Hello and welcome to Fibonacci, the Red Olive data podcast, all about data and analytics where we hear from leading specialists and get their take on the industry. We are joined today by Simon Hopkins, Director of Resources at Blind Veterans UK. This provides free support and services to vision-impaired, ex-Armed Forces and National Service personnel. 

Simon has previously held a variety of roles in the third sector at CFO, CEO and COO levels and started his career in professional practice, qualifying as a chartered accountant with KPMG in London. 

Simon is a regular columnist for Charity Finance magazine, publishes and speaks regularly on subjects ranging from financial sustainability to digital disruption. 

Here are the main topics of conversation with their timecodes:

• Learning how to rethink the relationship between money and data when moving to the charity sector (3m)
• Understanding that the customer is more sophisticated and multi-layered in the charity sector than people think (4m 41s)
• Integrating data, and the idea of one platform going out of fashion (6m)
• How important it is for a single view of data at the top is in bringing an organisation with you (6m 52s)
• Simon’s work at Blind Veterans (10m)
• Formulating a data strategy (11m 28s)
• Connecting with other organisations to help the vulnerable (16m)
• Data-rich solutions that could connect multiple sources into a marketplace of help (22m)
• Thinking of the GDPR as an asset (27m 44s)
• Where a marketplace of help could emerge from (31m)
• A map of veterans’ needs and how it helps anticipate what their future needs will be (33m)
• Using data from patients’ smartphones to help determine when interventions are needed (34m)
• The skills that you need to enter a career in the data industry (40m)
• Working strategically with Red Olive (44m)

- Hello, and welcome to

The Red Olive Data Podcast",

all about data and analytics,

where we hear from leading specialists

and get their take on the industry.

I'm your host, Nicky Rudd.

Today I'm joined by Simon Hopkins,

director of resources at Blind Veterans U.K.,

a charity that provides free support and services

to vision-impaired ex-armed forces

and National Service personnel.

Simon has previously held a variety of senior roles

in the third sector,

and started his career in professional practise,

qualifying as a chartered accountant with KPMG in London.

He's a regular columnist for "Charity Finance Magazine",

publishes and speaks regularly on subjects

ranging from financial sustainability to digital disruption.

He's a passionate and occasionally outspoken advocate

for financial professionals

shaking off the back office label and embracing their role

as outward-looking organisational leaders.

But where does data fit in with this vision?

Let's find out more.

(driving rock music)

Just wanted to start our discussion really

and cover off your background,

'cause obviously with your role that you're in now,

which we'll come to, it's very, very different.

So do you want to tell me about your past?

- I've had a classic sort of commercial accountant's career,

bit like Jefferson at Red Olive, funnily enough.

And 15 years ago, I had the chance to do one of those

leap of faith moves,

where you take yourself right out of your comfort zone.

And I became a senior civil servant in Whitehall,

under the Brown government.

And I worked there for three years.

It was a classic classic mid-career move.

And for me, with hindsight,

it was a really really important step

to moving into the charity sector,

because it helped me to think in a different currency.

It helped me to think about money and data

through the lens of social change,

rather than through the lens of profit.

My move was heavily driven by curiosity,

and I think anybody that's interested in data

has to be fueled by intense curiosity.

When I'd been in the civil service sort of

2 1/2, three years,

I had the chance to come into the charity sector.

I came into the charity sector in early 2010.

And for me, it felt like a perfect combination

of the commerciality, and innovation, and drive,

that I was used to in industry and commerce,

allied to that sense of success being measured

in non-financial terms that I'd learned in Whitehall.

I'd loved to claim that there was this grand plan

to come to the charity sector, but there wasn't.

It was just a really lucky synchronicity for me.

And I still feel like that 12 years on,

having been in the sector for 12 years.

That sense of the alliance of the commerciality

and the public benefit, which you only find, in many ways,

in civil society.

It all felt like I was leading up

to being part of this sector.

I've had to learn how to rethink money,

but I've also had to learn how to rethink data.

And because success is measured in terms of social change

and transforming lives,

and not about giving a rate of return to shareholders,

it's got massive implications

for the way that we as a sector think about data,

and utilise and exploit data.

- What was the biggest learning,

and kind of rethinking your brain?

Obviously with your background in finance,

it's completely different, but, you know,

was there big sort of technology steps

that you were like actually,

it's much easier for me to kind of step into

and understand it, or kind of better visualisation tools,

or anything like that

that sort of helped with that transition?

