Identify gaps, barriers and opportunities

Mapping your data ecosystem can help your initiative find opportunities, understand the benefits of building data infrastructure and plan to address any gaps or mitigate risks related to improving access to data. After mapping the actors and value flows in the ecosystem, we recommend the following activities:

Identify gaps and barriers

Identify where a lack of data access is creating the most considerable issues in the ecosystem. You might want to start by identifying external actors that have specific data you need but are not currently sharing it, and think of ways to establish partnerships. Also consider what data gaps your partners and other stakeholders are currently experiencing. Reflect on why these gaps and barriers exist – is it a lack of specific data infrastructure that is causing this, or just a relationship that has not been established?

Some barriers that we have seen in our research include:

• Data doesn’t exist (data would need to be created or collected)

• Data isn’t shared (data exists, but is siloed)

• Some data is shared, but not to the desired degree (quality, granularity, timeliness, etc)

• Data is shared, but is not as useful as desired

Find opportunities to improve access to data and define a future state

One of the most valuable uses of your data ecosystem map is to find new opportunities. Look for new potential opportunities from your mapped ecosystem such as where to improve data flows, create new services, or build new connections.

Some typical opportunities for improving your ecosystem include:

• What data is your service missing?

• Is missing data being held by an organisation, or is it not being collected?

• How could standards boost interoperability?

• Where could a trusted and independent third party improve data sharing in the ecosystem?

Consider what a current state and a future state look like. Mapping out an ‘as-is’ and ‘to-be’ data ecosystem can help you to envision future opportunities and barriers, and design ‘ideal states’ that you can work backwards from, identifying key activities, assumptions and dependencies that would be needed to bring that ideal state into being, along the way.

Find opportunities

Image credit: ODI

The opportunities you discover in your data ecosystem map can help you understand the inputs you need to access, the activities you need to undertake, and the outputs you need to create in order to achieve your desired impact.