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

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

Friday InstantAtlas link of the day – John Patterson (Blackpool Council)'s new blog and IA User Conference 2012 (Rochdale)!

Friday has started out on an amazing high for me. Not only do we have sugar donuts (courtesy of our lovely Sales team) but we have this awesome unsolicited blog post from blogger John Patterson (Blackpool Council).

Did you present at the conference? If so, head over there quick!

Did you go to the conference? If so, you might be in one or two of his pictures.

Do you want to know what happened at the conference? What are you waiting for – go go go! (I’ll wait right here while you do.)

Now that you’ve read his post, did you wish you went the conference? If so, that makes two of us. That’s right, this friendly neighbourhood Support team member was supposed to present after @frenchpeter. And unfortunately, I was very ill that weekend and could not make it. I can only wonder what @Jonopatterson would have made of my presentation….

 

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.

Read the full article

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.”

Read the full article

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 >>

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

New TalkLIS interview with Suffolk County Council

“In the third in our Talk LIS series, Julian Tyndale-Biscoe discusses the future of LIS initiatives with Lyn Baran, Group Manager, Business Development, Suffolk County Council and the important role that communities will play by being able to interact with their LIS and include their own specific local information.”

OCSI Data Packs help Facts about Coventry improve local public services

Facts about Coventry – some background

Coventry’s Local Information System, ‘Facts about Coventry’ (http://www.facts-about-coventry.com), was set up in November 2010 by the Coventry Partnership. It set out to offer citizens and service providers a single point of reference for information about the public services people use, and background contextual information about the place itself.

Facts about Coventry primarily aims to ensure Service Managers can improve services through better access to better data. However, the system also serves a wider range of users, including local councillors, civil society organisations or members engaged in the Big Society, local businesses, those with an interest in public issues, students with projects, teachers and more. We talked to Tim Healey, Corporate Research Officer for Coventry City Council to find out more about how they are using Data Packs.

Launching Facts about Coventry

Unlike many Local Information Systems, ‘Facts about Coventry’ was not built on an existing system, but was built from scratch. Before the development of this system, the different departments within the authority were used to collecting and presenting their data in different ways from one another, with no integrated system in place. Faced with this problem at the inception of ‘Facts about Coventry’, developers decided the best approach was to buy a system using ‘off the peg’ solutions.

After an extensive review of the range of products available, Instant Atlas Server (http://www.instantatlas.com/iads.xhtml) and OCSI Data Packs (http://www.data-packs.com) stood out as offering the best solutions. Data Packs were selected due to the comprehensive range of public domain data and reporting they made instantly available, and because they were prepared in a way that enabled the user to load them directly into the Coventry system in a format readily processed by Instant Atlas.

Benefits of Data Packs for Coventry

A powerful tool for service managers

Facts about Coventry has proved to be useful to all Partnership data teams and service managers. As Tim explained, it is standard practice in Coventry for service providers to collect and analyse local service information. The contextual information provided by Data Packs is now used to support and strengthen this local data and has enabled service providers to deepen their analysis.

Read the full article

 

Watch the latest InstantAtlas Essentials Tutorial #17
How to configure a component to be a pop up window

Video Transcript below

Today I would like to show you, how you can make a component of your dynamic report to be a pop-up window that can be toggled on and off using a button.

To demonstrate this, I will use this example report. This report is as it comes out of the Publisher – nothing has been changed yet.

Now let’s say I would like to make the Time Series Chart a pop-up window. I would maybe want to do this if a component is not primarily important for the report or if I am running out of space to display all components next to each other.

I will open the config.xml file in the InstantAtlas Designer, select the component I would like to make to a pop-up window – in my case the Time Series Chart – and tick the checkbox of the property ‘PopUp Window?’. There is another property called ‘PopUp Window Visible?’ which allows me to define if I want the component visible when I open the report or if it shall be hidden on start-up. I want it to be hidden initially, so I leave this checkbox unticked.

Now I need a button to be able to toggle the component on and off. I will insert a new button via ‘Insert’ – ‘Button’ and give it a label e.g. ‘Time Series’. In the URL field of the ‘Links’ tab I now have to call an ActionScript function. This has to start with “script:” followed by the appropriate function name. The Designer section of the InstantAtlas Desktop User Guide lists all available ActionScript functions but I can also find the name of the function of I select the Time Series Chart again and hold my mouse pointer over one of the two pop-up window properties. The tooltip that appears will tell me the correct ActionScript function, in this case ‘toggleTimeSeries’.

So I go back to the new button und write exactly this function behind the ‘script:’. Please note that the function names are case sensitive.

I can now save my changes and refresh the report in my browser window. Initially I don’t see the time Series chart but when I click on the Time Series button, I can toggle the component on and off.

By the way: The data explorer is by default set up as a pop-up window which is toggled using the ‘Data’ button. If you would prefer to have the Data Explorer as a static component rather than a pop-up window, you can simply delete the ‘Data’ button and untick the ‘PopUp Window?’ property in the Data Explorer Properties.

If you experience any difficulties in setting up your own pop-up windows, or if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact support@geowise.co.uk.

How Somerset Intelligence Network is using data presentation to explain community profiles to a wide user audience

Background

The Somerset Intelligence Network (SINe) aims to gather and use intelligence effectively to support policy-making and improve the quality of life for people living in the county of Somerset. SINe is part of the South West Observatory and is co-ordinated by the Partnership Intelligence Unit (PIU), based at Somerset County Council – a strategic partner. The website (http://www.sine.org.uk) is a public portal to SINe and the Observatory. It acts as a first point of access for people and organisations looking for data, information and research about Somerset at a range of geographical levels.

We spoke to Mike Smith, information manager with the PIU. He says that one of the issues identified early on was that individual partner organisations each had their own data sets but there was little coordination in terms of bringing them together. A team was set up to collate data sets and disseminate them which is now being done via a microsite called INFORM Somerset. This provides an overview of Somerset based on a range of themes including health and wellbeing and crime and community safety.

Getting started

Once staff for the PIU was recruited, it started to look at how other organisations were disseminating data and it was quickly recognised that a data visualisation package was needed. After going out to tender, InstantAtlas was selected as the preferred provider and the decision was taken to have a hosted solution.

Read the full article >>