May round-up of InstantAtlas stories

Welcome to the latest edition of the InstantAtlas blog news – our monthly round-up of projects where InstantAtlas software solutions are used to map and present statistics in interactive dynamic reports and profiles.

In this edition we review two case studies from Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council and Warwickshire County Council a forthcoming live webinar from the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, plus we introduce a new offering from InstantAtlas called the ‘Report Creation Service’.

Tailored to your needs – The InstantAtlas Report Creation Service

We make no apology for the fact that everyone working for InstantAtlas is excited about what they do – whether it is developing software that helps you to present data in an interactive easy-to-understand way, or helping you get the most from InstantAtlas. So when someone asks us for advice, or help with a project we get a real buzz. With that in mind we thought it would be helpful to explain exactly what we can do for you – especially when you find yourself short on time, resource and budget so you know where to come.

What does InstantAtlas Report Creation Service offer?

The InstantAtlas support team provides a service for anyone who needs a helping hand with report creation with InstantAtlas Desktop. This includes:

• Map data preparation
• Dynamic report publishing
• Report design and branding
• Preparation and loading of statistical data
• Performance tweaks
• Report deployment

Pierre, Head InstantAtlas Support, says: “We can help support with any aspect of report production with InstantAtlas Desktop. Whether it’s filling gaps in a multi-faceted project, or providing report creation throughout from start to finish, we have the experience to help make it a success.”

Learn more

Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council

‘Using map presentation software to ensure services are delivered in the most effective way at Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council’ 

Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council covers nine towns situated between Manchester and the Peak District. The council places great emphasis on partnership and has a culture of working closely with local organisations.

The council is part of the Tameside Strategic Partnership which brings together a diverse set of partners from the public, private, voluntary and community sectors to agree key aims, objectives and priorities for Tameside. The partnership includes the police, health service, Tameside College and Greater Manchester Probation Trust. To help the partnership get a better understanding of local needs, a Partnership Information Portal has been developed.

Getting started

Jody Stewart, Principal Policy Officer, Corporate Performance and Improvement at the council says that for many years it produced a publication called Quality of Life which included selected statistics about the borough. “The challenge was that by the time it was published the statistics were out of date,” says Jody. “So we decided to move towards an online data observatory that would allow people to access up-to-date information on a variety of topics and track this data over time.”

 

Read the full article

Warwickshire County Council

‘Creating dynamic online reports for needs assessment at Warwickshire County Council’

Warwickshire Observatory is the home for information and intelligence about Warwickshire and its people. Its aim is to be a centre of excellence in research, data collection and analysis to support evidence-based policy-making across the public sector in Warwickshire.

The observatory undertakes work for, and in partnership with, a wide range of customers across the county council and other partner organisations. Paul Larcombe is Corporate GIS Manager and he explains that although the observatory has used GIS software in the past, it has only recently developed a local information system (LIS).

“We found that we were getting more queries from the public and it was taking time to find answers so we decided that an LIS would help people find the answers themselves,” he says.

Getting started

The team looked at a range of suppliers but decided to go with interactive map building software from InstantAtas which was bought in tandem with Coventry City Council. A successful funding bid meant the team was able to start building the LIS and this also covered the purchase of OCSI data packs.

“The LIS is a still a work in progress but the focus to date has been on desktop dynamic reports and we have a range of live content supporting the JSNA (Joint Strategic Needs Assessment),” says Paul.

Read the full article

Forthcoming North American Public Health Webinar with Charles J. Utermohle, PhD

Our latest North American public health webinar in June will be presented by Charlies J. Utermohle, Data Analyst, Division of Public Health, Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. Charles works in the Section of Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion within the Alaska Division of Public Health. His responsibilities include statistical analysis of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System for adults and the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System for middle and high school students.

Webinar Topic
‘Automating InstantAtlas production using Access Data Manager’

In the webinar Charles will discuss how the InstantAtlas Access Data Manager can be used to prepare large datasets using the example of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS).

Charles’ presentation will focus how Access Data Manager can be used with any dataset where there are too many variables to be efficiently handled in the Excel Data Manager.

