Welcome to the latest InstantAtlas News. In this month’s edition we focus on UK Local Government clients:-
1. CLIENT EXAMPLES
- 1.1 Client Spotlight: Worcestershire County Council | Building Area Profiles for Elected Members
- 1.2 Client Spotlight: Nottingham City Council | Tracking Neighbourhood Change in Nottingham
- 1.3 Client Spotlight: West Midlands Regional Observatory | State of the Region Reporting
- 1.4 Client Spotlight: North Yorkshire County Council | New interactive Neighbourhood Profiles
2. RESOURCES & NEWS
- 2.1 New Local Observatory / LIS demonstration site
- 2.2 New demos published to illustrate the capabilities of our templates
- 2.3 Local Economic Monitor (LEM) – latest updates
- 2.4 West Midlands Regional Observatory New Recession Monitoring Reports
- 2.5 InstantAtlas demos by theme
- 2.6 Staying in touch with InstantAtlas
- 2.7 UK LIS Workshops Feb 2010 – dates for the diary
- 2.8 UK LIS Data & Report Packs update – The Economic Assessment Duty Pack
3. PRODUCT NEWS
- 3.1 Area Profile Template version 6.3 – new features coming soon
1. CLIENT EXAMPLES
1.1 Worcestershire County Council | Building Area Profiles for Elected Members
The Worcestershire County Council Research & Intelligence Unit are using InstantAtlas Server to deliver a corporate Local Information System (LIS). As part of this work they have built a rich set of Ward Profile reports aimed at, amongst others, elected members. They include sections on the relevant local councillor, population, crime, economy, health, children, and place survey results. One-click links to these reports have been published as a simple list on their intranet site (not currently publicly available).
Click to see larger image
Innovative follow-up work is on-going to incorporate data from their central contact centre on the number and type of phone enquiries. Postcode-tagged enquiries around issues like road maintenance problems, refuse collection and council tax are aggregated to neighbourhood and higher level geographies and then loaded into their LIS for reporting purposes. Reports of “most frequently asked questions” can then be presented to councillors in the form of profiles and thematic maps via the council intranet. This opens up all sorts of options, for example, to better understand neighbourhoods that appear to have high levels of enquiries regarding specific problem issues. Users can visualise neighbourhoods of specific geo-demographic types that have high or low levels of enquiries and whether there are actions that can be taken to target interventions and provide smarter approaches to council communications.
David Onions, Acting Head of Research & Intelligence, comments: “Instant Atlas server is a very cost effective solution for presenting geographical data in an easily accessible format. Worcestershire County Council is currently taking advantage of this to support our Elected Members in being even more informed about their local areas, by means of providing them with a profile of their electoral division and details of the services requests residents have made to our customer service centre.”
If you want to see the sort of profile reports (like the ones above) that can be developed and published with InstantAtlas Server try our Local information Systems demonstration application – use the clickable map of Nottingham Wards for instant access to reports.
1.2 Client Spotlight: Nottingham City Council | Tracking Neighbourhood Change in Nottingham
Nottingham City Council has recently started a project to understand how they can support a requirement to evaluate and monitor regeneration activities within the City. The main objective of this project is to develop a tool to deliver evidence of social, economic and environmental change over time in relation to investment, providing a holistic approach to regeneration and enabling the monitoring of outcomes at a local level. – To read more download the PDF case study
1.3 Client Spotlight: West Midlands Regional Observatory | State of the Region Reporting
West Midlands Regional Observatory has produced a new set of InstantAtlas reports to support its State of the Region 2009 Project with the aim of assisting policy makers to explorer research with highly-interactive maps. The report brings together some of the key evidence from the State of the Region dialogues, a new process started in 2008, with a range of other information about the major issues facing the West Midlands. WMRO has linked the themes to wider developments influencing regional policy and strategy. Excel datasets of indicators and the data can be explored in interactive maps covering areas such as local economy, population & health, community & culture and environment & transport
More about this project »
1.4 Client Spotlight: North Yorkshire County Council | New interactive Neighbourhood Profiles
North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) has recently launched an impressive set of interactive profiles for neighbourhoods across the County. The statistics help paint a picture of the local area covering topics such as: (1) Population Age and ethnicity; (2) Health; (3) Crime; (4) Quality of life; (5) Environment; (6) Employment; (7) Education; and (8) the local economy. The profiles will help NYCC and its partners when planning services to make sure they are taking local variation and local needs into consideration.
2. RESOURCES & NEWS
2.1 New Local Observatory demonstration site
The Support and Marketing teams have developed a new Local Information System / Local Observatory demonstration site based on off-the-shelf web design tools. This embeds InstantAtlas Server (IAS) and demonstrates some of the new functionality in the 6.2 release for dynamic embedding of IAS content into other web pages. Specifically the demo shows:
(1) Embedding InstantAtlas Server 6.2 into a broader Local Observatory style site.
(2) Embedding individual charts and tables (called ‘profile widgets’) into other web pages and add relevant commentary.
(3) Adding context-sensitive web links that can take users directly to dynamic Data Views and Profiles.
