Tag Archives: big data

From big data to creative ‘binfrastructure’: new ideas for tackling litter

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As we’ve previously reported, litter is a big and expensive problem for the UK’s local authorities. A 2015 report by the House of Commons Communities and Local Government (CLG) Committee put the annual cost of cleaning up litter in England at around £850m. Litter also generates strong emotions. Research by Populus has found that 81% of people are angry and frustrated by the amount of litter lying all over the country.

The CLG committee and the UK government have put forward a range of proposals for tackling litter. But at home and overseas local authorities and the third sector have been looking at inventive ways to keep our streets clean.

 Philadelphia’s data-driven litter index

Earlier this year, Philadelphia’s Zero Waste and Litter Cabinet launched a digital tool to help catalogue the type and location of litter in the city’s neighbourhoods.

The Litter Index provides a full picture of the different types of waste in each of the city’s neighbourhoods, as well as recording the incidence of litter during different weather conditions. Using tablets, city workers record how much waste they’re seeing in their neighbourhoods, take photos and give ratings. The information can then be used to devise a plan for cleaning up litter in different parts of the city, and to pinpoint where resources are needed.

The Philadelphia plan is ambitious, but, as Nic Esposito, the city’s Zero Waste and Litter Director says: “If we’re not changing infrastructure and attitudes, we’re not going to solve the problem.”

 Edinburgh’s intelligent litter bins

New technology has been undergoing tests by the City of Edinburgh Council to measure how full litter bins have become and provide alerts via mobile when they reach capacity.

Sensors positioned inside the bins use ultrasonic technology to measure how full a bin has become. The data is then transmitted to notify the council’s waste management system when a bin needs emptied. The system can also help the council to spot fly tipping when there is sudden spike in the results, and a heat sensor detects fires inside the bin.

During the initial pilot project, collections in areas fitted with the new bins increased by 24% on average, and some collections quadrupled in frequency. The data from the sensors will be used to provide reports on waste generation patterns and can help in planning the most efficient routes for litter bin collections.

Driving litter underground

A growing number of European cities have invested in underground collection units in an effort to make their streets less cluttered.  In the Slovenian capital of Ljulbljana, these units are located around the city centre, with different receptacles for paper, glass, and packaging. In addition, residents of the city have access cards which open receptacles for organic and other specialist waste types, which in turn determines the level of their monthly waste management bill. Separation of waste in this way drives down the cost of managing it, and makes recycling much easier.

In the UK, Cambridge City Council has also taken an interest in subterranean waste units. Steel chutes have been set into the pavement with the aim of replacing thousands of wheelie bins. Residents have corresponding bins for their kitchens, which the city council believes will help create a sustainable living space.

Once completed, the 150-hectare site will have 450 underground recycling and general waste banks across 155 locations.

Thinking outside the bin

Environmental charity Hubbub has examined research and examples from around the world to develop a catalogue of creative and playful ideas for tackling litter effectively. Among the suggestions are:

  • an open-air gallery featuring local people to raise awareness of personal responsibility for waste management;
  • flashmobs to cheer on people who pick up litter and put it in the bin;
  • brightly-coloured bins that draw attention to litter campaigns; and
  • ‘talking bins’ that reward users with belches or coughs.

Hubbub has not confined its efforts to urban waste. Earlier this year, the charity unveiled a campaign targeting countryside litter. A “trashconverter” van toured the Forest of Dean, accepting trash, rather than cash, in exchange for flowers and hot drinks.

Final thoughts

As the Populus survey demonstrates, litter has a negative impact on how people view their own neighbourhoods. At the same time, as the recent Blue Planet 2 programme highlighted, our litter can have terrible effects on the natural environment and on birds and marine life, both in our own coastal waters and in oceans thousands of miles away.

Data, technology and behavioural insights all have important roles to play in tackling the blight of litter. Unusual initiatives, such as those employed in Philadelphia, Edinburgh and Cambridge, as well as Hubbub’s inventive ideas, are worth exploring if they can make an impact on human behaviour, and contribute to the conservation of the natural world.

If you found this article interesting, you might also like to read our previous blogs:

Talking rubbish: the never-ending problem of litter on Britain’s streets

Throwaway lines: poets celebrate the “hideous beauty” of landfill and the unsung heroes of waste management

Smarter tourism: solving the data problem to boost tourism and create better cities

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By Steven McGinty

On 22 March, I attended ‘Smarter Tourism: Shaping Glasgow’s Data Plan’, an event held as part of DataFest 2017, a week-long festival of data innovation with events hosted across Scotland.

