The importance of moving from data quality to trusted information
Housing providers have spent the past decade modernising their systems. The next strategic challenge is ensuring that those same organisations can actually trust the information those systems rely on.
As AI, consumer regulations and increasing expectations around transparency expose weaknesses in information quality and governance, information governance is becoming a leadership issue rather than simply an IT or compliance responsibility.
Over the past decade, housing providers have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on technology. Housing management systems have been replaced, CRM and asset management platforms implemented, customer portals launched and Microsoft 365 has become commonplace. Digital transformation has quite rightly become a boardroom priority.
Yet despite all that investment, I still see the same problem: the applications have changed but the information surrounding them usually hasn’t. The next major challenge is therefore whether housing providers can trust the information they’re using to make decisions.
Beyond data quality
Trusted information goes beyond traditional data quality. It combines accurate data with governance, ownership, security, context and confidence, ensuring organisations can rely on information for operational decisions, regulatory assurance and residents’ trust, and that isn’t just an IT question anymore.
The UK government’s recent ‘More & Better Social Homes’ consultation made it clear that the regulators intend to place greater emphasis on the quality, verification and validation of housing providers’ data, therefore making trusted information a leadership question.
Every major priority facing our sector today, such as consumer regulations, building safety, cyber resilience, tenant transparency, AI and better decision-making, depends on trusted information. Without it, even the best technology struggles to deliver the outcomes we expect.
For years we’ve talked about digital transformation; the next phase of transformation is about information.
The information gap
Wherever I go, I see very similar patterns. Organisations have invested heavily in modern technology yet the information estate surrounding those systems has often evolved organically over many years. Legacy EDRM platforms continue to exist because replacing them feels too difficult, SharePoint sites created for collaboration become long-term repositories, and Teams, OneDrive, file shares and other older systems all accumulate versions of the same information until nobody is entirely certain which record is authoritative.
None of this happens because organisations don’t care. It happens because every transformation programme has understandably focused on solving operational problems in areas such as housing management, repairs, customer services, finance and compliance.
Very few have stopped to ask a more fundamental question: what does our information estate actually look like today? The result isn’t necessarily poor technology, it’s fragmented trust.
One organisation, multiple departments
Housing providers works in departments, yet residents experience one organisation.
One of the realities of modern housing is that organisations are built around specialist functions. Repairs, housing management, income, neighbourhoods, asset management, compliance and customer services all have different responsibilities, processes and systems.
However, the challenge isn’t that housing works in specialist teams. The challenge is when information becomes just as fragmented as the organisation itself.
A vulnerable resident doesn’t care which team holds the latest document. A repairs operative doesn’t care whether critical information sits in the housing management system, SharePoint or somewhere else. Just as housing providers’ contractors need the right information at the right time to do their jobs safely and effectively, residents expect the same through self-service portals.
When information remains fragmented across departments and disconnected systems, every interaction becomes harder than it needs to be. Housing staff spend time searching rather than supporting residents, contractors work without the full picture and residents find themselves having to repeat and re-submit information their housing provider already holds.
Increasingly, housing boards and regulators aren’t looking for assurance that information is accurate; they’re looking for confidence, supported by governance, evidence and controls, that the information can be trusted.
Governed once, trusted everywhere
Housing departments should be specialised but information shouldn’t be isolated.
Information governance isn’t about removing departmental ownership. It’s about ensuring that information can be governed once, trusted everywhere it’s needed and then securely shared with the people who need it, whether that’s another department, a contractor or the residents themselves.
While departments might work independently, good decisions depend on a shared view of trusted information. The most valuable view of a resident isn’t held by any single department, it’s created by connecting trusted information across all of them.
For example, during a recent engagement with a housing provider, we analysed three everyday business processes to understand the hidden cost of fragmented information. Those three processes alone revealed approximately 2,600 hours of avoidable effort each year, equivalent to around £47,000 in annual operational cost.
It’s not about documents
One phrase I hear regularly is ‘document management’. I think that undersells the challenge because housing providers don’t simply store documents.