- I think there's two things in particular.

I mean, one is, as I've already mentioned,

this idea about success is measured

in a completely different way.

And it's in a way that you can't always quantify.

That certainly, in the charity sector in particular,

that mixture of quantitative

and qualitative measures of success,

metrics and storytelling, is really, really critical.

Most charities, when they do their impact report,

will probably use what I would refer to as

the mixed economy.

So they include metrics of the number of people

that they've helped, et cetera, et cetera,

but they'll tell stories as well.

And that's the way we articulate success.

It wasn't as like that working for a massive bank.

It was about weighted risk assets and return on investment.

Highly, highly metricated.

The other thing is the understanding of the customer,

and it's far more complicated in the charity sector

than I think most people might instinctively think.

So one of the things that's happened in the charity sector,

really positively over the last decade,

has been a real focus on single customer view.

But you might get a customer who is a beneficiary,

who raises funds for the organisation,

who is a member of a support group

and therefore a campaigner,

and who also might be a volunteer

and may even be a member of staff as well.

So the number of dimensions or lenses

through which you relate to the same person,

can be very, very complex and very, very sophisticated.

So the challenge, but the opportunity,

on things like single customer view,

are so much more multi-layered in the charity sector.

Now to a data nerd like me,

that's really, really fascinating and stimulating,

but it isn't necessarily intuitive

until you come into the sector and you realise that

your sense of customer is so multilayered.

- I'm presuming has its own challenges

and its own opportunities as well.

- It does.

I mean, the challenge is in how you integrate the data.

And it was quite fashionable 10 or 15 years ago

to think about this idea of one CRM.

I think it's gone out of fashion because

the cost of this idea of a single platform

that can deal with all of these perspectives,

is just prohibitively expensive.

It's prohibitively expensive to put in,

and also to maintain.

So the idea of data integration,

and my background is commercial finance not technology.

So don't ask me how you write code,

'cause this might be a very short conversation.

But that opportunity to move the sector

from the transactional to the relational is massive.

And as a sector, we are starting to achieve that

and we continue to achieve that.

And I find that really, really exciting.

- How important do you feel that having that view at the top

is what's needed to bring everybody along

on that sort of journey?

I mean you and I were talking earlier about

15 years ago or so, when people started thinking,

or charities started thinking about marketing,

it was very much a kind of, okay,

we're in third sector but we need to have this right,

'cause we're up against the commercial sector

and they're throwing stacks of cash at it,

and kind of really really, it's shifting,

it's moving really fast.

And I kind of feel that that's where data is

within the charity sector now.

But I can see that because there are so many layers of it,

actually you need somebody who's steering the project

and who's got a very, very clear set of objectives

of where they want the charity to sort of be

in a certain amount of time on that journey.

Would you say that the leadership side of it,

with all the digital technology,

the disruptive technology that's around,

and also all the financial side of it as well,

basically need to be pulled along by somebody, if you like,

to hold their hands and bring them with you?

- It is critical.

I would always characterise

the evolution of data in the charity sector

as somebody who doesn't claim to be

a sort of a black belt expert, but yes,

you need the leadership, you need that sense of digital

and data being mission-critical.

But at the same time,

you have to have a really strong sense of being informed

and being receptive to what's happening bottom up.

Not least because if you're the chief exec,

or the chief operating officer,

or the chief financial officer or CIO of a charity,

you're not gonna have day to day contact with beneficiaries.

So if it's purely top down,

there's a risk that you lose the organisation

acting as a sponge to that voice of the client.

And so it has to be both top down and bottom up.

Now, the place where I think it comes together,

which has got nothing to do with technicalities

and everything to do with culture,

and I think we're starting to get really right

at Blind Veterans, is that sense that

leadership articulate that it's important

and it gives permission.

And then the content comes from the front line.

It comes from the people dealing with suppliers.

It comes from people dealing with supporters and volunteers.

So what the job of leadership is to do

is to give permission and empower,

not to try and solve everything.

And that's a cultural consideration.

It basically says data is really, really important.

And as a leader,

my role is to create a culture of curiosity.

- With that then, let's just come back to Blind Veterans.

So what attracted you to the role there?

And obviously you've been working with Red Olive

for a while, but let's talk a little bit about

the charity's work, and how data sort of

flows around the organisation,

and what steps you've put in place

to make that work better for you.