Learn more about this webinar

InstantAtlas Essentials #26

‘Changing Visibility of Components Depending on Indicator Selection in HTML reports’

In this video we describe how to change the visibility of components on an indicator basis for HTML reports. This video compliments our Support document ‘How to Change the Visibility of Components Depending on Indicator Selection in InstantAtlas Reports’ which can be found in the Desktop Support area of My InstantAtlas.

YouTube version

InstantAtlas dedicated streaming server version

How Team Bury is using data visualisation with time series analysis from Bury Insight

Background

Bury Insight is the Bury statistics and maps website which is funded by Bury Council. It is a shared evidence base that provides quick and easy on-line access to data, information, and intelligence about the borough of Bury, and aims to meet the needs of the local community, Team Bury (the local strategic partnership) and the general public.

Team Bury partners, including Bury Council, collect a wide range of data including unemployment, housing and health. The site also uses OCSI data packs which means that in all it compiles around 10,000 individual datasets.

Getting started
Scott Abotorabi, Improvement Officer at Bury Council, who helped lead the project to develop the Bury Insight, website says: “We previously had a series of static maps, which on their own they lacked context and it wasn’t easy to view trends over time. By presenting the data in a series of interactive reports we felt we could help more people understand the data.”

Read the full article

Helping the Local Enterprise Partnership members understand socioeconomic patterns with data visualisation

Background

Local Enterprise Partnerships are business-led partnerships between local authorities and businesses and other key partners in England. They play an important role in determining local economic priorities and undertaking activities to drive economic growth and the creation of local jobs.

Created by the East Sussex County Council Research & Information Team, the South East Local Enterprise Partnership (SELEP) atlas was developed in Autumn 2011 at a time when the new Local Enterprise Partnership geographies were being stabilised.

The rationale behind the development of the atlas was to create a resource that would help the user quickly build an understanding of economic and social patterns in the region.

Read the full article >> 

Providing the insight to help decision-makers target resources more effectively with West Yorkshire’s regional Data Observatory

Background

The Yorkshire and Humber Data Observatory Programme consists of several initiatives each providing either tools or processes to collect, store and analyse data. This insight is used by local government officers, the general public and other stakeholders to improve understanding and decision making either within an authority or across authorities throughout the Yorkshire and Humber region. The West Yorkshire Observatory - a ‘one-stop-shop’ website for information and intelligence about West Yorkshire – is one of these initiatives.

Funding was initially made available through the Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership (RIEP) and the Programme was part of a wider Regional Observatory programme including South Yorkshire and North Yorkshire. The project included a review of existing Observatories and the technologies they used to deliver the project. Following a review, it was agreed that a solution based on the Humber Observatory technology would be the most appropriate.

Getting started

A  cross-organisational officer working party was set up to develop the project which was designed to replace the five existing and independent systems run by Bradford; Calderdale; Kirklees; Leeds and Wakefield. In some cases these systems had been in place for many years and were based on differing legacy technologies. Most of these systems consisted of online tools that had become unsupported, or were out-of-date and the cost for replacing them was considered too high.

Read the full article

Darlington LIS – ‘Using data visualisation to help target the resources of Darlington Borough Council and its partner organisation effectively’

Background

Darlington is a market town in the North East of England and has been an important centre for railway manufacturing. It is well known for the first public passenger railway in the world which opened in 1825. Engineering still forms an important part of the industrial base alongside a thriving call centre industry. As a unitary Council it is responsible for delivering the full range of local government services for local people. In doing so it has recognised the importance of having a clear understanding of local need, whilst working in partnership with other organisations – whether in relation to education, housing, transport, crime, health or other services.

The Council has long recognised the importance of local information as David Goodchild, Information and Analysis Manager at the council explains. “For a number of years part of my corporate role was trying to make the best use of myriad sets of data and encouraging others to do the same. This was successful but at the same time we recognised we needed to do more,” he says.

Getting started

The Council was granted funding by the Local Government Association under the Customer Led Transformation Fund, for a project focusing on families with multiple needs. The intention was to collate a range of data, thereby facilitating prevention activities and early intervention in families. A local information system (LIS) was seen as being best able to provide ready access to a wide range of data, and be capable of development over a relatively long time period.

