OpenDataCommunities Programme (UK0060)

DCLG will continue to extend the range and volume of fully accessible, five-star data published via its OpenDataCommunities service. It will also maintain a showcase of visualisations and interactive dashboards to demonstrate how developers, data analysts and local communities can use the open datasets to better understand the interplay of economic and social factors on specific neighbourhoods across the UK. Standards and best practice developed under the programme will also be promoted domestically (particularly amongst local authorities) and internationally. The vision is that by 2015, OpenDataCommunities will be the DCLG’s single platform for:
-routinely releasing all departmental data sources in a fully open, accessible and re usable forms, whilst preserving data quality and integrity
-stimulating third parties to use departmental data alongside related external sources to deliver innovative new tools and insights
-supporting the department to use its own and related third party sources in a more efficient, cost-effective manner, when designing and implementing policies and programmes
-building and spreading best practice for sharing and re-using data based on common standards, with a particular focus on partnerships with local authorities and other local public sector agents to unlock and publish their local sources in a consistent, comparable form
The benefits and impact will include:
-enabling economic growth – open and accessible data will enable growth of new services in the information economy, plus delivery of more efficient/cost-effective data sharing within current ‘data rich’ business networks, eg by streamlining sharing of data amongst business engaged in land-use planning and house-building
-facilitating social growth – open data drawn from multiple sources will be the fuel to power greater public participation in and understanding of DCLG’s policies and programmes at the local level. This is particularly important for policies under the localism and Community Rights agendas including Neighbourhood Planning and Neighbourhood Budgeting
-greater efficiency and cost-savings for DCLG and its partners – through standardising data and making it more open and accessible, we will reduce the cost and overheads of sharing often incompatible sources amongst a broad and diverse partner network. When coupled with development of new digital tools and services, this will deliver knock-on benefits to citizens, local communities, and businesses (ie data users), eg by providing outputs that are easier to understand and use, thereby streamlining the process, and so reducing the costs and overheads of engaging with public service providers
OpenDataCommunities is still largely in its formative stage, and driven by user demand for data, so it is difficult to provide precise milestones. However, in broad terms, the key outputs to be delivered by the end of 2015 will be:
-a robust, reliable and trusted source of DCLG data in fully open, accessible forms – with data content delivered according to user demand and priorities established under the NII
and supporting strategies
-active, sustained and significant use of sources in OpenDataCommunities by local authorities, public sector agencies, voluntary and charity organisations, and the private sector. To be achieved through pro-active, targeted promotion and communications, working closely with users to capture and disseminate evidence of benefits achieved
-strong and effective partnerships with key national and local bodies, thereby maximising reuse of OpenDataCommunities’ standards and best practices
-alignment of OpenDataCommunities with data.gov.uk, and new data visualisation and collaboration tools emerging on the single government domain – thereby maximisingopportunities for DCLG content to be combined with and re-used alongside related public sector sources
-development of OpenDataCommunities as the authoritative source for core reference data–ie supporting linking and joining of related datasets.