- There are a number of things that attracted me here.

I've worked in the charity sector for over a decade,

and that work has given me a real sort of epiphany

on how much work we have to do

as a society around disability.

And when the job with Blind Veterans came up

three years ago, there was this sense that

here's something that really, really matters to me,

and I have a chance in a leadership position

to do something about it.

So there was a natural kind of meeting of things

that was quite instinctive for me.

I have to say on top of that,

when I started looking at Blind Veterans,

I identified an organisation that I thought

this is really, really well placed

to be innovative and disruptive and bold,

around the data and digital agenda.

And again, I felt that there was something

I could help with, not at the level of explaining

how we might use NFTs or blockchain,

'cause I don't really know very much about those things,

but just at the bigger picture level on things like

single customer view,

on things like having a coherent data strategy

or coherent digital strategy.

They were things that I thought I could help facilitate

and bring along.

So part of it was around data,

but the key thing was around mission.

- What was the first steps when you kind of

sort of stepped into the role?

How did you kind of go about setting out that data strategy

and putting those pieces in play?

- For me, it was the same as coming into

any sort of leadership role.

Your single biggest tool, as an incoming senior person,

is to listen.

So what I did was just let people unload.

And in many ways, the data strategy

that we finally landed upon

where we talk about things like single customer view,

we talk about the principle of line of sight, for instance,

where everything from kind of atomic level data,

all the way through to reporting,

through to performance management framework,

through to things like strategic impact measurement,

has to be systematically integrated.

That data strategy emerged quite organically,

because we just listened to what people

much much more expert than me

across the organisation was saying.

All I did, which I think was the right thing to do,

was to create a space where we could bring it together

and say, right, we're gonna capture some of this

and turn it into a data strategy.

And it's not a massively complex data strategy.

It just articulates the big principles

that are most important to us,

that we know will help further our work

and further the impact we have on society.

- Have you had to sort of pull together

different people within the organisation,

to sort of run with that?

I mean, I know the way that you're now working with

Red Olive is almost like an outsource data partner,

but I'm guessing that actually

there's a lot of people within the organisation

that know that they are the go-to person,

if they need that information for a particular report or,

whether they're looking at different aspects

of the business.

How has that kind of evolved over the time

that you've been working with them?

- We've deliberately used a cross-functional data group

and that's drawn from all parts of the organisation.

So we have people in there

who represent the service delivery side.

We have people in there who represent

the information services team,

the research entity that we've set up within the group,

the senior person who runs

the performance management framework.

We've deliberately had this very eclectic group,

with very different frames of reference,

and quite wide cognitive diversity.

And the data strategy that we now have in place

was developed by embracing that sort of eclectic mix

of experiences and that cognitive diversity.

And if it was simply the case of I'd sat in the corner

with the chief exec and the head of information services

and written it, we'd have probably come up with rubbish.

By dint of the fact that

we went for something really inclusive,

I think got us to a better data strategy

and allowed us to think quite holistically

and quite strategically about things like

single customer view.

Our single customer view is really quite sophisticated,

and we now have that programme mobilised, for instance.

We can quite often have somebody who's a member of staff

and a member, we don't refer to them as beneficiaries,

we refer to them as members, and a volunteer,

and a fundraiser.

So the relational view of that person

is really sophisticated, but if we get it right,

it's remarkably rich.

Similarly, we've just overhauled our procurement framework

and you might think what's that got to do with

single customer view?

Well, one of the things we now make a virtue of

is that for our strategic suppliers, we now say to them,

one of the things that gives you the licence

to operate with us,

is you need to tell us how you're going to contribute

to our social mission.

So suddenly we have a situation where

we have people who have a record as a supplier

in the back end of the accounting system,

but we also need a record of how they are helping us

campaign or fundraise,

or how they are becoming more accessible

as an employer themselves.

So there's quite a lateral and sophisticated

relational set of data we need,

to describe that relationship

that we might historically not have had.

So the single customer view thing in particular

is a really massive, massive part of our data strategy,

and something that we have set up deliberately

as a flagship programme,

because how important we realise that it is.

- I guess that, like you were saying,

it's your wider network then of partners and suppliers

who are also helping you tell that sort of

social value story, if you like.

Jefferson's mentioned to me that you have a vision

for interconnected organisations working together

to help the vulnerable.

