Analytics provides public sector organisations with solutions by enabling them to make evidence-based business decisions. These improve both the efficiency and quality of services delivered, and encourage an enterprise wide view of the business rather than the traditional siloed approach.

Challenges include the restrictions on sharing data between departments and services and ensuring the right skills and funding are in place to realise innovative projects. Effective analytics requires deep industry and sector knowledge, broad functional capabilities, and a high degree of technical sophistication but the reward may be to solve the riddle of better, cheaper, tailored services through this smarter use of data.