Daniel MacIntyre, from Glasgow City Marketing Bureau (the city’s official marketing organisation), opened the event by highlighting Glasgow’s ambitious target of increasing visitor numbers from two million to three million by 2023.

To achieve this goal, Mr MacIntyre explained that the city would be looking to develop a city data plan, which would outline how the city should use data to solve its challenges and to provide a better experience for tourists.

In many ways, Glasgow’s tourism goal set the context for the presentations that followed, providing the attendees – who included professionals from the technology and tourism sectors, as well as academia and local government – with an understanding of the city’s data needs and how it could be used.

Identifying the problem

From very early on, there was a consensus in the room that tourism bodies have to identify their problems before seeking out data.

A key challenge for Glasgow, Mr MacIntyre explained, was a lack of real time data. Much of the data available to the city’s marketing bureau was historic (sometimes three years old), and gathered through passenger or visitor experience surveys. It was clear that Mr MacIntrye felt that this approach was rather limiting in the 21st century, highlighting that businesses, including restaurants, attractions, and transport providers were all collecting data, and if marketing authorities could work in collaboration and share this data, it could bring a number of benefits.

In essence, Mr MacIntyre saw Glasgow using data in two ways. Firstly, to provide a range of insights, which could support decision making in destination monitoring, development, and marketing. For instance, having data on refuse collection could help ensure timely collections and cleaner streets. A greater understanding of restaurant, bar, and event attendances could help develop Glasgow’s £5.4 million a year night time economy by producing more informed licensing policies. And the effectiveness of the city’s marketing could be improved by capturing insights from social media data, creating more targeted campaigns.

Secondly, data could be used to monitor or evaluate events. For example, the impact of sporting events such as Champions League matches – which increase visitor numbers to Glasgow and provide an economic boost to the city – could be far better understood.

Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC)

One potential solution to Glasgow City Marketing Bureau’s need for data may be organisations such as the Urban Big Data Centre.

Keith Dingwall, Senior Business Manager for the UBDC, explained that the centre supports researchers, policymakers, businesses, third sector organisations, and citizens by providing access to a wide variety of urban data. Example datasets include: housing; health and social care data; transport data; geospatial data; and physical data.

The UBCD is also involved in a number of projects, including the integrated Multimedia City Data (iMCD) project. One interesting aspect of this work involved the extraction of Glasgow-related data streams from multiple online sources, particularly Twitter. The data covers a one year period (1 Dec 2015 – 30 Nov 2015) and could provide insights into the behaviour of citizens or their reaction to particular events; all of which, could be potentially useful for tourism bodies.

Predictive analytics

Predictive analytics, i.e. the combination of data and statistical techniques to make predictions about future events, was a major theme of the day.

Faical Allou, Business Development Manager at Skyscanner, and Dr John Wilson, Senior Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde, presented their Predictive Analytics for Tourism project, which attempted to predict future hotel occupancy rates for Glasgow using travel data from Glasgow and Edinburgh airport.

Glasgow City Marketing Bureau also collaborated on the project – which is not too surprising as there a number of useful applications for travel data, including helping businesses respond better to changing events, understanding the travel patterns of visitors to Glasgow, and recommending personalised products and services that enhance the traveller’s experience (increasing visitor spending in the city).

However, Dr Wilson advised caution, explaining that although patterns could be identified from the data (including spikes in occupancy rates), there were limitations due to the low number of datasets available. In addition, one delegate, highlighted a ‘data gap’, suggesting that the data didn’t cover travellers who flew into Glasgow or Edinburgh but then made onward journeys to other cities.

Uber

Technology-enabled transport company, Uber, has been very successful at using data to provide a more customer oriented service. Although much of Uber’s growth has come from its core app – which allows users to hire a taxi service – they are also introducing innovative new services and integrating their app into platforms such as Google Maps, making it easier for customers to request taxi services.

And in some locations, whilst Uber users are travelling, they will receive local maps, as well as information on nearby eateries through their UberEATS app.

Uber Movement, an initiative which provides access to the anonymised data of over two billion urban trips, has the potential to improve urban planning in cities. It includes data which helps tourism officials, city planners, policymakers and citizens understand the impact of rush hours, events, and road closures in their city.