Read the full article here

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.

Read the full article here >>

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.

Read the full article here >>

East Riding Data Observatory – Supporting the localism agenda in the East Riding of Yorkshire through a data presentation initiative

Background

The East Riding Observatory is an online resource that provides easy access to population, economic, community safety, health and education data for local authorities, partner agencies and communities across the East Riding of Yorkshire. The East Riding Data Observatory is a member of the Humber Data Observatory Group. Other Observatories in this group are: North Lincolnshire Council, North East Lincolnshire and Kingston upon Hull.

Gareth Hughes is senior research officer at the Observatory. He explains that Regional Improvement and Efficiencies Partnership (RIEP) funding was made available and Humber Data Observatory Group members were asked to highlight areas for investment.

Read the full article >>

How the London Borough of Newham is supporting evidence-based policy-making and decision-making through data presentation

Background

Newham Info is the name given to the London Borough of Newham’s information and intelligence hub. The idea started out as a data and statistics hub with an associated website which came online in late 2003. However, the vision was to develop an observatory and create a resource where users could find data from a wide range of sources and covering a wealth of issues to support evidence-based policy-making across the public sector in the borough. 

 

Getting started

Stephen Croney is Information Manager, Improvement and Performance Service in Policy, Partnerships and Communications at the London Borough of Newham. He joined the council in 2009 with responsibility for the boroughs GIS systems and turning the existing data store into an observatory that focused more on making information easier to access and use, ‘Telling the Newham Story’.  “The idea was to have a site that could be used by anyone to improve decision-making, support partnership working and better prepare the borough, its partners and stakeholders for the future,” he says.

Read the full article

Poole Partnership | ‘Providing an information resource to help commissioners of childrens’ services address local priorities’

Background

Poole Partnership is the Local Strategic Partnership for Poole. It involves community, voluntary and faith groups, working together with businesses and the public sector. It  aims to achieve long-term improvements to the quality of life for people living in Poole.

We spoke to Sara Ireland, Senior Research Officer, about the project. “It originated from work with a children and young people’s dataset that we had been working on for a number of years. We realised we were sitting on a large amount of information and were only able to do a limited amount with it – so we wanted to find a way of getting it into the public domain in a friendly format,” she says.

Read the full article >>

Image Credit – Jim Linwood

OCSI Data packs put more insight into Nottingham

Nottingham’s Local Information System ‘Nottingham Insight’ (http://www.nottinghaminsight.org.uk) was set up in response to challenges from the Local Strategic Partnership to make better use of evidence, and support stronger local partnerships.

We talked to Mick Dunn, the GIS, Data and Information Business Manager and Wendy Conibear, the Senior Mapping Officer at Nottingham City Council to find out more about the LIS and how they have been using Data Packs to keep up with ever-growing local needs for in-depth information on neighbourhoods and trends over time.

Background

Nottingham Insight was initially built from an in-house GIS system, which supported data and maps at a neighbourhood level. As local need grew for reliable, up-to-date and easy-to-use data, the system was initially extended by integrating the existing system into Instant Atlas Desktop (www.instantatlas.com). This served Nottingham’s needs well for some time, but as the required volume of data continued to increase further, it was necessary to upgrade the system to Instant Atlas Server.

In order to meet the demand for a comprehensive range of public domain data, the Nottingham team decided to enhance the content of the system by integrating the OCSI Data Packs. Combined with locally collected data and the extensive documents hub already in place, this made the whole range of required information instantly available to users.

“We decided on Data Packs because the demand for National Data was increasingly burdensome for us to meet – people are increasingly needing historic and in depth national data”

Benefits of Data Packs

Meeting local need for national data

Faced with the demand for reliable and usable national data, Mick explained how it made sense to populate Nottingham Insight with the OCSI Data Packs content. As well the city of Nottingham, the packs provide content for all districts across the county, with the system providing different home-pages for the different local authority areas. In addition, the team continue to collect and input their own locally collected data – enabling them to meet data needs for all users:

“Data Packs were particularly appealing as they strongly relate to the
JSNA and Community Strategy requirements”

Read the full article