The revolution in Public Management

The OneLake Experience with the Diputació de Barcelona

Faced with the challenge of fragmented data across multiple portals and applications, the Diputació de Barcelona has adopted OneLake from Fabric, radically transforming data management and analysis. This innovative solution allows us to centralize dispersed data, facilitating access and integrated analysis through Power BI. With the aim of creating indices like the MesuraDEL for Local Economic Development, this experience marks a before and after in our ability to respond to challenges with data-driven decisions. Directed at technicians and politicians, this post explores how we have achieved a global and detailed vision to tackle public administration challenges with efficiency and innovation.

One of the main obstacles faced by public administration in the digital age is the fragmentation of knowledge. Currently, we have several data sources that remain isolated from each other, making it difficult to create an integrated and global vision. On one hand, we have transparency data centralized by the AOC Consortium, which collects essential but isolated information. On the other hand, data generated by the general administration of the State, such as those from the INE, Social Security, among others, offer a partial view of the landscape. Added to this are the data collected by the Generalitat of Catalonia, through Idescat or the different departments and observatories, as well as the specific information that each public administration has in specialized applications. This data dispersion, far from facilitating, limits our ability to obtain a comprehensive understanding of current scenarios and challenges, as the lack of integration prevents the joint exploitation of available information.

In this scenario of data fragmentation, OneLake from Fabric emerges as the key solution for data centralization and integration in public administration. This cutting-edge platform is designed to overcome the obstacles of data dispersion, allowing the consolidation of all relevant information in a single “data lake.” Thanks to its flexible and scalable architecture, OneLake from Fabric facilitates unified access to data from different sources, including transparency data, state statistics, regional information, and local records. This not only optimizes data collection and analysis processes but also enhances the administration’s ability to generate synthetic indicators and actionable insights. With OneLake, the barrier posed by data fragmentation transforms into an opportunity for innovation and efficiency, opening the door to more coherent, accurate, and, above all, informed data-driven management.

The implementation of OneLake from Fabric, together with the analytical power of Power BI, has marked a before and after in how the Diputació de Barcelona manages and analyzes its data. This advancement has allowed us to:

1. Develop advanced visual mechanisms, facilitating the smooth comparison of indicators and dimensions dynamically. The creation of specific synthetic indices for different areas has been crucial, allowing not only the comparison of territories with each other but also observing their evolution over time. This has opened new avenues for establishing differentiated and well-founded strategies in decision-making.
2. Significantly improve information accessibility, integrating intuitive navigation methodologies and guides on each page of our reports. This has democratized access to data, ensuring that all types of audiences, regardless of their technical expertise, can understand and use the information provided for their specific purposes.
3. Implement advanced territorial analysis, which has allowed us to territorialize indicators precisely. Through these analyses, we have been able, for example, to calculate average access times to the transport network and develop accessibility indices by territory. This level of detail in geographic analysis is essential to understand the specific needs of each area and design more effective public policies.

In the near future, the integration of artificial intelligence in data analysis will change the way we interact with large volumes of information. With highly structured data models within platforms like OneLake from Fabric, it becomes possible to exploit data through advanced conversational interfaces, similar to this chat. This technological evolution allows us not only to formulate complex questions and receive real-time answers but also to visualize graphs, tables, and other graphical representations directly from the data model.

The ability for an AI-based system to connect directly with a data model, interpret user queries, and generate dynamic visualizations and actionable insights represents a significant change in information processing. This facilitates more agile and informed decision-making, allowing users, both technical and non-technical, to better explore and understand the data.

This conversational approach to data analysis not only improves data accessibility and understanding for a wide range of users but also opens the door to new forms of interaction with data that were previously unimaginable. In the near future, we will see how these technologies continue to evolve, making the exploitation of complex data models as simple as having a conversation.