The shift towards Open Data in water utilities is essential for solving massive, sector-wide problems. No single utilities company can tackle issues like flooding, environmental protection, and infrastructure replacement alone. By collaborating through initiatives like Stream, the sector can identify common challenges and allow analysts to turn disparate datasets into tangible solutions.
Water Utilities x Open Data: The Conundrum
While Open Data is all the talk in the water sector, it’s facing a conundrum. To demonstrate the real-world value of Open Data, utilities companies must first release enough of it for researchers, analysts, and the public to use. However, evidence of this value doesn’t exist yet, so securing internal buy-in to release data can be a challenge.
What’s the Value of Open Data in Water Utilities?
Open Data is still in the early stages of maturity across the sector, which makes it difficult to prove its value.
“It’s like Schrödinger’s cat but for data. There needs to be enough data available to see its value, but showing value is impossible without that data already being there.”
Zoe Shaughnessy, Business Analyst at Oakland
Value is hard to measure – but not impossible. It’s an ongoing process to understand what water utilities as a whole sees as ‘value’ in the data. Is it the number of visits to the Stream website? The number of clicks on datasets?
“At this stage of data maturity process, it’s a work in progress. But by working with organisations like the Open Data Institute (ODI), we’re able to develop value frameworks aligned to KPIs to start showcasing the impact of the open water data initiative.”
Zoe
Challenges to Open Data in the Water Sector
Most of the major water companies in the UK are involved in Stream. It’s a strong turnout, but not without its challenges. Barriers to involvement in Open Data initiatives include:
- Resource constraints
- Costs
- Reputational concerns
- Worries about releasing incorrect data
- Data comparisons
- Wrong conclusions being drawn from the data by the press and public
There’s also the huge expectation of what’s needed from the data, ranging from its formatting to its accessibility. For instance, data may be technically ‘open’, but if it’s in a tricky-to-use format (e.g. a series of PDFs), it’s not the easiest to extract and analyse.
One of the roles of data consultants, like Oakland Everything Data, is transforming data so it’s set up for success. From machine-readable tables to APIs, the easier the data is to access and analyse, the more value there is to derive from it.
How Open Data Could Improve Water Services
Like with any major change, there are challenges. But they’re massively outweighed by the opportunities sparked by the open water data initiative. These include the National Storm Overflow Hub, infrastructure planning, and public awareness.
The National Storm Overflow Hub
In a world-first, near real-time discharge data for nearly 14,000 storm overflows in England is brought together in one interactive map. The hub enables:
- Users to see which storm overflows are discharging
- Water users (swimmers and kayakers, for instance) to make informed decisions about whether or not to enter the water
- Access to improvement plans for every single storm overflow
- Water companies to access support from an independent steering group (including the Environment Agency and Ofwat)
Pretty useful, if you ask us!
Infrastructure Planning
Water company boundaries are now together in one public place, meaning households, developers, planners, and policymakers can view and access accurate, localised information to support decision-making. For example, the data can be used to:
- Check who supplies your water
- Plan new infrastructure
- Evaluate service performance
Public Awareness
During water shortages, high spikes in data usage occur. When the news is full of reports that reservoir levels are low, people have a tendency to do their own ‘sanity checks’. If the public has easier access to more water services data, their sense of ownership over it should grow.
Why Work with a Data Consultant on Your Open Data Strategy?
Look, we know that getting your data into a fit state for the public domain is daunting. But data fitness is our bread and butter. As a trusted data consultant for some of the UK’s biggest utilities companies, we’ve got a track record of turning raw data into structured datasets for open water data initiatives like Stream.
From creating roadmaps and value frameworks to establishing rigorous sign-off procedures, we guide you through the whole process. Ultimately, we ensure your data is clean, accurate, and secure before it’s released to the public.
How Water Companies Should Prepare Data for Open Data
So if you’re a water company preparing for the transition to Open Data, reach out to our team for personalised support. We’ve also detailed the critical steps you should take below to make the process as straightforward and rewarding as possible.
1. Put a strategic roadmap in place
Ad-hoc data sharing is to be avoided. Open Data success begins with a clear strategy and a release roadmap. Utilities should:
- Develop internal principles for how data will be accessed and used
- Create internal and external data hubs to manage the publication process
- Assess each potential dataset against a fixed set of criteria to avoid bias and ensure consistency
Discover our Data Strategy services.
2. Implement rigorous safe release protocols
One of the primary barriers to Open Data is the fear of reputational damage or the release of incorrect information. To mitigate these risks, utilities must build a robust sign-off process. We recommend one with:
- Cross-department sign-off
Data should move through stages involving legal, communications, customer service, and data owners.
- Data integrity
Before release, data must be cleaned, accurately formatted, and paired with comprehensive metadata.
- Contextual clarity
Providing metadata ensures the public and the press don’t draw incorrect or misleading conclusions from raw figures.
3. Prioritise machine-readable formats
The technical definition of ‘open’ is changing. While a series of PDFs may be ‘technically’ accessible, they offer little use for modern analysis. Transition from static documents to machine-readable tables and APIs, and ensure data is interoperable. This way, it can be easily ingested into tools like PowerBI or spreadsheets for immediate use by third parties (who’ll appreciate you for it).
Explore our Data Analytics & Insights services.
4. Align with regulatory and value frameworks
At the moment, Open Data participation is largely voluntary. But we know that regulators (e.g. Ofwat) already expect companies to publish strategies and show progress.
“Though it’s currently a voluntary requirement rather than an obligation (or fined requirement) for water utilities to provide Open Data, utilities should look to other sectors with mandated requirements in place – like energy – for a preview of potential future regulations.”
Zoe
Realising the Value of Open Data
To prove the impact of all the efforts outlined above, utilities can work with organisations like the ODI to develop value frameworks. When data publication is aligned with specific KPIs, companies can measure success – for instance, data downloads, API usage, and the development of public-facing tools (e.g. the National Storm Overflow Hub). From here, the bigger data picture can start to come together – and the true value of open water data realised.
For advice or support with anything Open Data, please get in touch with our team.
