About

This briefing explains how iStandUK is developing and incubating the SAVVI framework and associated data standards to support scalable, lawful prevention across the public sector.

Executive Summary

Public services increasingly recognise the importance of prevention, identifying people and households at risk early, and coordinating support before problems escalate.

However, services often operate in silos. Data is fragmented across organisations, legal interpretations vary, and local innovation is difficult to scale. As a result, people can fall through gaps between services, and prevention efforts are inconsistent.

SAVVI (Scalable Approach to Vulnerability via Interoperability) provides a practical framework to address this challenge. SAVVI enables organisations to:

• identify people and households at increased risk of poor outcomes
• share and reuse existing data lawfully, ethically and transparently
• coordinate support across organisational boundaries
• avoid building single-use systems for each new priority

SAVVI consists of:

• a Playbook – practical guidance for designing and implementing prevention programmes
• Common Data Standards – enabling consistent data matching and reuse
• an Information Governance Framework – supporting lawful, proportionate data sharing
• Blueprints – reusable templates for specific vulnerability themes

The aim is to move the public sector from isolated prevention projects to reusable prevention infrastructure; scalable, interoperable and ready to respond to emerging risks.

SAVVI has been developed by iStandUK with funding from the MHCLG Local Digital programme and is feeding into cross-government work on vulnerability data standards.

 

 

What SAVVI includes

 

The SAVVI Playbook	a practical “how-to” guide for identifying and supporting people experiencing vulnerability.   It describes the phases, governance, and implementation approach required to move from insight to intervention.
Vulnerability Data Standards	A set of common data standards designed to: enable data matching across organisational boundaries reduce technical integration costs promote data minimisation avoid vendor lock-in allow reuse of infrastructure for multiple vulnerability themes
An Information Governance (IG) Framework	A structured approach to ensuring that personal data is processed: lawfully ethically transparently proportionately   The IG Framework helps organisations clearly articulate their legal basis, public task, safeguards and communications.

 

What does SAVVI mean by Vulnerability?

SAVVI defines Vulnerability as:

“An increased risk of a poor outcome.”

Examples include:

• becoming homeless
• being unable to evacuate during a flood
• child poverty
• children not school-ready
• economic inactivity

In these scenarios:

• no single organisation holds all relevant data
• no single organisation controls all support offers
• prevention requires collaboration

SAVVI enables safe, standards-based data sharing and coordinated intervention across partners.

SAVVI Principles

SAVVI is built around a set of clear design principles:

 

Scalable	can apply to any vulnerability
Interoperable	data flowing independent of organisational boundaries or particular products
Repeatable	others can repeat success without relying on the same products and partners
Lawful, Ethical, Transparent	an exemplar of good data sharing and data reuse
Reusable	avoid single-use databases that can only tackle one type of vulnerability in a fixed way
Local	tunable to local context and imperatives
Ready and Routine	ready for the next local priority or emergency
Part of Something Bigger	a movement towards a standards based architecture

Why SAVVI?

We are finding that there are often fracture points and gaps between services, which people can fall through. This results in their needs not being recognised and responded to.

For example, according to the findings from the inquiry into ‘the role of public services in addressing child vulnerability’ by the House of Lords Public Service Committee, a lack of a joined-up national strategy on vulnerable children and their families is undermining the effectiveness of various departments’ policies on child vulnerability, leading to duplication and diminished effect as different departments work towards their own policy ends rather than a shared goal. The Inquiry finds this lack of integration at the national level is inhibiting the ability of services and agencies to address the overlapping needs of vulnerable children.

For some vulnerabilities, such as ‘school readiness’, no single organisation is responsible. For example, many children living in families where abuse, mental illness or addiction are present, are not on anyone’s radar. Consequently, access to services can become driven by eligibility thresholds rather than earlier recognition of need.

SAVVI exists to turn prevention from isolated innovation into repeatable public infrastructure.

SAVVI addresses three systemic challenges.

The Data Challenge

Identifying vulnerability requires combining data from multiple sources.

However:

• public sector functions and departments use different data standards
• names, addresses and attributes are structured differently
• matching individuals across datasets is difficult
• datasets often contain unnecessary complexity

For example:

A Local Authority may only need a simple “mobility impaired” indicator, yet receives detailed diagnostic data that requires complex interpretation.

This leads to:

• high integration costs
• repeated legal negotiations
• proliferation of single-purpose systems
• limited reusability

SAVVI proposes common data standards so organisations can match data more easily, share only what is necessary, and reuse systems for different prevention priorities.

The Lawful Challenge

SAVVI is about exemplar reuse and sharing of existing personal data, collected for an original purpose, to find and offer support to people who may be vulnerable, who we would otherwise not know about.