Housing providers are custodians of some of the most personal information people will ever share with an organisation, such as safeguarding concerns, domestic abuse, child welfare, mental health, financial hardship, legal proceedings and photographs inside residents’ homes.
These aren’t just records. They’re moments in people’s lives, entrusted to housing providers with an expectation they will be protected. That’s why information access concerns me more than almost any other.
That’s not because people deliberately misuse information but because permissions quietly drift over time. Departments merge, staff move roles, temporary access becomes permanent and new projects introduce additional security groups. Before long, information that was once tightly controlled has become accessible to many more people than anyone originally intended.
I’ve seen organisations where hundreds of employees could potentially view information they had no genuine business need to access. The uncomfortable question isn’t whether somebody might abuse that access, it’s whether they should ever have had access to it in the first place.
If a resident understood how widely some of their most sensitive information could potentially be accessed, would they still feel the same level of trust in their housing provider? For me, protecting people and not simply documents is the real purpose of information governance.
The conversation is changing
The ‘call for evidence’ section of the aforementioned ‘More & Better Social Homes’ consultation gave me pause for thought. The language isn’t only about collecting more information but also about improving the quality of housing providers’ data, strengthening verification and validation processes and taking firmer action where poor-quality information persists.
For years, the question has mainly been: can you provide the data? Nowadays, regulators, residents and boards are asking something much harder: can you trust the information you’re relying on?
That’s a very different challenge because trust depends on far more than whether information exists, such as is it accurate, is it complete, who has access to it and can you demonstrate why, all of which are leadership questions rather than just technical questions.
Consequently, regulators are looking for evidence of trusted information and a single version of the truth, not just the ability to produce data on request.
Why STAIRs matters
The same principle applies to the Social Tenant Access to Information Requirements (STAIRs).
Imagine responding to a resident’s request only to discover three different versions of the same document across multiple places: one copy should have been destroyed years ago, another contains information that should never be disclosed and a third has been updated but only in one system.
That’s no longer a transparency problem, it’s an information governance problem, and transparency without information governance is simply unmanaged disclosure.
AI exposes the truth
AI has accelerated this conversation and forced housing providers to confront something many have managed to avoid for years, and that’s the quality of their information.
AI doesn’t understand organisational history, it doesn’t know which version of a document someone intended to use, it doesn’t recognise that permissions gradually drifted over ten years and it simply works with whatever information it can access. If that information is duplicated, inconsistent or overexposed, AI amplifies those weaknesses rather than solves them.
As a result, the organisations gaining the greatest value from AI will be those that have spent time and money on the governance of the information AI depends on.
Information builds trust
Technology can transform processes but trusted information can transform entire organisations.
Housing providers often measure their digital maturity by the systems they’ve implemented, such as a new housing management system, customer portal or CRM tool. Those are important achievements but residents experience information, not technology programmes.
The organisations that will stand out over the next decade or so won’t simply have the newest technology, they’ll also have the greatest confidence in the information behind it.
What next?
The first step is to understand your current information estate. For example, boards should understand where their critical information resides, who’s accountable for it, how it’s governed and whether it can genuinely be trusted.
Like cyber security or financial governance, trusted information needs clear executive ownership, not because it is an IT issue but because it underpins every strategic decision an organisation makes.
For too long, information governance has been in the wrong conversations and been considered as part of compliance, records management, technology or something to revisit after the next big programme ends.
I think that’s becoming one of the biggest strategic risks facing the sector. Can your board confidently answer:
- Where is the critical information about our residents?
- Who has access to it?
- Can we trust it?
- Are we only keeping what we should?
- Could we confidently share it with a resident or regulator tomorrow?
If not, the challenge is organisational, not technological.
Our sector has spent the past decade transforming its systems; the next decade will belong to organisations that modernise trust. The housing providers that recognise this first won’t just become more compliant. They’ll make better decisions, protect residents more effectively, adopt AI with greater confidence and reduce operational risk.
Because ultimately, the organisations that can trust their information are the organisations their residents will trust.
Kirsty Marsden is the head of enterprise sales at Mizorix.
