Newsletter, November 2018 No Images? Click here Hi there, In this month's newsletter, you can find
Efficient and intelligent councils - assessing your own council and learning from othersThe LGA’s Efficient and intelligent councils initiative is bringing together learning from across local government on how councils can serve their communities better. The work will describe an efficiency model and look at how service design can be improved with better use of data. It will provide resources, case studies and a self-assessment tool for lead members and senior officers to better understand where their authority is in their efficiency journey. The tool will draw on lessons from our Data Maturity self-assessment tool currently available to councils. After launch, councils and the LGA will go on contributing to the set of resources and you will be able to discuss them with peers online. Combined data for combined authorities - the easy way to know your 'new patch'The new devolution deal for the North of Tyne area, with a new combined authority covering the areas of Newcastle City Council, Northumberland CC and North Tyneside MBC, is another example where local authorities are combining to meet their unique challenges. However, in this process, quickly understanding the key issues across the new area is critical. But where is the data? How can we quickly understand what’s happening across the new organisation? Understanding your new neighbourhood has never been easier with LG Inform Plus. Our Natural Neighbourhoods tool allows you to create new geographical areas, covering any combination of areas (large or small), and then analyse the data against our database of over 2,000 metrics. Creating maps make it easy to view and present the latest publicly available data, revealing the hot spots within the new landscape. This example report shows the combined North of Tyne area and a selection of metrics. Subscribing users can view or create new areas tailored to suit their needs using any one of our example templates, such as our basic report broken down by ward. Where are the fast food outlets in your area?The density of fast food outlets is often believed to have an impact on obesity levels in an area. So, with this in mind, new metrics on the ‘count of fast food outlets’ and the ‘crude fast food outlet rate per 100,000 population' in England have been added to LG Inform and LG Inform Plus. The data set is provided by Public Health England, using the Food Standards Agency (FSA) Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS) data to provide better understanding of this in your area. You can view LG Inform reports for count of fast food outlets in Calderdale compared to metropolitan borough councils, or the crude fast food rate per 100,000 population for the same area. The modifiers at the top allow you to focus the report on your area. This data is also available at Ward level for subscribers to LG Inform Plus. Those with a current subscription can see the data for their area and the Wards. New small area demographic data for 2017In October, the Office for National Statistics published small area population statistics by gender and age band for 2017. We've now loaded this data into LG Inform Plus for wards, mid and low level output areas and other areas that are built up from output areas. The Population and Age sections of our basic breakdown report (e.g. Basic facts about Sheffield broken down by Ward) and any reports you have authored yourself are automatically updated to show the 2017 metric values. Record of Processing Activity (RoPA) - It’s not too lateCreating and managing a Record of Processing Activity is required by the General Data Protection Regulations 2018 (GDPR) to describe how each council looks after customer records with personal information. Our RoPA tool (using our 1,700 Records Retention schedules) can pre-populate your local RoPA with lots of information, such as the legal justification for holding the records. It provides a template to input information that is local to your authority. Whilst GDPR came into force in May 2018, councils are still refining their RoPAs. Our RoPA User Group meets every couple of months via telephone conference to let compliance officers share problems and discuss solutions. We continually improve our RoPA tool in response to these discussions. Do contact us if you’d like to join the RoPA User Group or have queries on how best to use our RoPA download. Using LG Inform to compare yourself with similar councilsWe’re hearing interesting stories from councils about how members are reviewing council performance via LG Inform metrics. By using a comparison group of like councils (setting up their own comparison group if need be), users can see how their authority ranks against these others on issues such as recycling, fly-tipping and unoccupied dwellings. The results can be fascinating, highlighting different council priorities or indicate where your council might learn lessons. You too can make comparisons using LG Inform for your chosen metric types or using the LG Inform Plus Data Tool. Ask us if you’d like help running comparisons. LG Inform Fire Benchmarking club – 2018-19 Q2 updated and liveThe LG Inform Fire Benchmarking Club Q2 data has now been added to LG Inform with the most recent report available here . Using the comparison group modifier, you can focus the report on either a ‘regional group’, such as metropolitan, combined or county group, or the ‘Family Group 4’ comparison group. Also, on the 18th October, the Home Office published a number of updates to the ‘Fire Statistics Monitor’. Where these overlap with the benchmarking club, the official statistics are used in place of any locally submitted data. Date for your calendar: the collection window for Q3 2018/19 opens 7 January 2019 and closes 8 February 2019 If you know of anyone else who would be interested in taking part, please pass on this article or have them contact lginform@local.gov.uk. The more users we have, the better the club is for all! Did you know?The LG Inform Benchmarking club has over 120 local authority members submitting quarterly data on a variety of topics from attendance to street scene issues. Visit the site now for more information on how to join. Online Training: new schedule released for Nov 2018-Jan 2019Are 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 can see our screen. 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. 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. |