(4) Using clickable maps as a simple and easy-to-use method for users to select area-based profile reports.
The pages are built as templates using a web design tool. This demonstrates how a Content Management System (CMS) tool can be implemented to allow non-technical staff to maintain content.
2.2 New demos published to illustrate the capabilities of version 6 templates
The InstantAtlas Template section of the InstantAtlas website has new demos by geographical area. You can now view separate demos for both the UK and USA – Click Click here to see USA template examples | Click here to see UK template examples
2.3 UK Local Economic Monitor (LEM) – latest updates
Published – 11 November 2009
October 2009 unemployment figures added to the LEM
The October 2009 Jobseekers Allowance figures have been added to the Local Economic Monitor.
DWP Benefit datasets have been updated on the LEM
Data for a range of key DWP benefit datasets has been updated for Februrary 2009. See the latest news on the Local Economic Monitor
2.4 West Midlands Regional Observatory – New recession impact monitoring reports
WMRO has produced a new set of InstantAtlas interactive maps to monitor the impact of the recession at different geographical levels in the West Midlands:
- By West Midlands Local Authority
- By West Midlands Census ward
- Neighbourhoods in the Rural Regeneration Zone
The maps show Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) claimant rates (the proportion of the working age population claiming JSA), which gives an indication of unemployment. The maps help to see how the recession is affecting different areas.
Vist the WMRO recent blog posting ‘Observations’ for more.
2.5 InstantAtlas demos by theme
The Marketing team have put together some interesting examples of InstantAtlas Reports by theme for you – there are more available on the InstantAtlas showcase.
(1) InstantAtlas for Community Information Systems (CIS) – New York City Community Health, US (Demo) using the Single Map
Purpose: An atlas comprising a wide range of community health indicators based on the New York Community Health Survey with a 4-year time series. The atlas is based on our new InstantAtlas version 6 template.
How to use the Single Map Template (Video Link)
(2) InstantAtlas for Survey Reporting – Behavioral Risk Factor Data Explorer, MMSA Rankings, US (Demo) using the Single Map
Purpose: This Single Map template provides a single map view of current BRFSS state for specific US Census Bureau Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas (MMSAs). The use of color-coded symbols make it easier to distinguish data values geographically. How to use the Single Map Template (Video Link)
(3) InstantAtlas for Cancer Mapping and Reporting – West Virginia Incidence Rates and Trends / Major Cancer sites (Demo)
Purpose: This Single Map view presents West Virginia’s aggregated 1997-2001 and 2002-2006 incidence rates across the state and graphs trends between both time periods.
2.6 Choose how you ENGAGE with InstantAtlas
InstantAtlas customers are always looking for ways to keep in touch with news and features of the product and how it is being used around the world. So as well as providing the eBulletin service here is a compilation all the ways you can keep up with the latest news:
InstantAtlas RSS News Feed - for all our latest Blog posts - click here to grab all the news | If you’re not sure how to use RSS – click here for an overview and list of feed tools
NEW – the InstantAtlas Email News Feed – If you prefer the latest Blog posts to come in via your email InBox then you can subscribe to ‘email updates’ on the Blog.
Twitter - Join the growing InstantAtlas community – click here
Delicious – Bookmark – click here
Digg – InstantAtlas RSS Feed – click here
Flickr – View InstantAtlas reports on Flickr by Theme of interest – click here
VIDEO CHANNELS
YouTube – Watch Free InstantAtlas Video Tutorials for InstantAtlas Desktop and Server – click here and subscribe today
YouTube – Español
YouTube – Deutsch
Metacafe – click here for channel – click here for video RSS feed
Vimeo - Click here for channel – click here for video RSS feed
Daily Motion – click here for video RSS feed – subscribe to channel
Important Note | If you are unable to view Video channels from your place of work all videos are available on CD in MP4 format. Currently CD’s are only available for UK organisations with a UK business address
2.7 UK InstantAtlas LIS Workshops in Feb 2010
For all our customers and anyone interested in developing Local Information Systems (LIS) please make a note of the best date for one of our events in February. We are hoping to finalise the programme of both the ‘North’ and ‘South’ event soon and will publish them on the web site. More information is available from the LIS Section of our web site.
2.8 UK LIS Data & Report Packs – New Economic Assessment Duty Pack
Our partners, OCSI, have been working on the development of data resources and outputs to create an Economic Assessment Duty Pack. A number of local authority customers have expressed an interest in taking this to address their obligations for production of their Economic Assessment. For more information see our Packs page on the LIS Section of our web site.
3. PRODUCT NEWS
3.1 New Area Profile Template version 6.3 (coming soon)
There are a couple of significant enhancements to the new Area Profile template (version 6.3) planned for release at the end of December 2009. It includes new configuration files for a new Radar Chart profile and an Election Results Report.
- The Radar Chart is a significant improvement on previous releases with the ability to display a significant number of select areas on the same chart with a legend for each area. This ability makes it useful for comparing profiles of multiple areas.
- With local and national elections coming up in the summer of 2010 in the UK, a new election results report configuration is designed to make it easier for customers to use our templates for the purposes of reporting their results at any geographic scale.
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