Chris Yiu, General Manager at Uber, highlighted that people lose weeks of their lives waiting in traffic jams. He suggested that the future of urban travel will involve a combination of good public transport services and car sharing services, such as uberPOOL (an app which allows the user to find local people who are going in their direction), providing the first and last mile of journeys.

Final thoughts

The event was a great opportunity to find out about the data challenges for tourism bodies, as well as initiatives that could potentially provide solutions.

Although a number of interesting issues were raised throughout the day, two key points kept coming to the forefront. These were:

  1. The need to clarify problems and outcomes – Many felt it was important that cities identified the challenges they were looking to address. This could be looked at in many ways, from addressing the need for more real-time data, to a more outcome-based approach, such as the need to achieve a 20% reduction in traffic congestion.
  2. Industry collaboration – Much of a city’s valuable data is held by private sector organisations. It’s therefore important that cities (and their tourism bodies) encourage collaboration for the mutual benefit of all partners involved. Achieving a proposition that provides value to industry will be key to achieving smarter tourism for cities.

Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in public and social policy are interesting our research team. If you enjoyed this article, you may also be interested in: 

From data to intelligence and improvement – what cutting edge councils are doing in the UK

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By Steven McGinty

Data has the potential to revolutionise the delivery of local services. Just like the private sector – where organisations such as Amazon and Facebook have leveraged user data – local councils have the opportunity to reap significant benefits from analysing their vast silos of data. Improving efficiencies, increasing levels of transparency, and providing services which better meet people’s needs, are just some of the potential benefits.

Although many councils are still at the early stages of utilising their data, some are innovating and introducing successful data initiatives.

Wise Councils

In November 2016, the charity NESTA published a report highlighting the most ‘pioneering’ uses of data in local government. The report emphasised that most local services would benefit from data analysis and that a ‘problem-oriented’ approach is required to generate insights that have an impact on services. The case studies included:

Kent County Council

Kent County Council (KCC), alongside Kent’s seven Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), have created the Kent Integrated Dataset (KID) – one of the largest health and care databases in the UK, covering the records of 1.5 million people. The core requirement of the dataset was to link data from multiple sources to a particular individual, i.e. that information held about a person in hospital, should also be linked to records held by other public bodies such as GPs or the police.

This integrated dataset has enabled the council to run sophisticated data analysis, helping them to evaluate the effectiveness of services and to inform decisions on where to locate services. For example, Kent’s Public Health team investigated the impact of home safety visits by Kent Fire and Rescue Service (KFRS) on attendances at accident and emergency services (A&E). The data suggested that home safety visits did not have a significant impact on an individual’s attendance at A&E.

Leeds City Council

Leeds City Council have focused their efforts on supporting open innovation – the concept that good ideas may come from outside an organisation. This involved the initiatives:

  • Data Mill North (DMN) – this collaborative project between the city council and private sector is the city’s open data portal (growing from 50 datasets in 2014 to over 300 data sets, in over 40 different organisations). To encourage a culture change, Leeds City Council introduced an ‘open by default’ policy in November 2015, requiring all employees to make data available to the public. A number of products have been developed from data published on DMN, including StreetWise.life, which provides local information online, such as hospital locations, road accidents, and incidents of crime.
  • Innovation Labs – the city has introduced a series of events that bring together local developers and ‘civic enthusiasts’ to tackle public policy problems. Leeds City Council has also provided funding, allowing some ideas to be developed into prototypes. For example, the waste innovation lab created the app, Leeds Bins, which informs residents which days their bins should be put out for collection.

Newcastle City Council

Newcastle City Council have taken a data-led approach to the redesign of their children’s services. The Family Insights Programme (FIP) used data analysis to better understand the demand and expenditure patterns in the children’s social care system. Its aim was to use this insight to support the redesign of services and to reduce the city’s high re-referrals and the number of children becoming looked-after.

The FIP uses data in three different ways:

  • Grouping families by need – The council have undertaken cluster analysis to identify common grouping of concerning behaviours, such as a child’s challenging behaviour or risk of physical abuse. When a child is referred to long term social work, senior social workers analyse the concerning behaviours of the case, and then make a referral to a specialist social work unit. Since introducing this data-led approach, social work units have been organised based on needs and concerning behaviours. This has resulted in social workers becoming specialists in supporting particular needs and behaviours, providing greater expertise in the management of cases.
  • Embedding data analysts – Each social work unit has an embedded data analyst, who works alongside social workers. Their role is to test what works, as well as providing insights into common patterns for families.
  • Enabling intelligent case management – Social workers have access to ChildSat, a tool which social workers use to help manage their cases. It also has the capability to monitor the performance of individual social work units.

