The Power of Data Podcast
Episode 90: Transforming Due Diligence
Guest: Euan Slack, Head of Spotlight, Cabinet Office
Interviewer: Patrice Bendon, Customer Success Director, Dun & Bradstreet
Patrice Bendon 00:00
Hello, thanks for joining me today. My name is Patrice Bendon, I'm Customer Success director from Dun & Bradstreet and I'm talking to one of our customers, Euan Slack from the Cabinet Office, who's going to talk to us today about Spotlight, which is a program that he manages with his team. And I'll hand over to you, Euan, for a quick intro.
Euan Slack 00:18
Patrice thank you for having us. Yes, I'm Euan Slack. I head up digital delivery from the grants and commercial digital team within the Cabinet Office, I look after a number of products and services that enable the sort of wider or what of the commercial and grants teams and government departments. But one of the key ones that we're really proud to talk about is Spotlight. That is a due diligence system that we have designed, built and delivered out across government. And I look forward to discussing that and a little bit more with you.
Patrice Bendon 00:54
Excellent. So, I thought before we just get into the detail of data and the everyday at the Cabinet Office with your colleagues, I want you to just dig a bit deeper and understand a bit more about what really motivated you to join the world of data, digital and otherwise. So maybe just a little bit of a potted history about yourself.
Euan Slack 01:11
Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah, starting at the sort of beginning. I am one of those civil servants that never applied to join the civil service. I was quite happy in my private sector recruitment career before the contract I was on suddenly ended, and I found myself TUPEd into Jobcentre Plus, so the department for work and pensions in Liverpool where I was living and working for at the time. Now actually going into that environment, coming from quite a mature marketplace where we had some more modern digital tools that enabled recruitment and employment activities, to DWP, I certainly saw a little bit of a gap there in terms of digital systems automation, and how that could make life easier. Now that really struck me because actually, the work of DWP in the job centre when you there is extremely empowering and rewarding. When you are helping those in society that need you most, you want that to be as effective and efficient as possible. So it was actually really in those early days at DWP, that I thought there's really a lot digital could offer this particular sort of world and transformation to make the life for the citizen easier. So it was from there, that I sort of moved my career onwards, ended up moving down to London, and had some nice interesting roles in private office for a couple of director generals in government digital service, fraud, debt or debt and function, the four data dating grants function as it was at the time, to the Chief Operating Officer of the Cabinet Office and to where I am now in digital delivery and the commercial and grants function. So very committed to this agenda, I haven't quite made it back to DWP to sort of get involved in their digital transformation. But that's potentially a career move further down the line.
Patrice Bendon 03:09
right, where you're getting yourself ready. I mean, it's this will go out on the airwaves and someone might be listening, you never know.
Euan Slack 03:15
Excellent stuff.
Patrice Bendon 03:16
So just rolling it back a second to the Cabinet Office. So maybe for our viewers, they might not be familiar with everything the Cabinet Office does. In fact, let's not go there, because that's probably far too broad. Let's just go to what the Cabinet Office does in terms of spotlight and the team you work in, and that side of things. So so just a little bit of a background. That'd be lovely.
Euan Slack 03:35
Yeah, absolutely. Gosh, yeah, what the Cabinet Office does would be a big question and probably not got enough time to cover it. In a nutshell I'll touch briefly, the cabinet office has a lot of core functions, but as one of its main principles, is making government work better for the citizens. Now, that's across everything. Mostly everything you can imagine. There's I think 42 or 43 different business units in Cabinet Office going from national security to constitution to government functions, such as Human Resources, and where I am, the commercial function, and the grants function. What I'm looking to do within the grants and commercial digital team is create digital products and services that make department's life easier, more effective. So, you know, a minister in the department for leveling up, comes up with a new grant scheme that needs to be administered by that department. You know, there's a process to go through to get a grant up and running. And where's that you require digital products, tools and services. One that we've built Spotlight as a due diligence tool, you know that's commonplace across the world. Anytime you're interacting with an organization or an entity that involves a transaction, you want to know who you're doing business with. You want to know that the people applying, the organization, the individual, applying to that grant or contract is actually who they say they are. And there is a number of checks within the due diligence process, certainly from government side, that we'd expect them, we want departments to go through to ensure that that money is going to the right individuals, the right organizations, and we're trying to mitigate misappropriation as much as possible. So really, the best place for spotlight was actually exiting the European Union. With that, there were a number of large grants schemes administered by the EU, were then transferring back to the UK, it was a real opportunity for digital transformation. Because naturally, with those grant schemes comes more work. How do you want to do that, effectively you automate. So that was really one of those catalysts for digital transformation, you know, a big nationwide change that impacted everyone as an opportunity for transformation. And that was the catalyst and kickstart for spotlight. And now we continue to iterate and develop that to much wider government needs.
