Rochdale Borough Council | Empowering local communities to make better decisions

“The level of support InstantAtlas has provided has been great – we haven’t come across any other software supplier who has provided such support”

Rochdale Borough Councils’ Research & Intelligence Team is part of the Policy & Research Team in the council’s Performance & Development Service. Its main function is to provide research and intelligence to the council, LSP partners, the voluntary sector and members of the public.

The team provides data, analysis, mapping and outcome information across a range of partner organisations. This intelligence provides evidence of need, neighbourhood analysis and information provision on disadvantaged groups. This ensures that the LSP continues to use a sound and coherent evidence base for policy.

Starting point

Rochdale Borough Council developed its own Local Information System in 2004. This was a custom-built system. However, after several years the council realised it needed one with better functionality and increased value for money because the existing system could no longer meet the needs of the LSP partners. Partner organisations needed a reliable and accurate information service allowing them to plan services, research neighbourhoods, and develop area profiles. The partners were seeing an ever expanding demand for robust evidence to help them plan and inform service provision.

The objective was to create something that would offer quick and easy access to a wide range of information to anyone, not just the experts. The option was to either upgrade the existing system, or buy in an off-the-shelf package. The council looked at cost of current system and compared its functionality with software from other providers. The cost-benefit analysis revealed that InstantAtlas in particular offered better functionality and improved value for money. In addition, the council recognised it would be buying into an evolving system – which would avoid the cost incurred every time it wanted to develop its bespoke system. The deciding factor was the level of support that was on offer from InstantAtlas.

Meeting the need

The third sector had been the catalyst for the decision to create Stats and Maps (http://www.statsandmaps.org.uk) and the team realised they needed to provide training workshops in the community, to help the organisations that needed help the most.

The council partnered with the local CVS PC training scheme which was set up to help those without computers, gain access and understand computing basics. The workshops have proved very popular.

Matt France, Customer Insight Analyst, Research and Intelligence Rochdale MBC, thinks Stats and Maps is empowering local communities to make their own decisions. “We’ve had a positive reaction from community groups and Stats and Maps is definitely seen as a good resource for local people,” he says.

The Research & Intelligence Team also run events to showcase the site, helping local people understand how to use the site – from simple mapping to complex statistics. The team is also planning to take the site into local schools for use in geography and maths classes, to help children to understand local neighbourhoods better.

Making the project work

The council set up a project team to implement website solution which consisted of experts in the fields of Information Technology, Geographical Information Systems and Research & Intelligence…

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