Engaging a wide user audience through useful intelligence on employment and skills in the Capital

Background

The Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion is the UK’s leading not-for-profit company dedicated to tackling disadvantage and promoting social inclusion in the labour market. CESI is involved in a wide range of initiatives from the provision of training and events to the collection and analysis of UK labour market statistics.

One of the projects it has been involved with is the London Skills and Employment Observatory. The Observatory aims to provide a dedicated one-stop service to users looking to find out information on skills and employment issues in London. It also strives to identify information and research gaps and suggest how these are best addressed.

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How the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has used data reporting and visualization to develop its Disability and Health Data System (DHDS)

Background

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a government agency that was set up to protect health and promote quality of life through the prevention and control of disease, injury, and disability. Part of its work is to harvest expertise and information that will allow it to create tools that people and communities need to protect their health.

The CDC’s Disability and Health Program promotes health and wellness amongst people with disabilities. Presenting state level data on the health and health outcomes of people with disabilities is an important part of the program and has led to the development of Disability and Health Data System (DHDS). This is a state level disability surveillance tool designed to assist partners, researchers and the general public in the assessment of the health and wellness of people with disabilities.

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Results for 2012 and last three London mayor and London local elections now available for tablet users

 

The Greater London Authority’s Intelligence Unit has for the first time made elections results for 2012 and the last three London mayoral elections and the 2012 London local elections available online and available to tablet users with data visualization software InstantAtlas.

The results of Mayoral, Assembly list, and Constituency member elections since 2000 are now available on the London Datastore (http://bit.ly/I8LgZa). Data can be viewed at three levels of geography – constituency, borough and ward.

As well as a Flash-based version of the report the results can be viewed in InstantAtlas’s new HTML5 template allowing non-Flash users the ability to interact with the results data across a range of devices such as iPads and other tablets. User will also be able to easily extract a link to the report and post on their own web sites.

Data includes:

• the winner in each area (the candidate or party with most votes). This excludes second preference votes in the Mayoral election;
• the winning majority (the highest number of votes minus the second highest number of votes); the percentage turnout figure (not available at ward level since the lowest geographical level that postal votes are registered is borough level);
• the percentage of votes for each of the major parties.

Gareth Piggott, Senior Research and Statistical Analyst, General Statistics Team said: “This is the first time data from all three elections and all three levels of geography have been brought together for analysis in a single place. To make it easier to identify patterns and trends in the data, the results are presented using Instant Atlas mapping software, which also includes a data table, bar chart, and trend chart.”

Please note – The InstantAtlas HTML5 Template is currently scheduled for release late May 2012. However the release date is subject to change.

See the London Mayoral Election Results using the HTML 5 template

‘How Pembrokeshire County Council’s online and interactive data resource is helping to reduce ad hoc queries for information’

Background

Pembrokeshire County Council has a long-held ambition to put data into the public domain in a usable and easily-understandable format. Much of this data has geographic information and it has been a natural development to use data visualisation.

Adam Crocker, GIS/Information Manager in the Policy & Corporate Planning department says the council collects a large volume of data covering crime,agriculture, democracy, deprivation, economic indicators, the environment,income, population and housing. In some cases the data goes back to 2005.

Getting started

Once the council had decided to use InstantAtlas the team set about creating Statistical Maps and Tables – the section of the council’s website devoted to data sharing. “We thought about everyone who would be using it from members of the public to council employees,” he says.

His first impression of InstantAtlas was that the ability to carry out analysis over time would be particularly helpful to users. The first report Adam worked on was job vacancies which used data such as claimants for Job Seeker’s Allowance and he said it was straightforward once he got the data from ONS and Nomis.

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How data reporting is helping to drive efficiencies at Conwy Borough Council and ensure strategic planners have access to the latest local intelligence

Background

Conwy County Borough Council serves a total resident population of 111,800, 80 per cent of whom are settled along the coastal strip in the larger towns of Abergele, Colwyn Bay and Llandudno.

Mark Bowler is Principal Research Officer at the Borough Council and explains that when he joined in 2008 they had a website to provide information for council staff including: business managers; analysts involved in strategic planning and managers who were responsible for delivering development plans. The areas it covered included the 2001 Census, deprivation and economic development.

The website gave access to a series of spreadsheets containing local data by theme but Mark is the first to admit it wasn’t well structured. “It wasn’t easy to find what you wanted,” he says. “We realised we needed a new approach and this was not just about presentation but about the way that the data was being collected and updated.”

“I visited the LARIA annual conference where I came across InstantAtlas. Afterwards I attended a number of Welsh Government meetings where projects using InstantAtlas were being discussed so we decided to start using it,” says Mark.

Getting started

Having presented a business case and been given the go head, the team started to use InstantAtlas. Mark says the relatively small Research Unit put a lot of effort into getting the data up to date and ready to link with InstantAtlas. The Unit was fortunate that its efforts coincided with work being carried out by the Wales Data Unit. “The Wales Data Unit was setting up Infobase Cymru and we realised there was some overlap with what we were doing so we started working more closely with them,” says Mark. “The way this works is that we take more of an interest in local data whereas Infobase is more concerned with national data.”