However:

• legal gateways are often interpreted inconsistently
• councils commission repeated legal advice
• departments can receive slightly different data requests from hundreds of authorities

… consequently, prevention activity varies nationally.

SAVVI provides an Information Governance framework as a guide to establishing the lawful, ethical and transparent use of personal data.

The Good Practice Challenge

Local areas often develop innovative approaches to a specific vulnerability — but:

• others may be unaware of that practice
• lessons are not systematically shared
• approaches are rebuilt from scratch

SAVVI addresses this through Blueprints, which take the good practice that we find in SAVVI Case Studies, for a particular vulnerability and make recommendations for

• metrics
• relevant public powers and duties
• candidate datasets
• extractable risk factors
• lawful bases for reuse
• referral pathways and service mapping

Blueprints provide:

• deployable templates
• cross-area comparability
• support for regional/national reporting

A Blueprint can provide an organisation with a short-circuit approach to rapidly achieve results without having to have the same technology choices.

Current work:

• Draft Blueprint: Financial Hardship
• In development: Civil Contingencies, Economic Inactivity

 

SAVVI Communities

SAVVI has established links to a series of communities to reach important stakeholder groups.

SAVVI Scotland

The Scottish Government has provided funding to the Improvement Service to establish a SAVVI Engagement Team for Scotland.  The team is focussed on devising good practice for a range of vulnerabilities, to then apply them consistently across the Local Authorities of Scotland, while looking for opportunities to deploy platforms at a national scale.

They are initially looking at

• Child Poverty

… and will move on to

• Civil Contingencies

The Data Standards Authority (DSA) Vulnerability Working Group

The Government Digital Service (GDS) within DSIT, has established the ‘Vulnerabilities Working Group’ to recommend standards for the UK Public Sector.  The group has good cross-departmental representation including Police, Treasury, MHCLG, Scottish Government, NHS, HMRC, DfE, Local Government Association, DWP, etc

The working group looks to SAVVI to feed in proposals which are then debated and refined within its sub groups.

By April 2026, the DSA plan to publish initial recommendations for

• Vulnerability Data Standards for cross public sector interoperability
• a draft list of Risk Factors and definitions
• a Data Sharing Playbook to complement the SAVVI IG Framework

TechUK SAVVI/ORUK forum

TechUK – the UK’s technology trade association, hosts a forum for suppliers to be briefed about public sector data standards including SAVVI and Open Referral UK.  This is a safe space for suppliers to hear about emerging standards and take up offers of help for those that are ready to adopt them.

The next forum is set to take place in May 2026.

The Data Sharing Network of Experts (DSNE)

The Data Sharing Network of Experts brings together data sharing professionals across the UK Public Sector to share good practice.  SAVVI regularly presents into this group.

We are currently working with DSNE to refine our Blueprint for Financial Hardship.

SAVVI Legislation Group

If an organisation uses the SAVVI IG Framework, they may find that they are unable to find a lawful basis/legal gateway to reuse a data source for a particular vulnerability.  We may then champion that case through the SAVVI Legislation group which can propose new or amended regulations/legislation to explicitly and unambiguously permit reuse and data sharing for a given vulnerability scenario.

The group

• reviews barriers
• develops proposals
• is chaired by DSIT’s head of data sharing legislation
• has pathways into making proposals within the Digital Economy Act

 

Adoption

Case Studies

The SAVVI programme has worked with individual organisations to trial the SAVVI approach.  These are documented as case studies on the SAVVI Web Site.

• Supporting Vulnerable People During an Emergency at Wigan Council
• Reusing Data to Find Cases of Rural Child Poverty in Scotland
• Supporting Children at risk of being not ready for school in North Yorkshire

Learning from Good Practice

We also document external good practice that informs blueprint development, including:

• Addressing Poverty in South Cambridgeshire District Council
• Wigan Council Benefits Maximisation

Pilot with Greater Manchester Combined Authority

The Local Digital programme of MHCLG is arranging to provide funding to Greater Manchester Combined Authority to implement SAVVI and ORUK across the 10 Unitary Councils, within the Prevention Demonstrator, looking at Economic Inactivity in particular.

This pilot is intended to test a scalable “place-based adoption model” combining ORUK services data with SAVVI insights.

The intention is to create a dedicated team at GMCA, supported by iStandUK.

Detailed scope, funding and delivery milestones are being developed through joint workshops.

This pilot represents a significant opportunity to

• develop a repeatable implementation process
• understand drivers and blockers
• measure impact

… towards establishing a credible business case and implementation support package, for other councils to follow.