From Smart Data to Better Lives: Aligning Cross-Sector Efforts Around Human Needs

By Heather Xiao, Founder & CEO, Horizon Zero | Honorary Research Fellow, Warwick Business School Gillmore Centre

Open Banking, Open Finance and Smart Data are ultimately about transforming our lives and building our digital future. Building on the significant progress already made, what will it take to bring together the capabilities we have built and address today’s most pressing needs?

What if joining up data could help tackle the cost-of-living crisis, support households at risk of energy disconnection, reduce NHS waiting times and ease cash-flow pressures for small businesses?

We are standing at the edge of a vast blue ocean of possibilities. Much of this potential remains untapped. The opportunity is to connect data, services and organisations across sector boundaries around people’s needs, turning our growing capabilities into joined-up solutions that improve everyday life.

When services deliver tangible benefits that people understand and trust, customers have a compelling reason to adopt them. That demand gives businesses a stronger reason to invest.

As data ecosystems expand, coordination becomes harder

As we move from Open Banking towards Open Finance, Smart Data, and connected data and AI ecosystems, more organisations, sectors and services become involved. This brings greater possibilities, alongside more dependencies and a greater need for coordination.

Different standards and systems create integration barriers. Responsibilities, liability and governance become more complex across organisational boundaries. Business incentives may not align, and customer trust and participation cannot be taken for granted.

The question we increasingly face is: How do we align organisations across sectors so that shared data and AI deliver meaningful outcomes for people and businesses?

Human needs give ecosystem efforts a shared direction

This question inspired me to originate the Human Needs-to-Outcomes Framework. I am now working with colleagues at the Gillmore Centre for Financial Technology and cross-sector ecosystem partners to develop and test it, bringing together research and practical experience.

The framework keeps human needs as our North Star and aligns the ecosystem around delivering outcomes that matter to people. It brings together three connected elements:

• Human needs and outcomes: What matters to people, and what strategic outcomes are we trying to achieve?
• Outcome-driven applications: What services could deliver those outcomes, who needs to contribute, and what business models, roles and responsibilities would make delivery viable?
• Ecosystem capabilities: What data, intelligence, infrastructure and shared capabilities are needed to make those services work?

The framework starts with the outcome and works back to what is needed to deliver it. This helps participants understand how their contributions fit together, where they need to coordinate and why taking part is worthwhile.

The following diagram shows these capabilities in a little more detail:

• Coordinated actions bring participants, services and responsibilities together.
• Shared intelligence helps identify needs, recognise emerging risks and inform suitable responses.
• Trust and infrastructure foundation capabilities enable secure, accountable data sharing through capabilities such as consent management, digital identity and common standards.
• Data sources across sectors provide the relevant information that supports these capabilities and the services built on them.

With better customer outcomes as a shared goal, everyone wins

Collaboration can create value for customers and every participant contributing to those outcomes. For people, that could mean earlier support and greater control. For businesses, stronger customer relationships, improved efficiency and new opportunities. For public services, more coordinated delivery and better use of resources.

This approach could also help connect our existing efforts. Our landscape mapping identifies more than 30 major UK data initiatives across sectors. While their purposes differ, many need similar capabilities, including data standards, consent management, digital identity and trust services. Understanding these shared needs could reveal opportunities to reuse capabilities, reduce duplication and make investment go further.

A warm home shows what this means in practice

Tackling fuel poverty illustrates how this approach could work. We start with a clear human outcome: helping households stay warm and better manage their energy costs and debts.

With appropriate permissions and safeguards, relevant signals from banking, energy, council and housing data could help identify emerging difficulties. A connected service could then help a household access suitable assistance, an affordable repayment arrangement or improvements to its home’s energy efficiency. Clear responsibility for coordinating support would help people move between services without repeatedly explaining their circumstances.

The intelligence helps identify needs and personalise assistance; the data, services and partnerships make delivery possible. Success is measured by whether the household’s circumstances improve, including whether it can stay warm and manage its energy costs.

Cross-sector perspectives help develop the framework

To explore and challenge the framework, we convened a roundtable with the Gillmore Centre at Warwick Business School’s The Shard campus, followed by another at the Open Banking Expo with support from ElectraLink.

These brought together leaders and experts from across sectors and disciplines. Their enthusiastic engagement, generous support and complementary perspectives helped deepen our understanding of how the framework could work in practice, bringing several important insights into focus.

Proactive support starts with understanding people’s needs

Data insights can help organisations recognise emerging difficulties and offer timely assistance, but their usefulness depends on understanding customers’ circumstances and what help they would value.

Trust depends on human psychology and behaviour as well as technology

People need to understand the benefits of sharing data, feel confident about the risks and retain meaningful control. Participation should be easy to understand and navigate. Organisations likewise need clarity about responsibilities, costs and value before committing resources.

Human needs and business incentives must align

Banks, energy companies, healthcare providers, telcos and other participants need a clear reason to invest in infrastructure, share data and develop services. Benefits for people must connect with a viable case for the organisations delivering them, whether through stronger customer relationships, improved efficiency, reduced risk or new revenue opportunities.

Systems thinking helps identify where to act for the greatest wider impact

Some services and capabilities can unlock benefits well beyond their initial use, making further collaboration easier and creating opportunities for reuse. Identifying these points of greatest influence can help turn a promising first application into wider ecosystem progress.

Better lives start with one impactful service

Imagine a future where data and AI work together to make everyday life easier, more secure and more fulfilling. People are better supported to keep their homes warm, manage difficult debts, find care when they need it, access nutritious food and build more resilient livelihoods.

In this future, Open Banking, Open Finance, Smart Data and AI become connected capabilities, helping organisations to understand people’s needs and work together to respond. With people’s permission, relevant data can inform timely support, while AI helps make complex choices easier to navigate and services more personal and accessible. People remain in control, with clear accountability and access to human help.

We can build towards this future one impactful service at a time, starting with people’s needs and the outcomes that matter to them, and helping businesses thrive.

For example, a service that helps households stay warm can establish trusted ways of sharing data, coordinating support and measuring results. Those capabilities and partnerships can then support further services, adapted to different needs, as evidence and confidence grow.

The vision is a growing ecosystem of services driven by human needs, with each service building on shared data, partnerships and capabilities to turn coordinated actions into meaningful improvements in people’s lives.

Through collaboration with colleagues at the Gillmore Centre, we’re bringing research expertise and perspectives from across disciplines together to challenge and refine the framework. Alongside ecosystem partners, we’re combining the framework and roundtable insights into a new report, identifying priorities for further research and exploring opportunities to test the approach through real-world applications.

We welcome organisations interested in contributing to this work, who can help us to build evidence of how innovation can deliver lasting value for people and businesses, one impactful outcome at a time.