I'm guessing that's part of that.

- It is.

This is something I've been campaigning on for years,

or making a nuisance of myself about for years,

pick your version of it.

So if you bear with me, let me tell you a story on this.

- Yeah, sure.

- One of the things that attracted me to Blind Veterans U.K.

was I saw how well positioned they were

to be a really active participant,

a really active catalyst in this.

So if you look at areas like

financial hardship and disability,

really, really central themes to the charity sector,

those individuals and families that we help as a sector,

will often have very complex needs.

And issues like disability and financial hardship,

for instance, very often go together.

Probably more so than most of the public would realise.

If you have a family where there's a disability

in the immediate family,

statistically, that family is two or three times more likely

to be struggling financially,

than one where that isn't an issue.

Now to me, as somebody in a leadership position

in civil society, I am totally intolerant of that situation.

It's a moral disgrace.

It is not good enough.

So my question to myself is what am I gonna do about it?

'Cause I'm not a campaigner,

I don't work in service delivery.

I'm a person who does a classic director of resources role.

So hold that thought.

What I've also learned is that the help that is needed

to deal with those sometimes kind of

collective complex needs, is very often all out there,

but more often than not, it's very fragmented.

So let me paint a picture to illustrate.

And because we're talking about something

that I think can be transformed

through a very data-led solution,

I'm gonna describe a persona,

'cause I think that's the right term.

So we've got a family dealing with disability.

They're struggling financially, despite being in work.

The health diagnosis that wraps around that disability

is still quite new.

So they're still processing it,

and they need advice on things like

access to local services,

just in terms of how do we adapt life

to deal with this new variable that is life-changing?

They're finding the benefit system around disability

totally impenetrable, because it is.

They would benefit massively from being part of

a local support group, just in terms of coping.

What I've described there is a very, very common picture,

as a set of complex things.

The package of support, if you think holistically,

if you think whole person,

the package of support that would help that family

is quite likely all out there, but it's in multiple places.

So let's say there's help from the local authority.

There's a benefits helpline

that will help them navigate the disability benefits maze.

There's a charity out there that might give them a grant

to adapt a bedroom or a bathroom,

to physically adapt the family home.

There's a local support group out there

where there's mutual support for people

living with the same condition.

And there might be a local charity out there

that provides things like talking books for people

who are experiencing sight loss.

Now my premise is this.

If that package of things can be bundled up,

that family will see a transformational change

for the better.

It's an holistic set of interventions.

If you can help them holistically,

if you can deal whole person,

then that family will not just cope, but they will thrive.

And that's good for that family,

but it's good for society as well.

Traditionally, this is a sort of thing

that an experienced case worker would bundle up.

A case worker would sit down with that family and say,

have you considered this, and did you know about this,

and you can possibly be eligible for that.

Casework is expensive and it's not actually that scalable.

As casework capacity increases, casework cost increases.

It's a pretty straight line extrapolation,

'cause it's a capacity issue.

So it's actually quite expensive.

And similarly, not everybody does casework.

Now you might say at this point,

well we live in a consumer society,

and if all that help is out there,

we've all got a smartphone.

We've probably most of us got a laptop or a tablet.

Why can't that family just research this stuff?

In a consumerist society,

the responsibility for bundling and packaging

sits with the family, doesn't it?

So far so good, but there's a problem with that argument.

It doesn't actually work.

It relies on perfect consumerist behaviour.

We aren't dealing with somebody

who's buying a pair of shoes, or booking a train ticket.

What we're dealing with here

is something that's far more important at a human level,

than purchasing a commodity.

And it brings with it a level of complexity,

not least because we're talking about

interacting with people

when they are at their most vulnerable.

One thing I have learned from years in the charity sector

is that when you see these kind of cases

where people have to package from very multiple sources,

is that they cut out after about the second or third search,

or the second or third phone call,

because the process of getting help

actually adds to the burden and stress.

That can't be right.

That's completely counterintuitive.

So my question and my premise is this.

What if the wider system of help could take the strain

in a much more coordinated,

and dare I say it predictive way,

because we've established a persona.

And that's how personas can work.

There simply has to be in this day and age a data-led,

data-rich solution to all of this.

What if we could connect multiple sources of help,

primarily charities, but local public services as well,

through really really smart, interconnected use of data.

