Water as an Open Data leader. Key deliverables included:

1. Open Data strategy & roadmap

A clear strategy outlining Yorkshire Water’s vision and a phased roadmap to achieve it. This defined how Open Data supports company goals and aligned with Ofwat’s and Stream’s expectations, ensuring an organisation-specific strategy that also supports the wider industry direction.

2. Governance model and processes

Oakland established an end-to-end Open Data release process and governance framework. This included a detailed RACI, with data owners, stewards, and approvers, guiding principles, and a value framework to evaluate each use case uniformly. Step-by-step procedures for evaluating data including Data Privacy Impact Assessment checks and approval workflows made the publishing process repeatable and secure. The process has proved to be robust and fit for purpose and as such, has been adopted by other areas of the business to apply to their own data sharing work.

Learn more: Data governance for humans

3. Value framework & use-case backlog

To support prioritisation, Oakland developed a value framework to rank datasets by potential benefit versus risk. This helped build a pipeline of Open Data use cases drawn from external stakeholders and common customer information requests, ensuring pipelines of datasets to release. Ongoing momentum beyond the initial regulatory minimum is now ensured.

4. Technical architecture & tools

We produced a target operating model and reference architecture for Open Data publication, detailing how data flows from internal systems to the Stream platform and to any future Open Data spaces. A SharePoint-based internal hub was created to provide guidance, documentation, and data catalogues.

We also delivered supporting assets, including an Information Asset Register, metadata templates, and a data glossary, all designed to standardise how data is documented and shared.

5. Training and cultural change

Oakland delivered training workshops and materials to help cultivate a data-sharing culture. We attended monthly meetings with a growing community of data owners and stewards, equipping them to manage Open Data in their domains. We also supported running internal communications and hackathon-style events to showcase innovative uses of Open Data.

Historically, there was limited understanding of Open Data and the Stream initiative across the organisation. Now, they have a growing and actively engaged community of data SMEs, owners, and stewards who are confidently managing Open Data within their domains. Uneasiness around Open Data has been reduced and the Open Data principles are being adopted into BAU activities.

For more insight on this type of deliverable, please read our blog: How data management helps people take ownership of data.

6. Dual-track delivery of use cases

Alongside frameworks, Oakland delivered concrete Open Data outputs via Stream. These use cases demonstrated the framework’s effectiveness and generated success stories to rally stakeholder support.

By providing both the “instruction manual” and fulfilling Ofwat’s requirements, this dual approach has ensured that Yorkshire Water has not only a documented Open Data programme – but also tangible experience and early success in executing it.

“Oakland Everything Data has been fundamental in transforming our approach to Open Data, shaping our understanding of not just the regulatory requirement but also our overall thinking in the space. They have moved forward our strategy both around the governance & how we publish this data, but also more importantly the way we think internally about the opportunity that Open Data brings.”

Rachel Frazer – Tech Change Lead at Yorkshire Water

The outcome

Yorkshire Water’s Open Data journey, supported by us, transformed a compliance obligation into an opportunity for industry leadership. The company advanced from lagging to leading in Open Data maturity. In fact, Yorkshire Water climbed to become the top-performing water company on the Stream platform. This exemplary performance means Yorkshire Water is now setting the pace for how to publish Open Data in the utilities sector.

Meeting Ofwat’s data requirements and driving Open Data maturity

Crucially, Yorkshire Water met Ofwat’s Open Data requirements in full and went beyond them. The company delivered everything the regulator required and did so in a way that added business value rather than merely ticking boxes.

With a robust Open Data programme in place, Yorkshire Water can head into periodic Ofwat reviews, well prepared with no risk of non-compliance. On the contrary, they are often showcased as a positive example. Notably, by October 2025, the company was able to report a satisfactory Open Data roadmap and progress fully aligned with Ofwat expectations.

A continued cultural shift

Confidence and knowledge around open data continues to grow across Yorkshire Water, driven by a cultural shift where open data is no longer seen as a regulatory obligation but as a strategic asset. The initiative has fostered an engaged community of data owners and stewards, improving data quality and embedding a data-driven mindset. Building on this momentum, there is now agreement to create an external open data hub, designed to publish datasets that reflect Yorkshire Water’s unique challenges and showcase its leadership in the open data space.

With a solid foundation (strategy, governance, architecture) and real experience under its belt. Yorkshire Water is now fit for the future. The organisation continues to innovate and publish new datasets, using Open Data as a strategic asset that enhances transparency, trust, and innovation across the utilities sector.

“Oakland Everything Data has been the driving force behind Yorkshire Water’s improvements in meeting our Ofwat/Stream obligations, showing great resilience & expertise as our maturity around this grows”