The Government is being urged to adopt classic direct marketing techniques by setting up a team of data experts to ensure public information is used more effectively, opening up potential savings of up to £33bn a year.
The proposal is the brainchild of think tank Policy Exchange, which has drawn up a report entitled The Big Data Opportunity, to be presented to Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude today.
Under a raft of plans it says that better use of data, technology and analytics could help the government save billions by improving efficiency rather than cutting services.
It predicts a “data force” could save taxpayers between £13bn and £22bn from day-to-day government running costs and public services by using the most up-to-date analytical techniques.
Up to £8bn a year could be saved by collecting a greater share of unpaid taxes by better identifying cases to be investigated, and up to £3bn a year could be saved by tackling fraudulent benefit claims.
The report also proposes to scrap the ten-yearly UK Census, saving £500m a year. Instead it will gather data from the Electoral Register, Council Tax registers and other sources to estimate the total population of the UK and its breakdown, according to types and sizes of household, occupations, religion and other factors.
Policy Exchange says the information could be “acceptable quality and more up to date,”
A government spokesperson said Whitehall welcomed the report.
Report author Chris Yiu said: “Extraordinary quantities of data are amassed in the course of running public services – from managing welfare payments… through to issuing passports and driving licences.
“Finding ways to share or link this data together has the potential to save time for citizens and money for taxpayers,” he added.