And to my mind, what we're talking about here

is the charity sector not thinking like

a traditional benevolent organisation,

but thinking more like Airbnb or Trip Advisor.

The classic consolidator disruptor,

fragmented marketplace of supply, significant demand.

They're the broker in the middle.

We can do this.

What if we could use digital technology

to create what I call a marketplace of help?

And that's kind of how I've been describing it for years.

I should probably trademark it,

but that feels like the most appropriate description.

What if there was a broader virtual system

sitting behind thousands of charities,

so that when somebody makes that first connection,

wherever they first present as a sector,

the wider virtual system simply kicks into gear.

The system, whatever it is, technically,

does the process of bundling.

And as I've already said,

that notion of holistic help is critical

because it gets people past simply coping, to thriving.

Now make no mistake,

there is a lot of phenomenal work going on

in the charity sector,

between charities making really effective referrals,

signposting to complementary services.

And that stuff is very, very data-led.

So we're not starting from scratch.

We're starting from a very, very strong position.

My point here is that that stuff

that you tend to typically see is quite bilateral.

The marketplace philosophy is based on something

being consolidated and multilateral.

So in other words, rather than everybody setting up

lots of bilateral partnerships,

even though they work very, very effectively,

what if we all collectively use data

to create a single marketplace,

to which we all then subscribe.

It's a industrial scale form of consolidation and brokerage,

but the social impact implications

could be unbelievably transformational.

The potential for that system

growing and learning organically is huge.

You get a bit of pretty basic machine learning

embedded in this,

and it starts to work like Amazon Marketplace.

Other online retailers are clearly available.

I have a massive data footprint with Amazon,

'cause I've been using them for years.

So when I buy a pair of gloves,

it says, would I like to buy a scarf as well?

And it does that because of two things.

It does that because it has established

a behavioural pattern on my part as a regular visitor.

But it's also established through

what I think is probably machine learning,

but I'm not an expert,

something that says 79% of people who needed that

also needed that.

So it sees me not just as an individual,

but it sees me through the lens of a typical persona.

Now, if you can do that on help,

and you can have something that learns organically,

it constantly gets better,

it constantly gets more effective.

Now I'm not a technical expert,

as you will have worked out by now,

but I've got a sense

that there's an enormous opportunity here.

And this opportunity requires a number of things.

So it's going to require a critical mass,

and an approach and a philosophy

that are highly highly multilateral in nature.

Really really importantly,

it has to start from the premise

that this isn't about making money.

So that classic classic process

of commercial intermediation doesn't apply.

Now that is actually really, really helpful,

'cause it means we don't have to worry about

the money thing.

And that probably sounds a bit surprising,

coming from a commercial accountant,

but hopefully it reflects the fact that by now

I have learned to think in a different currency.

- I was gonna say, that's some journey you've been on.

- I hope it is because that's my job.

It's my job to think like that.

Because it's not about making money,

you don't need a common front end.

So you're not saying you have to go to help.org.uk,

or whatever you're gonna call it.

That isn't needed.

What if we could all act as effective referral agents

for each other, through this bigger collective system.

If you like, what about if everybody

is everybody else's front door,

because the person that we're helping benefits from that.

It will need gold standard levels of data security and DP.

We are talking about the data of people

at their most vulnerable.

So if a bit of my record on a online retail platform

happens to reveal to somebody

that I bought a pair of slippers,

in the great scheme of things it doesn't matter.

But the sort of data

we're talking about here matters intensely.

So the design of this thing that I'm talking about

has to be gold standard, in terms of security.

GDPR is actually a massive asset in this.

You probably find that most people don't talk about GDPR

as an asset, but it really, really is.

GDPR presents us with something

phenomenally valuable in this,

because it helps to define a benchmark level

of practise and behaviour for anybody wanting to participate

in the marketplace of help.

And if we ever got this going as a sector,

there's a very careful balancing act

between wanting as many agencies as possible participating,

because the richness of what's available is enhanced.

But having barriers to entry about minimum standards of data

and digital maturity, that balancing act would be critical.

Somebody's gonna have to go first.

By definition, it can't be somebody acting on their own,

it's got to be a first cohort who'll just give it a go

and prove the concept.

And of course, somebody's gonna have to fund it.

Somebody's gonna have to fund the initial investment

in creating this thing, whatever it is.

That can be funded in money, or it could be funded in kind.