Investing in data

Tom Symons, principal researcher in government innovation at Nesta, has suggested that councils need support from central government if they are to accelerate their use of data. He’s suggested that £4 million – just £1% of the Government Digital Service (GDS) budget – is spent on pilot schemes to embed data specialists into councils.

Mr Symons has also proposed that all combined authorities should develop Offices of Data Analytics, to support data analysis across counties. Over the past few months, Nesta has been working on this idea with the Greater London Authority, and a number of London boroughs, to tackle the problem of unlicensed HMOs (Houses in Multiple Occupation). Early insights highlight that data analytics could be used to show that new services would provide value for money.

Final thoughts  

After successive years of cuts, there has never been a greater need for adopting a data-led approach. Although there are undoubtedly challenges in using council data – including changing a culture where data sharing is not the norm, and data protection – the above examples highlight that overcoming these challenges is achievable, and that data analysis can be used to bring benefits to local councils.

Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in public and social policy are interesting our research team. If you found this article interesting, you may also like to read our other digital articles. 

How data and smart city infrastructure can support transport planning

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Image from Flickr user JustGrimes, licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons License

Image from Flickr user JustGrimes, licensed under Creative Commons

By Morwen Johnson

Efficient transport is vital to the smooth running of businesses and everyday life in a city. The emergence of new technologies is rapidly transforming both traffic management systems and the analysis of travel activity and transport modelling.

At the Open Data Awards last week, the Greater London Authority won the Open Data Publisher Award, with the opening up of Transport for London’s data infrastructure being highlighted as an example of how whole systems thinking can create an ecosystem and value chain supported by data.

Smart transport solutions

Within the UK, initiatives such as the Future Cities Demonstrator (based in Glasgow) and the Catapult Centres, both established by Innovate UK (fomerly the Technology Strategy Board), are exploring innovative ways to use technology and data to make life in cities safer, smarter and more sustainable. The UK Government has also continued its support with its announcement in the March 2015 budget of new funding to support the technology market around the Internet of Things.

Smart solutions involve data gathering, real-time processing, data analytics and visualisation. Using data ultimately aims to support better decision and enable innovation. New technologies and availability of data, and the near-universal uptake of mobile devices, therefore offers an opportunity to innovate in order to make our urban areas more adaptive and resilient.

‘Intelligent mobility’ is a sector of the wider transport industry which is predicted to be worth around £900 billion a year globally by 2025. A recent report suggested however that the UK faces major transport-related data gaps which limit its ability to take advantage of this market. In some cases this relates to datasets which do not yet exist at all in the UK, and in other cases to datasets which exist only in ‘silos’ or which are not yet open or freely available.

Data supports transport planning

Transport for London has allowed their data, which has been collected from Oyster Smart Card use, to be open and available to developers to create a range of Apps which allow the public access to travel information, much of it real-time.

Many councils across the UK are using data to improve journey planning in a similar way. The itravelsmart App from Cheshire West & Chester Council won the Best Smarter Travel App award at this year’s Smarter Travel Awards for a tool that integrates travel information, interactive maps and public transport timetables.

At a city-wide level, using an intelligent transport system can also help improve capacity and manage traffic flows. Cities such as Amsterdam, have been leading the way in using open data to support transport planning – back in 2012 Amsterdam won the World Smart Cities Awards 2012 with its Open Data Program for transport and mobility. Since March 2012, the city’s department for Infrastructure, Traffic and Transportation (DIVV) has made available all its data on traffic and transportation to interested parties. Data about parking (tariffs, availability, time), taxi stands, cyclepaths, and stops for touring cars are public now, as well as real-time information on traffic jams on main roads around the city.

The Urban Big Data Centre was established by the UK Economic and Social Research Council to address social, economic and environmental challenges facing cities. It launched in 2014 and focuses on methods and technologies to manage, link and analyse multi-sectoral urban Big Data, and to demonstrate the use of such information, for example in transport planning.

