Oxford Insights
Sport England’s dedicated staff were being held back by a relatively immature data ecosystem and legacy IT systems. Lacking insight into the behaviours of target groups, the organisation was missing opportunities to bring them into amateur sport and increase activity levels. Low-quality data and overbearing reporting processes meant staff struggled to fully understand the impact of their work and justify investments to central government.
To overcome nervousness about risk-taking with new digital tools, we launched a Data & AI Lab. After working closely with staff to identify issues, the Lab rapidly built proofs-of-concept that used AI and digital tools to solve these problems. This created a culture shift in which staff started to trust AI and build confidence in their own problem-solving approaches.
We also delivered a new data strategy and data operating model, setting out an ambitious vision to use data to get people active. This helped create executive-level support for a full, upcoming digital transformation programme, while also encouraging staff to autonomously collaborate in managing the organisation’s data.
The challenge
Sport England is an arms-length government body supporting grassroots sport and physical activity. Its strategy commits it to helping historically marginalised communities into sport.
However, with little interoperable or real-time data, slow and duplicative reporting, and clunky legacy systems, Sport England was struggling to understand its impact and justify its decisions to government. Its new Director of Data and Digital set out an ambitious agenda to establish the organisation as a digital leader in a nationwide ‘movement to move’. With our partners Register Dynamics and Mike Rose, we were tasked with laying the foundations for this.
Our approach
We started by understanding Sport England’s requirements, interviewing approximately 40 people working across the organisation. Following this, we held collaborative workshops with senior leaders to map how data should flow between teams and test our emerging recommendations.
To align staff around shared priorities, and to communicate Sport England’s intent to its partners and funders, we created a new data strategy, along with a new framework to help guide all data-related decisions. Sport England’s data needed to be Counted, Linkable, Ethical, Assigned, and Reusable, or CLEAR. We also established a blueprint for implementation (a ‘data operating model’).
To further support staff and improve efficiency, we created a Data & AI Lab. The purpose of the Lab was to highlight that investing in digital programmes and experimenting with prospective digital solutions could help teams address persistent problems. Working with Sport England staff collaboratively and pragmatically meant we could quickly discover how better use of data and AI could give staff more time and more insight into what matters most to them: serving communities across England.
We explored possible avenues for supporting teams using data and AI and showed what is possible if teams are given the resources to co-design better ways of working. This helped us to overcome the scepticism that can accompany digital transformation projects and show senior leadership that digital and data isn’t just an administrative function, but an asset that can drive Sport England’s mission.
Our impact
Balancing an ambitious vision with a pragmatic approach, we won the support of our sponsors, the executive leadership team and the board, creating a clear runway for an upcoming digital transformation programme. We also saw senior staff adopt the principles of data ownership and begin to autonomously collaborate to pursue structured and reusable data.
The Data & AI Lab produced prototypes that helped people across Sport England see the art of the possible. There was a culture shift: we heard that we’d ‘opened minds’ to what AI could do if you focused on services that worked with staff. Different teams collaborating on a potential service discussed how to solve shared problems in the future. Critically, stakeholders at the executive and board level began to see the value of embedding technologists and designers within teams.
Grid photo by Edoardo Busti on Unsplash
