Data & integration

1. Specification

Finance, HR, case management, clinical and other sector systems hold the records that define a public service. The evidence shows these systems changing hands quickly, often to private equity, and the data in them bound to the vendor’s format (key finding 4). The sovereign approach makes the data portable by default: open table and exchange formats, published APIs, and access control that belongs to the public body rather than the product.

2. Layer profile

Already adopted in UK government

The Open Standards Board has adopted ISO 8601 for dates and times, UTF-8 for encoding, persistent resolvable identifiers (URIs), the Open Contracting Data Standard for contract data, and UPRN and USRN for property and street identification (Open standards for government). In health, NHS England requires HL7 FHIR UK Core through its information standards. No board profile covers APIs or analytical table formats; DI-2 and DI-4 go beyond the adopted set and are the lines to argue for.

3. Open-source solutions that meet the profile

Not yet assessed. Candidates: PostgreSQL-based business systems, openEHR platforms, Apache Superset, Metabase. Assessment follows the template in Identity & access.

4. Public services implementing the standard

Not yet recorded. Candidates: NHS England FHIR APIs, GOV.UK Pay and Notify.

5. Skills and horizon

Horizon 1 and 2. Data engineers and API designers; sector informatics specialists. See the roadmap.