A reflection on using Data Analysis to improve the delivery of service in Health and Social Care - Essay Example

Social services comprise a range of facilities provided by a government agency that can include anything that affects the life of the public such as employment, child care, education etc. To provide better social services, a provider of such essential services such as the government needs to obtain and store information and analyze them to uncover areas that can be improved upon and understand locations or facilities that need immediate attention (Suzanne Blanchett, 1995). Data analysis techniques fulfill this requirement as they can work through information systems in allowing the grassroots worker to collect information at the source (at the school, employment exchange etc.), which can then be aggregated and processed through relevant methods to identify and ascertain certain desired patterns.

For example, the government could be interested in determining the number of children who are enrolled in schools within the city of San Francisco against the number of registered children of a particular age. This helps identify whether all children at that age group are getting their basic right to education or whether some cannot afford to go to school (Lawrence Wolper, 2004). Likewise, data analysis can be used for analyzing and reporting the performance of a particular economic sector in an area.

For instance, the reporting of the rising unemployment rate during the ongoing financial crisis was made possible by the collection of data from employment centers across the United States and processing the data to help determine statewide and nationwide employment statistics. Such processes not only help identify the performance of a nation or government, but also provide insights into various other sectors such as the health of the economic sector or the level of consumer spending within an economy.

Healthcare saves lives and improves the quality of