We caught up with Esme Barratt, Coordinator, Services Planning at the City of Adelaide, to learn more about the Research and Insights Network.
What are the goals of the Research and Insights Network? What has been achieved?
The goal of the Network is to champion the development and use of insights to inform decision-making across the City of Adelaide (CoA). The intent is to help the organisation make decisions, particularly complex decisions, through research and insights by:
- Providing a central point for sharing and coordinating research and insights development for the City of Adelaide.
- Being the central point of expert advice on matters related to research, data interpretation and analysis (qualitative, quantitative and geospatial).
- Striving for consistency and veracity in terms of the output (insights) and the application (action).
- Contributing to the dissemination of actionable insights.
- Fostering capability – build understanding of the importance of data insights to inform decisions and evaluate the impact on the community, and support the development of research, data analysis and interpretation skills across the organisation.
The Network has been established as a pilot and is due for review in June 2025. At this point, I would expect the evaluation will show there has been good improvement in information sharing and coordination. The Network has been well-attended since establishment and each session now showcases a research or data collection process across council.
If you had a magic wand, what is the one thing you would do with all the data we collect?
With the aid of quite a bit of magic, I’d like to be able to analyse and connect the data and insights gained across the organisation. This includes our research and evaluation information, our community engagement insights and our customer and performance insights. Ideally, this would be used to inform and shape our services; not just now, but for horizon planning for CoA.
What advice would you have for readers who are wanting to drive improvements to data and research management within their own organisations?
My advice would be to consider this as a change-management process and build in the capacity to evaluate any improvements and build on the management over time.
Do you have your own internal wins helping your organisation make better, more informed decision making? Share your story with our Network in the BPIN Viva Engage site.