It's a sort of thing that actually big tech could say, okay,

we're gonna take some of our bright people,

and we're not gonna send you a donation,

but we're gonna build the infrastructure

around the marketplace for help,

and invite participation and invite organisations

to plug in.

So there's lots of considerations to getting it going,

but I've been convinced by this idea

for the last six or seven years.

And the more I think about it, the more I think this idea,

if brought to fruition, could be quite extraordinary,

because it recognises how complex needs work.

- Yeah.

I think the thing is, like you say,

it's, you can see it's a great idea and how it could work,

but again, it's one of those real challenges

as of who would drive that.

'Cause that is obviously societal change, isn't it?

Is it the Charity Commissioner,

or is it actually government, or is it, you know,

sort of a lot of public organisations working together?

But I think the idea as well of using some machine learning,

or having it so that actually you've got

that predictive modelling within it,

you're not just looking at what you've got.

You're looking at it sort of future-wise.

Obviously you've got a,

even not being a techy person in your own words,

you've got that kind of vision of how data could be used,

and how it could completely change the way that people

can benefit from and access services.

But I wonder how many charities are that data-driven?

There was a report that came out a couple of years ago

that basically said that they were thinking they performed

in using, managing and analysing data,

not particularly brilliantly.

I mean sort of 88% of them saying

they're fair to poor at it.

So again, I think it's that getting the right person

to drive it with that vision.

So I don't know whether that's going to be your next

I'm going to aim for.

It's visionary.

Because like you say, you know,

it's great when you can see data being a sort of an enabler,

and technology being used disruptively for a greater good,

but there is still, isn't there,

some sort of steps to move that, to progress it on.

I don't know kind of what your thoughts are on that.

- I think it will happen,

and I think it will happen organically.

It's going to have to come from the sector.

It's not a fair thing to chuck at our regulator.

It's not something we should reasonably expect

the Charity Commission to do.

It's actually not fair on them.

And I don't think it's gonna come from government.

It's going to be something that as the sector evolves

and matures collectively, it's gonna happen.

Data is really more and more central

to what the sector is doing.

We are absolutely on a journey, as a sector.

The fact that we actually have specialist

conferences and networks on things

like innovation around data,

this stuff is picking up a head of steam

and it's actually really, really encouraging.

I think the sector has really upped its game

in the last decade.

Have we got to the promised land?

No we haven't.

But there is a sense that this is a really critical thing.

And I think the whole idea, for instance,

of the marketplace for help,

I think it will come organically

out of that unstoppable momentum.

You know, if you look at Blind Veterans U.K.,

we now have a strategic objective on data.

So we have six strategic objectives, one of which says

we will use data and digital

to make a bigger difference in the world.

It's completely out there, it's in the public domain.

And it's very deliberate on our part,

because we want to say to the world, this is who we are.

This is how we work.

There are some really great examples in the sector

of how this thing is just hurtling forward positively.

I've already talked about single customer view.

There's been massive, massive progress on that

across the sector.

And again, as I said earlier,

helping charities to be more relational

and less transactional, that's really priceless.

It's really, really positive.

There's a lot of phenomenal work happening on data analysis,

to understand the bigger picture.

And again, it's data analysis

that is constantly reinforcing this idea

of the very sophisticated interconnectivity

between charities, and it's that kind of platform

and that kind of ethos that will make marketplace of help

happen one day.

So if I give you an example,

there's been a really phenomenal piece of work done

over the last couple of years by,

I think it's the University of Northumbria,

working with veterans' charities,

and it's to create a thing called the map of veterans needs.

That's a really powerful piece of shared analysis

that helps the whole veteran sector

plan and target more effectively.

And it's painting a really rich picture

of the U.K. population,

so it's telling us where veterans are,

where there's regional variation,

what their current welfare needs is,

but it's also anticipating

what their future needs are going to be.

Now for us, as a charity

that's not just a sight loss charity

but a veteran charity as well, this is gold dust

because it helps us get our strategy and our plans right.

And if we get those things right, we'll do more good.

It's that simple.

You know, I look at what our research charity is doing

around digital phenotyping.

We've all got a smartphone, or pretty well most of us

have got a smartphone.

Smartphones are increasingly being used

to collect health information.

Digital phenotyping,

which is something that our research subsidiaries

is working on,

is all about using data collected from smartphones

to build a picture

about an individual's lifestyle and health.

