The Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) has embarked on a Department-wide program of aggregating its data relating to Australian military veterans to help shape its policies and programs as well as assess ongoing performance in service delivery.
Chief Data Officer and Head of the Department’s new Data and Insights Branch, Paul Nicolarakis said that until now, DVA had not been able to aggregate the “huge amount” of information.
“By combining 26 separate data sets into one, we will be able to strengthen the evidence base supporting DVA’s interventions,” Dr Nicolarakis said.
“DVA is uniquely placed to do this because the data gatherings are so comprehensive, enabling us to build insights no one else can glean.”
He said the harmonisation of all the data into one place and linking it and analysing it over time was revolutionary.
He said that while DVA was not the only Government Agency doing this — “the Department of Social Services has been doing similar work for four years” — DVA would focus more on wellbeing.
“Wellbeing can sound like a fluffy concept, but in reality we’re looking to take a very data-driven approach,” Dr Nicolarakis said.
“The first step is to come up with a view of what wellbeing looks like [for veterans and their families] and what data exists.”
He said DVA would develop a wellbeing framework that would shape the way the Department analysed its aggregated data.
