Interim presentation: Building Composite Stories to Visualise Data Flows
This is one of a series of interim outputs produced as part of the Information Sharing Project in collaboration with The Promise Scotland. This project has sought to understand the legal, cultural, and technical barriers to data and information sharing as it relates to care experienced children, young people, and their families across public sector agencies and organisations in Scotland.
These slides represent work undertaken by Datavant to visualise the data flows designed by Dr Yang Lu, from Loughborough University, as part of another workstream in this project. The data flows are based on existing composite stories developed by the Independent Care Review in partnership with children, young people, their families and carers to reflect their experiences. These data flows are intended as a foundation to clearly map how data moves across organisations and systems.
These slides have been developed around Isla’s composite story, and aim to to understand the underlying data journeys, identify where data is created, shared, accessed, or stopped, and validate these flows with stakeholders. Particular attention was paid to ensuring that the visual representations accurately reflected real-world practice and organisational responsibilities.
The resulting outputs are visually clear data flow diagrams that use simple iconography and consistent visual language. These diagrams are designed to make the complex data journeys easier to understand, supporting discussions around transparency, governance, risk, and service design.
The findings presented here should be read alongside insights from the other work packages. Together, they contribute to a shared and evolving understanding of how data and information sharing can better support care experienced children and young people in Scotland. As with the other interim reports, the content reflects work in progress, with the full set of final project outputs due to be published in spring 2026.