From smarter data to smarter decisions

To make a city smart and to use smart infrastructure, it’s vital that the transport system functions to the best of its ability. By utilising data from a variety of sources, such as open transport data, sensor data, crowdsourcing and other social media sources, it seems there is potential for a huge improvement in efficiency by increasing integration.

Encouraging modal shift can also have an impact on environmental problems, such as pollution and carbon emissions. Using data, whether it is open data or big data, can help inform evidence-based decision-making in these important policy areas.

We’ve written a briefing on the emerging use of big data and open data in transport planning, including case studies from the literature.

Idox has recently announced its acquisition of Cloud Amber Ltd, a leading supplier of integrated transport solutions to local authorities.

The Idox Knowledge Exchange are also hosting a Big Data Knowledge Transfer Project in collaboration with Salford University.

What’s happening to make big data use a reality in health and social care?

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data-stream-shutterstock_croppedBy Steven McGinty

At the beginning of the year, NHS Director Tim Kelsey described the adoption of new technologies in the NHS as a ‘moral obligation’. He argued that the gaps in knowledge are so wide and so dangerous that they were putting lives at stake.  It’s therefore no surprise that the UK Government, the NHS, and local governments have all been looking at ways to better understand the health and social care environment.

The effective use of ‘big data’ techniques is said to be key to this understanding. Big data has many definitions but industry analysts Gartner define it as:

“high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing for enhanced insight and decision making”

However, if health and social care is to make better use of its data, it’s important that an effective infrastructure is in place. As a result, changes have been made to legislation and a number of initiatives introduced.

Why is it important to know about big data in health and social care?

The effective use of data in health and social care is a key policy aim of the current government (and will most likely continue under future governments).  The changes that have been made so far have had a significant impact on the policies and practices of health and social care organisations. The vast majority focus on information sharing, in particular how organisations share data and who they share data with.

What changes have been made to support big data?

Care.data

This was the most ambitious programme introduced by NHS England. It was developed by the Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) and set out to link the medical records of GP practices with hospitals at a national level. It was expected that datasets from GPs’ records and hospital records would be linked using an identifier such as an NHS number or a person’s date of birth. However, due to concerns raised by the public, particularly in regards to privacy, the programme was delayed. The programme has now resumed but new safeguards have been introduced, such as the commissioning of an advisory board and the ‘opt out’ provision, where patients can opt out from having their data used for anything other than their direct care.

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 and the Care Act 2014

The Acts have both introduced provisions that impact on data. For instance, the Health and Social Care Act enshrines in law the ability of the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) to collect and process confidential personal data. In addition, the Care Act clarifies the position of the Health and Social Care Act by ensuring that the HSCIC doesn’t distribute data unless it’s part of the provision of health and social care or the promotion of health.

Centre of Excellence for Information Sharing

This initiative came from the ‘Improving Information Sharing and Management (IISaM) project’, a joint initiative between Bradford Metropolitan District Council, Leicestershire County Council and the 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester. The centre has been set up to help understand the barriers to information sharing and influence national policy. They hope to achieve these goals through the use of case studies, blogs, the development of toolkits, and any other forms of shared learning. The centre has already published some interesting case studies including the Hampshire Health Record (HHR) and Leicestershire County Council’s Children and Young People’s Service (CYPS) approach to communicating how they deal with data.

These are just some of the steps that have been taken to make sure 2015 is the year of big data. However, if real progress is to be made it’s going to require more than top down leadership and headline grabbing statements. It’s going to require all health and social care organisations to take responsibility and work through their barriers to information sharing.

Further reading

Read our other recent blogs on health and social care:

Become a member of the Idox Information Service now, to access a wealth of further information on health and social care including best practice and commentary. Contact us for more details.

Smart cities … treading the line between the possible, the probable and the desirable

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By Morwen Johnson

Sometimes it feels like every city in the world is now claiming to be ‘smart’. Our research team regularly add new reports on the topic to our database. And with a policy agenda riding on the back of a multi-billion pound global industry, the positivist rhetoric around smart cities can seem overwhelming.

We’ve blogged before about the disconnect between what surveys suggest the public values in terms of quality of life in urban areas, and what smart cities are investing in. And last week I attended a conference in Glasgow ‘Designing smart cities: opportunities and regulatory challenges’ which refreshingly brought together a multi-disciplinary audience to look at smart cities in a more critical light.