Patrice Bendon 06:10
Yeah. So that's fantastic. Thank you. So from that, I guess what you're trying to do is some level of unification as well, so that when a grant application comes in, you know, into Yorkshire, for instance, the application is the same that comes through someone in London. So it's all unified. The due diligence checks and balances are the same across the piece.
Euan Slack 06:31
Yeah, absolutely. So within the grants or functions as a whole, we have sort of the six priorities, or six areas that we focus on, one's setting strategies, giving expert advice, building capability. And there's another one which is setting standards and controls. So if you look on gov.uk, you can search, you will find minimum guidance, I think we call it MR7, that sets the standard for due diligence for grants. These are the checks that we expect a government department, an organization to conduct when getting a grant, that are set thresholds depending on the value of that grant and the checks that we want you to conduct. So that sort of control or standard is there, what I'm looking to do is automate that within a digital system and service so everyone can run those checks with as much ease and simplicity as possible. And as you see, no matter where that public sector organization, is in the UK, that standard sort of remains the same, what we want to do is give you access to a tool that enables you to do that as effectively as possible.
Patrice Bendon 07:42
Yeah. And for that, obviously, you will need a level of integration of the right sort of data to be able to check and balance all of that as the system is utilized. Before we go into the data, I just wanted to understand how many departments are currently using spotlight.
Euan Slack 07:58
Yeah
Patrice Bendon 07:58
I know, it's you know, there are some growth targets and things that you want to hit on your side as well.
Euan Slack 08:03
Yes, it's less growth targets, but more about appropriate usage. So you know, different departments have different volumes of grants. Annually, we're in that now, 40 billion to 50 billion pounds a year of general grants that get awarded, it's, you know, a significant amount of money in that space. What we're doing is making like I said, the tool available to all who need it. In that sense, we've been very fortunate that since our sort of first deployment, and just in 2020, actually, during the COVID crisis, when again, a lot of grants were being used to stimulate the economy. So it's being used there. But it's been a tool now that's been adopted by certainly most central government departments, actually a lot of supporting arm's length bodies, and other public sector organizations as well. So it's gone through a really, you know, steady growth over the last sort of two, three years. And again, as it sort of continues to iterate, it's really now at a stage of sort of word of mouth, more organizations are hearing about us, and coming to talk to us about what we're trying to offer.
Patrice Bendon 09:10
Excellent. That's really good. So in terms of looking at the wider programme of grants from overseas as well, for instance, driving external investment, you know, for inward growth. What are the strategic drivers? I mean, I know you've mentioned Brexit, and obviously change is always a driver, isn't it? You know, changing policy and so on. Are there any other areas that is worthy of mention, particularly around what data then drives those changes sort of thing?
Euan Slack 09:36
Yes, so, great question. There's been two big events that should be touched on exiting the European Union and those grants coming back to the UK to administer. That was then no bigger crisis than the response to C19, and again, the grants that were administered to stimulate the economy, that itself really drove the product out into the sort of wider public sector, at a pace, maybe quicker than we did intended, really one of the things of a digital product, agile methodology, start small and expand and grow. We went from zero to quite large across government very quickly. Then we talking now about data that's backing up the current decisions.
Patrice Bendon 10:20
Yes, well, I'd love to come into that, because obviously, that's an area that Dun Bradstreet are working with you guys on. So happy to go into that.
