Newsletter, July 2018 No Images? Click here Hi there, In this month's newsletter, you can find
Special Educational Needs & Disability (SEND) data updated and available in LG InformWith the recent publication of the National Statistics on Special Educational Needs in England (26th July), we've taken this opportunity to refresh the popular Local Area SEND report (sign in required). Developed jointly between the Department for Education and the LGA’s LG Inform team, it covers data items taken from key SEND publications. This interactive report allows you to select both your local area and a comparison group of your choice, and is intended to support use of data and intelligence to measure progress and success. Since its launch in 2016, there have been numerous changes to the source publications, so in addition to updating the report to include the latest statistics we have taken the opportunity to update a number of the key indicators too. The changes include:
We trust that you will find this report useful - if you have comments or suggestions on how this could be made better, please contact the LG Inform Team. Subscribers to LG Inform Plus can also access all the data used in this report via our API and then used in your own websites, Power BI implementations or Excel spreadsheets. If you would like to know more about this please contact the support team. Would you like to be part of our new RoPA User Group?Introduced in April to help local authorities meet the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), our LG Inform Plus Record of Processing Activity (RoPA) tool is being used in earnest and we’re starting a RoPA User Group for users from already subscribed councils. The Group will let records managers discuss their experiences implementing RoPA in their councils with us and one another. The first meeting will be held online in August/early September. Do email us if you’d like to join the Group. DataShare open data management software made open sourceDataShare - the open data publishing tool used by Redbridge council - has been made open source by agreement with the LGA. This gives councils reassurance that they can go on using DataShare and make changes to the software, if necessary, to comply with changing data standards and requests for enhancements. DataShare provides a simple means for councils to open up tabular data for easy online viewing and download. It lets you delegate publication of data to administrators across their organisations, rather than relying on a dedicated team. You can find DataShare documentation and source code here on GitHub. Please credit the London Borough of Redbridge if you use the software. Contact us if you need help setting it up or would like to discuss us hosting and supporting DataShare for you. Are you being served? Adding Resident Satisfaction Data to LG InformDoes your council carry out a resident satisfaction survey? We know from our Heads of Communication survey that many councils carry out this work, but very few upload their results to LG Inform. Our resident satisfaction benchmarking club ‘Are You Being Served?’ has been running for the last five years, and is open to any council that follows our question set and guidance. Interactive reports are available for telephone, face-to-face and postal/online surveys. The idea of the club is to promote useful lines of inquiry within individual councils, while also demonstrating engagement and transparency. For more details, contact Rebekah Wilson or post a question on our KHub Wiki. Local benchmarking in LG Inform: Q1 data open for submissionsThe LG Inform Benchmarking Club collection window for 2018/19 Q1 data is now open. We are really encouraged by the number of councils who share data via our benchmarking exercise each quarter. If your authority has not received their link, please contact the LG Inform team. Many users recently gave us feedback about how they are using the data we collect via the Benchmarking Club. Respondents mentioned using the data to:
We are delighted to see that the data is helping councils to learn, build and improve. You can view our collection of benchmarking reports here. For any questions about our benchmarking work, please contact the LG Inform team Highlighting the provenance of our dataYou may have noticed that some values in LG Inform and LG Inform Plus report tables and texts are now being shown as hyperlinks. When hovering over them, these hyperlinks pop up key information explaining where metric values come from, who published them, any calculations performed and, if appropriate, the “degree of fit” where values are added from smaller areas. If a value is derived from others, you can click through further to check the derivation of each of those values. You can add text tokens in your own reports to show the derivation of values. If you use our data tool, tick the “include derivation link” checkbox at the bottom of the page to add this information to your table. New features in LG InformThe LG Inform report builder allows registered users to create their own reports, tailored to suit local needs with leading edge information graphical tools. But we haven’t stopped there and we are always looking to improve how LG Inform presents data in more interesting and varied ways. Our users are very helpful in making suggestions and as a result we have developed the following new components, available now in LG Inform:
For more information on what’s new see here. Add a front cover to your LG Inform reportAs well as all the above, we’ve added the option to put a front cover on your LG Inform reports. To add it in, just tick the “Front page cover” checkbox in the “Features” tab within the report’s 'Properties' dialogue. Training and eventsAre you interested in learning more about LG Inform or LG Inform Plus? If so, why not sign up for our online training sessions? They're quick, informative and easily accessible from the comfort of your own desk. During these online meetings, we will give you a phone number so you can dial in to a conference call. We will also share a URL so you will be able to see our screen from your desk. Find out about upcoming online training sessions here, or click on any subject name to download a PDF guide. Please email LGInform@local.gov.uk if you are interested in joining any of the sessions. Alternatively, you can book your place on one of our popular training days using the links below:
At these events, you can learn what's available, how to use the tools, and ask us any questions you may have. As ever, we're always interested to hear your ideas for improving our services and would love to hear from you, so don't hesitate to get in touch by replying to this newsletter. |