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Using data reporting to turn a data rich resource into useful intelligence for council employees and partner organisations

 

Hertfordshire is located just to the north of London and stands astride the key road and rail routes between London and the major cities of the Midlands and North. It also borders the counties of Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Essex. It has a population of just over 1 million. Hertfordshire County Council is committed to publishing its data to demonstrate transparency in operations and to allow access to information free of charge.

The council encourages greater use of data so that citizens are able to challenge and scrutinise what the council does. Much of this data is being made available through the Hertfordshire Local Information System (http://www.HertsLIS.org). Content includes economic statistics, community safety, socio-economic data, public health and area profiles, and demographic data. HertsLIS was developed by Community Information and Intelligence Unit (CIIU) which is managed by Bernard Thirkettle.

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OCSI Data Packs Version 2.4 gives Local Information Systems latest data

The Data Packs version 2.4 update provides users with the latest data, benchmarks and outputs available for all geographies.

Major new datasets in this version include:

• Pupil attainment by location of educational institution,
• Employment by occupation group.

Major updated datasets include:

• Mortality rates from key conditions,
• Local Alcohol Profile,
• Earnings by place of work and residence,
• Outcomes and performance measures for children in care and at risk children,
• Fuel Poverty rate.

The full lists of new and updated datasets, including details of all indicators in the Data Packs can be requested from us.

Major new datasets

Pupil attainment by location of education institution The Department for Education have published information about the GCSE and equivalent  results for pupils at the end of Key Stage 4 (KS4) in maintained schools in England. The results are for the 2010/11 academic year. Unlike previous pupil attainment results, contained

within the Data Packs, this data shows results based on location of where pupils went to school rather than their local residence. For the first time, the GCSE data also includes information on pupils taking the English Baccalaureate and on pupils making expected progress in English and Maths. Data is provided in Data Packs down to Local Authority level.

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UK InstantAtlas User Conferences – Review

This year’s InstantAtlas User Conferences were held in Rochdale at the Town Hall and in London at the London Council Buildings. Both offered attendees a mix of presentation and open discussion as well as the opportunity to learn more about examples of leading applications of InstantAtlas (IA) products from established users.

IAUC Rochdale review by John Patterson, Research & Intelligence Officer, Blackpool Council

Extracts taken from John’s review, the full post is available here

If you haven’t come across InstantAtlas(IA) before it’s currently one of two things:

• If you are like me and you have a very small budget for research software then it’s a desktop GIS tool which creates various interactive atlases (like this one).
• If you have a much larger budget, then it leans more toward a data storing, profile generating, atlas creating server software (like this one).

IAUC London review by Julian Tyndale-Biscoe

The London conference kicked off with a welcome and introduction from Stephen Croney Corporate GIS & Information Manager, London Borough of Newham and Geowise Managing Director, Mike Forster. With the London event hot on the heels of the northern conference Mike said both events were designed to help users understand how data visualisation is helping IA customers meet their goals. He said they were a great opportunity to hear about what developments were being planned for the suite of InstantAtlas products.

Read the full review here 

How Wolverhampton’s Local Information System is driving consistency of data use and helping deliver evidence-based strategic planning

Background

The Corporate Strategy and Improvement Unit at Wolverhampton City Council provides statistics, information, research and intelligence for decision making and is responsible for demographic data held by the council.

Debbie Turner, Policy Officer (Research & Information) in the Unit, says the decision to develop a Local information System (LIS) came from a recognition that data wasn’t being used effectively and that there was a great deal of duplication of effort when it came to local intelligence.

“We were getting a lot of requests for the same information, often from the people working together on the same projects or in the same service while at the same time we knew there was good work going on in pockets across the council and other organisations,” she says. “We also spent a lot of our time co-ordinating data collection from a range of services for people within the council or for partner organisations.”

Debbie says one of their key aims was to improve information management and to ensure that the most up-to-date data, from the right sources was being used. The Unit started to develop a business case for an LIS and created a project group consisting of key strategic partners from across the city. The business case was signed off in September 2010 and the Unit set about a tender process. After assessing three bids InstantAtlas was awarded the contract.

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Cumbria Intelligence Observatory – ‘Bringing consistency to statutory assessment through online data visualisation’

Background

Cumbria County Council has been using InstantAtlas to develop interactive online reports that have been used to support work around statutory assessments. Rebecca Raw is Research, Information and Intelligence Officer within the Performance & Intelligence Unit at the council. Several years ago the team was asked to put together area profiles that could be used by council officers to better understand the profile of local areas. Data was collected and presented in spreadsheets. However, as Rebecca explains: “we found that circulating complex spreadsheets was not ideal”.

 “Through our involvement with the Cumbria Intelligence Observatory project we discovered that Cumbria PCT was using InstantAtlas and there was a strong feeling amongst Observatory partners that we should do the same.”

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Helping local communities in Trafford represent themselves and highlight their needs using an online interactive data hub

Background

Trafford Council has been an advocate of open data since May 2010 when the council took the decision to create an open data page on its website to allow access to numerous data it collects. This includes: council tax, business rates, location data, such as for schools and leisure centres and election results.

However, it wanted to use the data more effectively to create an intelligence resource. With NESTA funding and support from a steering group which included other Greater Manchester local authorities it embarked on an initiative called DataGM – a platform that would allow data sharing across Greater Manchester.

Alongside its work with DataGM, Trafford also wanted to develop its own data sharing initiative and went out to tender for a solution that would enable it to develop what it saw as a data observatory for Trafford.

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