The Clinically Extremely Vulnerable People Service: Summary of a private roundtable
A summary of a roundtable discussion with public servants and others involved in setting up the Clinically Extremely Vulnerable People Service.
The response to the coronavirus pandemic brought data to the heart of government decision making like never before – but what lessons does government need to learn about data sharing from the experience?
This paper summarises a roundtable discussion bringing together public servants and others involved in setting up the Clinically Extremely Vulnerable People Service. It found that:
- The clear sense of project purpose created a willingness from people, departments and organisations to find solutions to problems. It also helped identify and minimise what data needed to be shared to achieve the desired outcome
- A multidisciplinary team from a range of departments and expertise was integral for rapidly producing a functional service. Having policy, technical, legal, security and data sharing insight from the start allowed the design to have information governance and data security baked into the solution
- UK law is permissive and was not a barrier for the service. Rapid data sharing was possible given the justifiable public health reasons and the service’s data protection measures
- Public engagement and transparency about what, how and why data was being shared avoided a negative public response to the service.
This is the second of six papers in the series, each based on a roundtable discussion around a particular case study or theme. The others will be published in December 2022 and January 2023, with a short report drawing together key themes and lessons to follow in February 2023.
We would like to thank Scott Logic for supporting this project. Read more from Scott Logic about the Data Sharing in Government research project on their website.