The conference was rich and wide-ranging – too broad for me to try and summarise the discussions. Instead here are some reflections on the challenges which need to be explored.

Every smart city is a surveillance city

Look in any smart city prospectus or funding announcement and you’ll find mention of how data will be ‘managed’, ‘captured’, ‘monitored’, ‘shared’, ‘analysed’, ‘aggregated’, ‘interrogated’ etc. And this is inevitably presented as a benign activity happening for the common good, improving efficiency, saving money and making life better.

As David Murakami Wood pointed out at the conference however, this means that every smart city is by necessity a surveillance city – even if policymakers and stakeholders are reluctant to admit this.

Public debate is failing to keep up with the pace of change

Even for someone who takes a keen interest in urbanism and the built environment, any description of smart cities can risk leaving you feeling like a techno-illiterate dinosaur. It’s clear that there is also a huge amount of hype around the construction (or retrofitting) of smart cities – with vested interests keen to promote a positive message.

Do we really understand the possibilities being opened up when we embed technology in our urban infrastructure? And more importantly, what are the ethical questions raised around sharing and exploiting data? The pace of the development and rollout of new technologies within our urban environments seems to be running ahead of the desirable cycle of reflection and critique.

An interesting point was also made about language – and whether experts, technologists and policymakers need to adjust their use of language and jargon, in order for discussion about smart cities to be inclusive. Ubicomp … augmented reality … the Internet of Things … even the Cloud – how can the public give informed consent to participating in the smart city if the language used obscures and obfuscates what is happening with their data?

Where can we have a voice in the data city?

Following on from this point, cities are not ends in themselves – to be successful they must serve the interests and needs of the people who live, work and visit them. An interesting strand of the conference discussion considered what a bottom-up approach to smart cities would look like.

Alison Powell highlighted that there’s been a shift from seeing people as citizens to treating them as ‘citizen consumers’ – I’d add that within the built environment, this goes hand-in-hand with the commercialisation and privatisation of public space – and this has profound implications around questions of inclusion/exclusion. And also where power and decision-making sits – and who is profiting.

Although some general examples of community participation projects were mentioned during the conference, these didn’t seem to address the question of how ‘people’ can engage with smart cities. Not as problems to be managed or controlled – or as passive suppliers of data to sensors – but as creative and active participants.

Conclusion

I left the conference wondering where society is heading and how we, the Knowledge Exchange, can support our members in local government and the third sector to understand the extensive opportunities and implications of smart cities. We see a key part of our mission to be horizon scanning – and our briefings for members focus on drawing together analysis, emerging evidence and case studies.

Not all towns or cities have the resources, investment or desire to lead the way in technological innovation. But the challenge of bridging the gap between professionals and their vision and understanding of smart cities, and people in communities, is a universal one.

As William Gibson observed: “The future is already here … it’s just not very evenly distributed”.

 

The Idox Information Service can give you access to a wealth of further information on smart cities or public participation. To find out more on how to become a member, contact us.

Our reading list prepared for last autumn’s Annual UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference looks at some recent literature on smart cities.

The conference Designing smart cities: opportunities and regulatory challenges was held at the University of Strathclyde on 31 March and 1 April 2015, supported by CREATe and Horizon.

The Idox Group is the leading applications provider to UK local government for core functions relating to land, people and property, such as its market leading planning systems. Over 90% of UK local authorities are now customers. Idox provides public sector organisations with tools to manage information and knowledge, documents, content, business processes and workflow as well as connecting directly with the citizen via the web.

How can the government unlock the potential of big data?

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By Steven McGinty

Last May, the Open Rights Group announced that they were in discussions with the UK Government over their proposals to remove the barriers to data sharing and link up government databases. This would mean that thousands of government databases, containing information such as criminal records and even energy use, could be accessed by local councils, schools, the civil service and the police. It’s hoped that the sharing of data will allow the government to capitalise on big data techniques and provide better and more tailored public services.

However, several issues have been identified that may make widespread government data sharing challenging. These include:

  • a lack of prioritisation by local council and government leaders;
  • concerns over protecting the privacy of citizens;
  • a mistrust of government data handling;
  • the use of different systems and different standards by government bodies.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) reports that from April 2013 to March 2014 there were just over 1500 breaches of the Data Protection Act. Local authorities accounted for 234 of these breaches, coming second only to health organisations, who committed 551 breaches. In the last quarter of the year, the most common offences were disclosing personal information in error (175 incidents) and lost or stolen paperwork (74 incidents).