Euan Slack 10:25
I then just touch on one of the growth parts as well. I think this does touch a little bit on sort of Dun and Bradstreet as well. The majority of certainly grant funding within general grants does go to UK based companies, that is the immediate recipient of that. Naturally, there are departments that have much more overseas activity. So again, that grant funding is going out. Again, there is still an expectation of due diligence. And certainly departments within that space have quite mature due diligence practices in place. But these are common components in that space. What we want to do with that as an entity check, in one department may have some different risks associated with the grand scheme, but it's essentially the same check, no matter the department if you're looking at the same entity, so we want to give them that data. And again, what we're looking at, we have that sort of guiding star for us, which is again, that standard, which is published on gov.uk, you will see that for every grant under 100,000 pounds, we expect a financial viability check to be conducted, naturally a financial viability check that's going to bring in a lot of corporate financial data, you've got things in there such as, the way you can measure financials, acid tests, equity gearing ratios, etc. You know, you can have persons doing manual processes in calculating this. Or you can automate that, and get that data back very quickly and present it. So that's been our sort of first port of call, because that's our big one that we expect that check to be done on everything. When you go up a threshold to 500,000 pounds in grant, we're looking at adverse media checks, sanctions checks on entities. So again, you can either go and look at sanctions checks online and scroll through things and spend a lot of time or you can automate that and bring it back. So again, that's one of the things that we've gone back and, and put into the tool, because again, we're expecting departments to be doing these activities, why not make the life easier, and sort of automate and do that for them.
Patrice Bendon 12:46
Absolutely.
Euan Slack 12:47
So that's been really a sort of version two now, I'd say we are sort of at spotlight with these sort of good financial viabilities checks, to international checks with an organization based abroad, you can run that automated check on it as well. And then there's higher threshold grants, you've got much more detailed adverse media screening and sanctions checks. We've given departments a sort of feel that this is the standard. Now here's a supporting tool to make your life as easy as possible.
Patrice Bendon 13:15
That's fantastic. So in terms of the team and how they're working on that automation, and I know a lot of this is around, you know, making people's lives easier. And of course, then that's, that's free and uptime, and so on. So how are the teams find in this? Did you have any anecdotal feedback? Are you measuring, you know, the time saving, the cost saving? Or is it too early to say on that side of things?
Euan Slack 13:36
At this stage, I'm not looking at time saving cost savings. We've done some modeling previously, on how long it would take a manual check to complete. If you were to look at all those MR7 checks, if you were to do that manually, that's going to take a resource a certain amount of time. Naturally if we automate that there's a difference there. That's certainly not my focus. My focus at the moment is really that user experience and user journey. So bringing the right data into the tool, but then making that data as digestible and meaningful as possible within a supporting user journey. Because you could give someone a financial ratio that might be of a concern. But how do you make the user understand that? So what does good look like? What does bad look like? We need a lot of supporting advice and guidance around the raw data as well. So I think in terms of the way the teams working, we've been very, I've been very fortunate. I've either got a very good team, I think, and very good partners that we've been working with it.
Patrice Bendon 14:45
It's been a good experience on both sides.
Euan Slack 14:47
So I'm seeing great dialog in that sense. I'm seeing certainly some very good performance just from a numbers perspective and what the APIs can handle. When we look at, you know, government again, we can do big numbers it can be very peaks and troughs. But at its peak, we can be doing 10s of 1000s of checks in a day, in that sense. So we know we need a system that can handle that load, that performance seems to be good in that space. But what I'm sort of being most impressed about as like I said, we're very much on a journey, we've got those foundations that have sort of talked about the headline buckets, financial viability, but going in more until it corporate structure UBOs, ultimate beneficial owners, persons of significant control, adverse media sanctions. What's good is that we have people that can work with us on that journey to help us identify the data points that will add value as we put more in the system, what we need to avoid is a data overload, because then it makes that decision making process that much harder. You don't just want to give users more and more data, we want to give them a clearer understanding of yes, this data backs up a decision to make that award and spend those taxpayers money. Or there's reasons here to introduce a bit more challenge to the process, why there might be some concerns and giving out a multi-year grant or contract to an organization if some things are looking irregular.
Patrice Bendon 14:56
So on that point, do you have a measure of, I guess, what used to be manual checks? And what are now able to be automated where the integration of the API has really benefitted? Or is it still in those early days?