And so what they do is, patients download and launch an app

that collects both active data from things like surveys

and passive data from things like the stepometer.

So we've all got a stepometer on here.

You've got one in your pocket, I've got one in my pocket.

And those measurements can then be correlated

with self-reported data and findings

from clinics and clinicians.

And it creates opportunities to conceptualise

large volumes of patient-generated health data,

which can be used to aid clinical decision-making.

Now you can take it further as well.

So if a person's vision starts to weaken,

they might start going out less

when the evenings get darker.

Care providers can be alerted through digital phenotyping,

by these digital signals, and determine very early on

whether an intervention's needed.

And the beauty of this, to an accountant,

is that this is really, really low cost,

because the physical infrastructure is already there,

'cause we've all got it in our hand or in our bag

or in our pocket.

Now the point there, to go back to your point

about that sense of the way we were becoming

more and more interconnected,

something like digital phenotyping

is at its most transformational and most powerful,

when it's operated on a multi-agency basis.

When you take the data in multiple sources,

cutting across organisational boundaries

and put it together,

and there's the two plus two equals five effect.

So I look at those kind of things and I think, well,

I think the marketplace of help idea

will happen organically,

because it's where we are gravitating as a sector.

There's a lot of opportunities to take things further,

like I say, but I see a really consistent commitment

across the third sector.

One of the other things I see as well

is a real commitment to invest in data talent

and thought leadership.

One of the best things about working in the charity sector

is that 'cause we aren't really competing with each other,

that thought leadership is really viral.

So we have people in this sector like Zoe Amar,

who's the chair of the charity Digital Code.

Got people like Jo Kerr who is the instigator and driver

of a thing called the Digital Maturity Matrix.

We've got people like Tris Lumley

at New Philanthropy Capital,

who's constantly challenging the sector

to think very, very laterally about using data

to create better beneficiary pathways.

If anybody's listening to this, look these people up,

you will not be disappointed.

They are so fresh thinking and so wise.

And we've got things like, you know, a few years ago,

the sector set up this thing called

the Digital Leaders Programme,

which is run through the School for Social Entrepreneurs.

And I was lucky enough to be part of the

inaugural graduate cohort in 2016

that went through this programme.

So there's this really collective recognition that we need,

not just to invest in talent,

but to invest in the kind of thought leadership

that will make these more transformational initiatives,

they'll happen naturally.

There is a but to all this, and that but is,

sometimes it feels like when the really big conversations

around big data and similar subjects are happening,

that we get forgotten about as a sector.

Sometimes it feels like

it's the exclusive preserve of industry

and the public sector.

We need to be at that table,

because when you're talking about

stuff that affects people at a human level,

charities have a unique perspective

that for all its strengths,

public services sometimes don't have.

I used to be a senior civil servant,

so I'm not gonna criticise the public sector,

but we bring a degree of intimate understanding,

and therefore nuanced data,

that can inform some of those really big conversations

about big data, about innovation, about connectivity.

And I think we do tend to make a general plea that says,

please let us be at the table by default.

And if we think not just cross-agency but cross-sector,

some of the opportunities that are available

that are very, very data-driven, are huge.

I thought for years we could run payroll giving

through the tax system.

In fact, I'm convinced that you can run payroll giving

through the tax system.

When people leave a job,

usually 'cause they get a better job,

their payroll giving declaration lapses.

The system assumes

that they no longer wish to be charitable.

Well, that doesn't make sense.

So lapsed payroll giving declarations

cost the charity sector millions of pounds every year.

If you integrate that with the tax system,

and by the way you can 'cause we did it with student loans,

it can work.

If you integrate it with the tax system,

you make it universal and portable.

You're gonna fund stuff that's gonna change lives.

You're gonna fund stuff through that retention of income,

that might save the life of somebody that you or I love.

That's what's at stake,

and that is completely driven by data.

So if we have a seat at that table,

the transformational outcomes we can create,

even through simple things like that,

simply by being smart about simple data solutions,

the impact is gonna be unbelievably good.

- It brings me on nicely to my last sort of question,

which is for people who are maybe thinking about

entering into either a data career,

or actually a career within the charitable sector.

What kind of skills do you think

that they should be trying to get on to their CV?

I mean, I've always sort of said that

within the data sort of space,

there's been a sort of massive change.

Instead of it just being very, very technical people,

it's the people who are inquisitive.

