The Pathway Towards an Information Management Framework - Summary of Consultation Responses

[RachelJudson]

Last May the National Digital Twin programme (NDTp) published our proposed Pathway to an Information Management Framework (IMF).
The publication was accompanied by an open consultation to seek feedback on our proposed approach and to hear from across the community about how they thought the IMF should develop to support their use and adoption of it.   

The consultation ran until the end of August, alongside ongoing engagement with the programme’s technical stakeholders, we received a great deal of valuable feedback.  The full summary of the IMF Pathway Consultation Responses is published today, written by Miranda Sharp, NDTp Commons Lead. 

Overall, the responses to the Pathway were positive and respondents welcomed the opportunity to give feedback and contribute to its improvement. This was hugely gratifying for everyone who has contributed to the work over the last 18 months.  

Some of the responses to the pathways document challenged the proposed approach and we are keen to keep learning from these differences of opinion and perspective.  In the paper we have summarised the range of responses in the table below: 

Positive response themes	Nuanced response themes and questions	Critical response themes
The work is welcome and progress towards it is considered consistent with the Gemini Principles.    The plans to build on existing work are particularly welcome.	Discussion of the technical challenge is valid but respondents called for human factors associated with change to be explored in parallel.	A small number of respondents rejected the approach as too “top down”.
There was broad agreement that the IMF should consist of a FDM, RDL and IA.	Representatives from organisations often sought an indication for tangible next steps.	Some respondents stated that more than a single Integration Architecture is required.
The models and protocols described in the report were seen as comprehensive.	There were specific asks for advice on data quality, security, legal provenance and the securing of benefits from investment.	Several responses disputed the possibility and validity of a single FDM .

 More details about the responses can be found in the paper, but what we are hoping is to use this space in the IMF Community to discuss and work on the themes raised here in the IMF Community. 

Do you agree or disagree with these themes? Do you think any are missing? What work do you think could be done to address the questions and criticisms?  

Some work has already begun: 

The legal, commercial and regulatory elements of resilient and secure sharing of information. You can read about our first steps on this journey, Legal Roundtables held in November, here under the Digital Commons/ Legal. 

The need for a demonstrator and guidance for communicating the benefits of a National Digital Twin and how to begin readying organisations for the change. There was demand for use cases, case studies which is being addressed through the Gemini Programme and the DT Toolkit.  

Work has been undertaken this year, with funding from the Construction Innovation Hub (CIH) to create an FDM Seed for the CIH’s Platform Design Programme. We hope this will be the first demonstrator, of sorts, for the technical work that is being developed by the NDTp’s Technical Team. You can see the outputs of the Technical team here, and we will be releasing the next paper, Approach to develop the Foundation Data Model (FDM) here soon. 

We are planning further demonstrators that show the tangible benefits of the National Digital Twin, we hope to be able to share our plans with you in the near future.  

The Programme also strives to continue to build a body of evidence (‘Corpus’)), as per the Tasks set out in the Pathway, to build other demonstrators for the programme.  

Alongside this work the publication of the Response to IMF Pathway Consultation will contribute to the development of an updated Pathways document that will refocus efforts of the NDTp. We hope to share that will you in the coming months.