UK public servants invited to submit ideas to drive better policy through local spending data
A competition that will allow anyone working in UK public services to access local spending data to inform policy development has launched this week by Global Government Forum and Mastercard.
The Mastercard PULSE – which stands for Policymaking Using Local Spending Evidence – competition is looking for entries from across government to spark innovation in fields such as financial inclusion and urban resilience.
Governments often seek innovative ways to use private-sector data to address social and economic challenges, and PULSE aims to help generate actionable insights for policy planning and public service delivery.
The competition, which is free of charge and relatively simple to enter, is open to individuals representing UK public sector bodies – including local authorities, city governments, central government departments, NHS and other public institutions, such as universities. Entries are sought from data scientists, economists, policy analysts or researchers working on public policy and service delivery on how they could use economic data to drive better policy.
Entries are encouraged across the challenge’s five themes, which are:
- Inclusive growth – identifying underserved communities and driving equitable development
- Urban resilience – analysing how spending changes during crises or major events
- Tourism and culture – balancing economic benefits and community impact of tourism
- Sustainability – tracking behaviour shifts and aligning with green policy goals; and
- Small business support – mapping vulnerability and directing support effectively
Enter here: Click here for the competition application page
Free access to data tools
Launched at the Public Service Data Live.AI 2025 event (18 September 2025) in London, applications are open until 23:59 on Friday 17 October 2025 on Global Government Forum’s website.
The applications – effectively ideas that people want to further develop using Mastercard data – will be then analysed by a panel of public sector leaders. The five most innovative and effective proposals (which will not necessarily be one each from the five themes) will be invited to pitch their proposals to judges via a virtual Dragons’ Den-style panel during the week of 17 November.
Mastercard will provide all finalists with short-term access to aggregated, anonymised, GDPR-compliant data at postcode-level granularity.
Submissions will be assessed on: policy relevance and clarity of challenge; innovative prospective use of Mastercard data; feasibility of approach; anticipated societal impact; and methodology and scalability.
Prospective outputs could include: open-source policy dashboards (for example, neighbourhood resilience indicators or small business vulnerability ‘heatmaps’); policy pilots (for example, governments use of insights to design targeted grants, infrastructure investments or economic recovery programmes); and stronger public-private collaboration through transparent use of data.
The PULSE competition winner will receive 12 months’ access to Mastercard data tools plus ongoing support, enabling them to progress their idea towards potential implementation.
Putting spending data to use for policy: Mastercard’s Simon Wright-Lakin speaking to Global Government Forum on 18 September 2025 at Public Sector Data Live.AI in London (Instagram)
Any questions? Ask them at an upcoming webinar PULSE: a competition to access spending data to help policy delivery
‘Looking for ideas’
The competition, which is free of charge to enter for anyone working in the UK public sector, was launched at Public Sector Data Live.AI 2025 by Mastercard’s Simon Wright-Lakin and Thomas Green.
Wright-Lakin and Green illustrated how major events such as pop concerts and sports events trigger local spending spikes on restaurants and hotels.
They then described how such spending data can prove useful to the public sector. For example, Mastercard spending data was used to inform a London Assembly report on the night-time economy (2025).
“We are looking for your ideas about how you can use these datasets,” Wright-Lakin said, explaining the competition to the public sector audience.
Green explained how data that would be made available through the competition could prove useful. For example, merchant category codes (MCCs) – four-digit numbers that classify a product or service; whether spending was in a bricks-and-mortar outlet or online; and the ‘flag’ (country of origin) of the payment card.
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