Euan Slack 16:32
No, I mean, we have done some professional work, it is not set in stone. But like I say, if you were to look at that published list of MR7, we're in the region of a two to three hour check to compile all the data's and do financial viability checks in an organization, you know, you're doing that check in a couple of minutes by just simply inputting that basic data, into spotlight, those real time APIs bringing back the data in seconds, it is a big difference in terms of that data collection. Like I say, that data still needs to be assessed and a decision reached on it. But there's a big improvement within a time saving, absolutely, and that initial bit of work.
Patrice Bendon 17:15
That's fantastic to hear. That's really good. Well, I think I'll just have one more question for you today. And just before we finish, do you have a view at this point of what other issues or areas that you want to tackle next? So, if we were talking here, and it in a year's time, do you have any vision of what that would look like?
Euan Slack 17:31
Oh, this is a very big question. Absolutely, I think we've got a very good, like the baseline of data for those sort of standard set of checks that was pointed out. There's a big impetus, and quite rightly so to protect taxpayers money from falling into the wrong hands where, you know, sanctions checks on an entity that's directly applying. Absolutely. But knowing who you're doing business with is very complex in a global world and many linked entities. So I can certainly see in the future, not just an inital raw data on an entity that's applying but much more on that corporate structure.
Patrice Bendon 18:15
Yeah, the people behind the business, as you said, UBOs and person controlling.
Euan Slack 18:17
There are a lot of things now out, especially within the commercial procurement reform that's happening around modern slavery, human trafficking, supply chains is a big one. So again, you're doing business with this company, actually, what does that supply chain look like to get that product or service in, to government in that space. So, I think, really like a say, we spent a good six months, rebuilding the foundations of Spotlight. But actually, as we go forward now, there's a real opportunity to bring in and reinvigorate the tool, where it's not just new insights, new services, but going into like I said, new areas, not just with data or grants, but like I said, full supply chains, because I like said with the world that we're in now, and against some of the shocks that we've seen happen, it's hugely important that we understand who the sort of beneficiaries are of taxpayers funds.
Patrice Bendon 19:21
And then finally, I guess, from where you're sitting in the Cabinet Office, you are, you know, a department that's best placed to do that with your engagement across other departments as that central resource.
Euan Slack 19:31
Yeah, absolutely. I mean I do. We have our sort of Cabinet Office priorities that I sort of shaped up into my own ways that I think our sort of role is to listen learn and then lead government in that space. Like I say it's such a huge place between central government, departments, arm's length bodies, non ministerial departments, and then down into local government as well, it's a massive place, and we have so much to learn from each other. And the place that can really only do that is the Cabinet Office, so we're not ashamed to go out, and if we see some best practice, we will learn from them, and go out across government, and make sure that others can benefit from it. So we really are the place to provide sort of central services, not just from a product perspective, but again, advice, guidance will be a big thing. Because although I'm on a journey of digital development, you know, there's much wider like I said, the functions, we do work on capability. So, I was capability teams to make sure that then that learning and development can go into departments to help upskill in digital. So, it's, like, I see very much a big team effort across Cabinet Office and the different bits that we touch on and functions, because government is a big place, so it certainly takes more than one team, I think, to make a difference, we've got to really sort of work together across the piece to really drive change effectively.
Patrice Bendon 21:01
So Euan, just before we end this pod today, I just like to ask you one other question, from the work that we've been doing together, do you have any advice for any other customers, particularly the public sector, that might want to be using Dun and Bradstreet data and services?
Euan Slack 21:15
Yes, certainly, I would simply say reach out to them. I think the best way forward is to talk to people, whether it's colleagues in the civil service, it could be delivery partners outside of the civil service, but we won't make progress if the two parties don't work together. You know, change happens I think best when the public sector and private sector work together. So if you do have any ideas for innovation, certainly reach out. I certainly enjoyed this conversation, my other chats with other stakeholders at Dun and Bradstreet. So yeah, reach out. I'm sure it will be a rewarding conversation.
Patrice Bendon 21:54
Brilliant. Well, I think I'll be having a chat with you about supply chain because that's one of the areas that we're working very, very closely with other departments on, so, so watch this space. Anyway, again, thank you so much you Euan for your time today, I really appreciate it. And thank you everyone. Goodbye.
