No code, low code, code

Resources

Different organisations have different capabilities and resources. We describe these environments as no code, low code or code environments based on the publisher’s access to the resources required to create and use computer code.

In a no code environment data will most likely be held in spreadsheets rather than in databases and data will be exchanged by email or file stores rather than through a centralised tool for exchanging information, such as a website. It is likely that data analysis skills in this environment will be limited and similarly budgets for tools and infrastructure will be limited.

Low code environments are where an organisation has access to data via databases but has limited capacity to write code to analyse that data, instead staff use tools and websites created for them to evaluate and analyse the data. There may well be some budget for development and code creation but this is usually undertaken by third party firms rather than by in house analysts or developers.

A code environment has skills to create and maintain databases, they have the ability to collate, process and insert data into a database either using a supplier or their own developers and analysts. It is likely that these organisations have good analytical capability, are familiar with data and have budgets allocated for the creation and management of databases.

Most public sector organisations will probably sit in the low code category, but there are an increasing number of public organisations that recognise the need to have data and development teams located in the heart of their organisations.