Newsletter, January 2017 No Images? Click here Hi there, Happy New Year from the LG Inform & LG Inform Plus teams. We're starting 2017 with a new report exploring the social, economic and environmental factors of an area, and new online training sessions to help you learn on your lunch break. We're always interested to hear about your ideas for improving both the tools and would love to hear from you, so don't hesitate to get in touch by replying to this newsletter. New People and Place report for parishes and neighbourhood plan areasAlong with Hinckley & Bosworth we have created a new report that signed-in, subscribing users of LG Inform Plus can access here. It is marked as a draft as we are still finalising it, but would welcome any comments over the next couple of weeks. This report contains themed indicators that explore the performance of an area through both people and place. It covers a range of themes including, demographics, health, employment and occupation and deprivation as well as important economic indicators such as infrastructure, industrial structure, skills and qualifications, house prices and tenure. These success factors are displayed through a series of maps, tables and charts and can be viewed for most small area geographies. Use the selectors at the top of the page to view the report for your authority. Q3 submissions open for Benchmarking ClubThe LG Inform Benchmarking Club is now open for 2016–17 Quarter 3 submissions. All our key contacts have been sent an upload link, and secondary contacts should have received an email notification. We’re really encouraged by the numbers of councils who share data via our benchmarking exercise each quarter, and we would be delighted to hear from new councils that would like to get involved. Many users gave us feedback in Q2 about how they are using the data we collect via the Benchmarking Club. Respondents mentioned using the data to
We’re delighted to see that the data is helping councils to learn, build and improve. Please upload your data by 9 February 2017. A Microsoft Word version of the metric definitions is here. Summary reports for 2016–17 Q2 are available on the LG Inform Benchmarking Club page. Training and eventsWe ran a successful online training session on 18 January to discuss the report builder in LG Inform. The PDF from this, which explains how to build a report, can be found here . Join us for a series of online training sessions discussing areas of LG Inform and LG Inform Plus. There are five sessions planned in the new year covering topics such as the report builder, the Powers & Duties tool and Records Retention. 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. Please email LGInform@local.gov.uk if you are interested in joining any of the sessions.
If you'd prefer to learn with instructors on-hand to guide you and answer your questions, book a place at our LG Inform & LG Inform Plus training in Macclesfield on 16 March. Verify Local showcase in NewcastleThe Government Digital Service's (GDS) #VerifyLocal team is hosting 2 showcase events for local authorities and their suppliers, in Newcastle on 10 Feb, and in London soon after (TBA). They'll present the service patterns, business cases and prototypes they've started to develop with 17 council partners for residential parking permit and older people’s concessionary bus pass services using GOV.UK Verify. Read more and register here. Better Use of Data programmeOur Local Datavores intiative, focusing on helping organisations make better use of data and information management, concluded at the end of 2016. Our final report includes case studies of good practice in local information management. In partnership with the Open Data Institute we'll be running a second series of last year's online eLearning modules, which provide practical tips and benefits to open data publishing and standards. Designed as small and flexible in its scope, our Data Experts programme received a huge number of proposals from authorities up and down the country. Of the 54 submitted, 8 have been chosen to begin work and make better use of data. As part of the National Action Plan for Open Government, we've developed the first version of a data specification for publishing election results consistently. Work now continues to introduce the format to local electoral administration departments. And finally, an initial version of a data standard for the consistent publication of locally delivered services has been published by the LGA in partnership with iStandUK and other service providers. A pilot group of local service providers drawn from councils, health, voluntary sector and academia in the North West region is preparing data that meets the publishing standard to trial app development in early 2017. A briefing and progress workshop was held in Preston in December 2016 as part of our initiative to encourage the online publication of all local services. |