Event Overview
Our recent event, “Unlocking the Value of Data in Social Housing: Collaboration, Innovation, Action,” brought together technology and industry leaders to explore the data challenges and opportunities facing the social housing sector. The discussions highlighted both long-standing issues and emerging solutions, helping to set a clear direction for future collaboration.
1. Context & Challenges
Data remains one of the sector’s most valuable assets – but only when it’s accurate, accessible, and aligned.
Key challenges raised included:
- Poor integration
- Data overload,
- Gaps in reporting and limited in-house knowledge.
- Misaligned strategies, privacy, and cybersecurity risks.
Notable failure at Equifax, Citigroup, British Airways, and TikTok highlight consequences of weak governance and inaccurate reporting.
2. Operational Risks
Speakers highlighted a series of operational risks created by inaccurate or incomplete data, including:
- Inaccurate asset and tenant records
- financial errors and manual processes
- poor system integration
The impact is tangible: Increased costs, compliance failures, reputational damage, and reduced tenant engagement.
3. Wider Implications
Beyond day-to-day operations, unreliable data exposes organisations to:
- Compliance and safety risks
- Increased audit pressure
- Potential penalties
4. Opportunities
Despite the challenges, the sector is rich with opportunity.
Highlighted areas include:
- Real-time dashboards for faster decisions.
- Predictive maintenance, personalized tenant engagement, workflow automation, and compliance tracking.
- Industry-wide collaboration and shared data standards to reduce costs and improve accuracy.
5. Artificial Intelligence
AI’s potential was a major discussion point. When built on high-quality data, AI can support:
- Predictive analytics
- Automation
- IoT integration
- Digital twins for modelling asset performance
6. Roundtable Insights
The central question guiding the roundtable was:
‘Given the challenges with data, how can we collaborate to improve?’
Participants agreed that collaboration is valued but remains fragmented. Key barriers included: silos, legacy IT, unclear ownership, and regulatory demands.
Suggested actions include:
- Use compliance requirements to drive change
- Eliminate redundant reports
- Build trust in data for automation
- Leverage IoT for proactive maintenance and AI for asset analysis
- Establish shared metrics and data standards
- Foster transparency through regular forums and regulator engagement
7. Top Priorities
Core Problems:
- Cultural resistance
- Unclear ownership and governance gaps
- Poor system integration.
Key Opportunities:
- Develop a data strategy
- Build capability
- Implement a single source of truth
- Collaborate across associations
Key Takeaways
- Data is strategic: Drives compliance, efficiency, and innovation.
- Governance and culture matter: Ownership and standards reduce risk.
- Integration and automation unlock value: Minimize manual processes.
- AI and IoT are transformative: Enable predictive insights and proactive maintenance.
- Collaboration accelerates progress: Shared learning and collective
Post-Up Session Insights
Following the main session, participants took part in an exercise to reflect on strengths, challenges, and future investment.
Strengths
- Culture & Collaboration: Enthusiastic teams, strong relationships, shared ownership, and a positive data mindset.
- Leadership Support: Executive buy-in, trust, emerging data strategy, and governance foundations.
- Execution & Momentum: Progress on priorities, active project pipeline, data platform development, and forward focus on AI.
- Data Transparency: Accessible data, data lake readiness, and initiatives for education and adoption
Areas for Improvement
- Data Management: Governance gaps, silos, duplication and unclear processes
- Culture & Skills: Resistance to change, lack of accountability and low data literacy
- Leadership & Strategy: Insufficient buy-in, unclear priorities and limited investment
- Technology: System limitations, pace of change and fragmented architecture
- Compliance & Risk: Manual errors, regulatory pressure and reporting uncertainty
Areas for Investment
- Training and mentoring programs.
- Clear career pathways and engagement initiatives.
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