A year of collaboration

ecda celebrated its second year at the end of June 2020.

Our second year was one of outstanding collaboration! Partnerships, teamwork, participation, all fundamental to ecda’s way of working from day one, became even more important as 2020-21 raised the bar for us! Covid-19 presented a million new challenges and opportunities that would enable us to learn, time and again, that together really is better!

Collaboration amplified everything that ecda delivered in its second year to support the most vulnerable and prevent them from harm. Colleagues within ecda and its core organisations, partners from across the Essex system, and peers scattered throughout the country united (virtually of course) to achieve our ambitions to connect data and people to deliver action.

Working with our partners we supported the county’s response to, and recovery from, Covid 19. Together with our data community in Essex we made the most of video conferencing to identify needs, exchange ideas and unify our goals to build the capability that we need to achieve our collective future goals. Speaking with our citizens we explored their attitudes towards data sharing to gain different perspectives and create a reflective, practical, and critical understanding that has enabled residents within Essex to begin to shape our policies and practices and forge new roles to be involved on an ongoing basis.

ecda projects on gang violence and vulnerability, knife crime, societal impact of Covid-19, domestic abuse and mental health crisis brought together data, research, skills and experiences from all corners to generate significant new insight on shared challenges. This valuable new insight is enabling Councils, Police, health organisations and partners to transform services in the county, commission targeted preventative services, prepare for future demand and has further inspired leaders to image what’s possible through joining data.

To further expand our year of collaboration ecda launched a new blog www.ecda.blog.essx.gov.uk we hope that this new blog enables collaboration to continue to thrive by providing:

• a channel through which we can regularly communicate what ecda is working on
• an opportunity to introduce you to the people that make amazing things happen every day
• share what we’ve learned as we make our way
• sound out new ideas, and seek input from our citizens, colleagues and peers, so that together we can create the data ecosystem that we all want for Essex.

 

 

Page updated 08/07/21