Like you say, you're curious about why things work

in the way they should.

Or there's also then the kind of,

sort of reporting the analytics field, visualisation field.

But what would you say are particular skills

that if somebody was thinking of coming and

sort of moving into either of those sectors,

would be top of the list?

- I'm not a data professional.

So there are people who are far far more qualified

to talk about that than me.

What I can talk about is if you go into a role

that is data-rich within the charity sector,

what do you need?

And number one is you have to have

that intense unstoppable curiosity.

We did a piece of work, about 18 months ago,

where we took the data that comes from

the voice of our members.

And we took this very, very big data set.

And the scope of that data set was very very deliberately

just what the members were telling us.

It was very unfiltered,

but it excluded any of the kind of organisational biases

that we might have put onto it.

It was purely coming from the members.

And we produced this thing called the ecosystem map,

and it actually tells us what's really important.

Now that's been really powerful

in helping us plan and helping us create

really robust strategy.

That was a piece of work I sponsored,

but the substantive work was done by a colleague of mine,

chap called Matt Lee, and he won't mind me mentioning him,

'cause he's given me permission to mention him.

Matt is a serious, serious expert

in complex data interrogation interpretation,

but he also is driven by an intense curiosity.

So it's technique

and it's kind of behavioural attitudinal as well.

And the final analysis we got on our ecosystem map,

which is actually proving really, really vital by the way,

in helping us define good partnership strategy,

so it's forcing us to take very deliberate action.

It's not just an exercise for its own intellectual sake.

It's making us do stuff.

We wouldn't have got to the quality of interpretation

and conclusion that we got to on that,

if the field work and the actual research

hadn't been done by somebody

who's just known for being powered through curiosity.

And if you've got somebody who has the ability

to assimilate and balance data from multiple sources,

and who can look at it objectively,

who can have an intense curiosity to say

what else might I bring into this thinking,

what other data sources, be they internal or external are,

and has just that natural curiosity gene,

and who cares deeply about the work that's going to be done

off the back end of it.

So there has to be the brain,

but there has to be the heart as well.

Somebody coming into a data-rich job in the charity sector

needs those three things.

But if somebody does have those three things,

they'll probably be a really, really big success,

'cause they're gonna be made of the right stuff

that catalyses more of these sort of

transformational ideas and transformational programmes

that we've been talking about.

- Obviously at the moment you're working with Red Olive,

and they're like an outsource data department for you.

From a strategic point of view,

what was the sort of thinking behind that

and how is it working?

- It's working pretty well.

It was driven very much by our information services team

who are phenomenally good technical experts.

We have an information services team

that's been drawn from a very, very sort of

wide range of experiences.

And we have people who've worked on

three different continents.

We have people who've worked in multiple industries.

So again, you know what I was talking about earlier

in terms of the data group

being a group of people with very high cognitive diversity,

our information services team have the same.

And the Red Olive relationship was very much

their brainchild, because they saw an organisation

that would get us, if that's not too cliched a term.

And again, it goes back to something else I was saying

that says if we are going to be brave

and imaginative and creative,

we need something that's not transactional.

We need a relationship like the one we have with Red Olive,

where we can just say, do you know what,

we're just gonna share some ideas,

and it feels like a single virtual team.

And I think that's why our relationship

with Red Olive works, because it's not just transactional.

We're not just saying dear Red Olive,

perform this set of tasks.

There is that sense that when we're talking about

innovation and progress and implementing new things,

that it is one team.

I have that relationship with Jefferson.

We just meet up once a quarter and talk about

how the charity sector might use data better.

And actually that's how I ended up talking to you today.

The key thing for me to sum up

is that if it's just transactional, yeah,

it'll work after a fashion.

But for an organisation as critical in terms of what they do

as Red Olive does for us,

they have to understand what makes us tick,

and Red Olive do understand what makes us tick,

and that's why it's healthy.

- A really interesting take on the importance

of how data could be the driver

for making society a better place for all.

Join us for the next episode of

The Red Olive Data Podcast",

where we'll be joined by another expert

sharing their thoughts on the latest trends

in AI and big data.

Make sure you subscribe to

The Red Olive Data Podcast",

from wherever you get your podcasts,

to make sure you don't miss out.

That's all for today.

Thanks for listening.

I've been your host, Nicky Rudd.

I'll see you next time.