Data Harmonisation Platform – improving data quality management

They engage with communities, industries and companies of all sizes including state and local government agencies across the country, offering a diverse range of products and services.

The organisation collects and manages large and complex datasets. To ensure proper use and interpretation of these datasets, they are implementing a national data standard. They enlisted guidance from data quality and management experts, Evinact, to help standardise asset data management via the adoption of the data standard, with a focus on encouraging information sharing between end-users.

We were engaged to productionise a data harmonisation platform to facilitate the efficient and effective sharing and visualisation of information, ultimately improving the use of data-driven insights in decision-making.

Evinact engaged with key stakeholders and asset managers across Australia to confirm participation and data provision to the platform. The harmonisation platform technology is based on the Microsoft stack, comprised of the Azure cloud as the data and logic layers, and utilises Power BI as the dashboard presentation layer.

Evinact conducted pilot testing to ensure the usability and functionality of the platform in delivering insights to users. This included onboarding of state and local governments to the platform for data harmonisation, analysis and dashboarding, ensuring they have a deep understanding of the requirements for data collaboration.

In addition to dashboards of asset metrics, Evinact developed dashboards of data quality metrics for each participating organisation. To inform this, we assessed and interpreted the organisation’s current data quality, compared their data against the data standard for coverage and completeness, and identified the necessary tools and processes required for improvement. Currently, asset managers are leveraging the dashboards to identify issues in data accuracy, completeness and conformity. Data governance issues have also been detected and remedial activities have commenced.

Evinact also developed a high-level specification for an automated reporting portal that would further enhance the organisation’s objective of leveraging data-driven insights. As the project is still in progress, the current phase involves configuring the chosen COTS solution and embedding the final dashboard designs as a core feature of the new self-service automated reporting portal.

As a result of working with Evinact, the organisation now has a consolidated understanding of the requirements to nationwide asset data quality strengths and weaknesses. The dashboard and platform that Evinact developed standardises complex datasets, facilitates efficient information sharing between end-users and displays valuable and quality data insights.

The organisation is well-equipped to leverage these assets for actionable data-driven insights and enhance the decision-making process. Evinact’s input has contributed to the implementation of a data standard for the organisation, which will, in turn, lead to improved safety and reliability of its services.

This engagement was originally completed as GWI.