The ICO has also handed out several high profile fines to organisations in the public sector. For example, North East Lincolnshire Council was fined £80,000 for losing an unencrypted USB stick which held the personal and sensitive data of children. Similarly, Aberdeen City Council were fined £100,000 after a member of their staff accidently uploaded documents onto the internet, including personal information about social care cases.

The Improvement and Development Agency (I&DeA) released a report in 2010 on the role of data sharing in tackling worklessness. The report findings, still relevant today, highlighted the importance of developing data sharing systems that:

  • build in the need for data sharing into the design;
  • adopt clear and consistent definitions;
  • respect the privacy of individuals;
  • ensure data integrity.

Further, the report explained how anonymised personal data can be used to share data legally. For example, anonymised data (data which has had its identifiable information removed), has been used increasingly to provide local analysis across a number of areas, including health, crime and employment. Some examples include Eastleigh Ambition, which uses data to target and support vulnerable families, and Newham Council, who use a range of data, including Disability Living Allowance information to improve their understanding of changing populations and needs.

Working in partnership and using technological innovations has also provided solutions for data sharing issues. For instance, the Tyne and Wear City Strategy Partnership was established to purchase a shared customer tracking system to facilitate data sharing. The system has been rolled out in a variety of ways across the North East of England, with partners helping to make the system more user friendly. The system has been designed to ensure that consent is built in whenever data is shared. Users also have different levels of access depending on their organisation and on what they ‘need to know’, to ensure compliance with the Data Protection Act.

Although there have been some high profile cases of government data mishandling, it’s clear that data sharing will continue to increase, particularly as all levels of government look for more targeted services. Government and society will have to come to an agreement on how this should be done.

 

Further reading:

Piloting the use of ‘real time data’ to help decisionmakers – the Right Here, Right Now project

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Lynn Naven is from the Glasgow Centre for Population Health and recently took on the role of Project Manager of the ‘Right Here, Right Now’ project. The project aimed to capture, in real time, people’s lived experiences amidst rapid social and economic change, in order to inform policymaking and enable early action. This presentation outlines the rationale behind the project, the findings from the first phase of research and the scope of phase two.

Big challenges – and rewards – for Big Data in the third sector

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Image from Flickr user JustGrimes, licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons License

Image from Flickr user JustGrimes, licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons License

By Stephen Lochore

‘Big data’ is big news! Along with its close relative ‘open data’, it’s part of the latest thinking about how managing information can help bring about better services. The rough idea is to use new technology and approaches to understand, analyse, link and where possible share large complex datasets to generate new insights and improve decisions.

In 2012, the UK government identified big data as one of eight ‘great technologies’ that support science and business, and since then has invested in a range of big data initiatives through the UK Research Councils. This includes the ESRC’s Big Data Network, whose current phase involves establishing four academic research centres to make data from local government and business more accessible.

In Scotland, an industry-led data lab, backed by public funding, is due to open late in 2014 to develop new data science capabilities.

Most of the focus has been on private sector innovation, higher education research capabilities and public sector datasets. Little has been said about the third or voluntary sector, which is surprising:

  • Third sector organisations provide a wide range of services – policymakers need to understand the sector’s structure and capabilities;
  • Many third sector organisations gather information that could help improve the design and delivery of services – they work directly with local communities including vulnerable groups who can be reluctant to engage in formal consultations.

Fortunately, there are a few initiatives which are looking at these issues.

On Monday 13 October I went to the first of a series of workshops organised by Scottish Universities Insight Institute into the opportunities and challenges of using data for Scotland’s third sector organisations.

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We’re hiring! Data Scientist vacancy at The Knowledge Exchange

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DARPA_Big_Data

Alex Thomas

The Knowledge Exchange is advertising for a Data Scientist as part of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Salford. The role will examine the applicability of data mining techniques to big data held within Knowledge Exchange and Idox products including The Information Service.

The Information Service holds a unique collection of over 40 years of UK public sector research, strategy and policy. Such a collection offers rich and unique potential for sentiment analysis of the shifts and trends in public sector research since the 1970s. Anonymised user log-data from the Information Service could also be analysed to provide an unparalleled view of how the public sector uses and accesses research. This has far-reaching implications for academic research impact and funding. Continue reading →