Jo Kent

Congratulations to Nick Hill and all the speakers on a brilliant #OpenSource week.   One of the ongoing challenges with open source is building the right support wrapper around it, so it was great to hear in the Revs and Bens session about the governance approach and the work on testing data migration.   I found the potential of an open source social care system particularly exciting — with the learning to not simply replicate existing off‑the‑shelf products, but taking the opportunity to design from the ground up with users for a better result.   The State of Digital Local Government highlights the issue of market concentration across the sector, and open source is one response. Three of the products featured this week began through #LocalDigital funding, and it was fantastic to see how far they’ve developed. At last week’s LGR DDAT network, we focused on unifying customer experience — and all three councils had implemented open source websites / content management systems. We have a case study launching soon sharing the learning of a councils implementation of https://lnkd.in/e8aFZr5t   What struck me in that discussion is how much #LGR can unlock. Beyond structural change, it provides a moment to step back and redesign technology strategy: consolidate platforms, reduce duplication, modernise legacy, and create shared standards that improve the experience for residents and staff. Open source sits perfectly within that ambition — offering flexibility, transparency, and long‑term sustainability.   I’d encourage anyone interested to watch the recordings. Madeline Hoskin Jonathan Stephenson Laura McCartney Clare Evans Mark de Bernhardt Lane Jon McGinty Keith Macdonald

6

2 Comments

Would you like your archive’s collections to feature in a new toolkit which will help young people understand the career opportunities within archives? To be considered, submit up to 3 digital images of records (any type from any period on any topic are welcome!) Must be high-resolution digital images Archives using the toolkit must have permission to use the images (inc. printing them for school workshops) Provide credit line as ‘Archive service name/copyright holder + catalogue reference’ Submit to [email protected] by Wednesday 25 March

16

After testing with a small sample, data requests for 2024/2025 public library data will be going out to all UK library services this weekend. Will be accompanied by a small blog post and data samples 🙂 Will also be openly sharing data returns as they come in.

4

3 Comments

Gaining plenty of learnings from requesting Freedom of Information from all public library services (https://lnkd.in/e_pU3379) Firstly, generally brilliant responses from services. Merton replied the next day with all the data. Derby replied quickly and said it cost them £14.58 (presumably something like an hour). On the other end of the scale, one service said it'd take well over 18 hours to do so they couldn't possibly, and because the request was for a data format they'd have to manually type all the data into a spreadsheet, which would take ages. They could maybe do some high level figures but even that would take a long time to type out so they'd have a think about it. It was also difficult to make the request as clear as possible to avoid back and forth with services. When it gets misunderstood it's a pain! Libraries using the Wales combined system have a National data team, which is good. But that team misinterpreted asking for counts of reservations by pickup library to be asking for reservations by item library, which wouldn't really make sense. So all the libraries have come back with that query...except Cardiff who said the National Data Team couldn't provide the data so they've refused the request 🙃 But that'll get sorted out. Earlier today 'Freedom of Information: A practical guidebook' by Martin Rosenbaum arrived in the post, and it looks great. Here's a great writeup of a recent presentation he gave to the ICO on 20 years experience of FOI. The ‘tale of two giraffes’ seems very familiar. https://lnkd.in/etnJXc2D

1

2 Comments

📣 Inviting Expressions of Interest The East of England SDE welcomes proposals for data projects that: ✅ Use de-identified NHS data from the region ✅ Need secure space for 'BYO data' ✅ Reuse public datasets We look forward to supporting your research. #SupportingResearch #PoweredByData

13

Arts Council England has published an incredibly useful 'Responsible AI Practical Toolkit', designed to support you in taking a thoughtful and collaborative approach to building AI policies and practices within your organisation: https://lnkd.in/eyYEqA7c The toolkit and report were developed and written by Oonagh Murphy and The New Technologies and Innovation Team at ACE. This is a really useful toolkit to use alongside other resources, like the Arts Marketing Association's Example AI Policy: https://lnkd.in/ebPFfUJs #AI #MuseTech #ArtsDigital #ArtsAI

7

A useful update from Government Digital Service's Alasdair Hewitt on progress towards ‘Designing public services that work for everyone’. The key themes arising from the research conducted to date were: • The need for more practical, real-world blueprints and guidance, not just principles  . • A desire for shared language around #DigitalExclusion. • The importance of case studies that reflect complex, overlapping needs. More info; and planned next steps, here: ⤵ https://lnkd.in/eVxWpgtN

2

A year ago, GOV.UK completed its move from Universal Analytics to GA4, a HUGE shift for any large scale public platform. Now the team’s reflecting on what that first year has taught them from using BigQuery to unlock deeper insights, to building a sustainable support model for more than 1,500 analysts across government. Some key takeaways that stood out for me: 💪🏽 GA4 alone doesn’t meet complex government needs alone combining with BigQuery enables moreflexibility and powerful analysis 🧐Investing early in quality data tinkering and upskilling has paid off in stability, capability, and confidence. 🧏The team’s semantic layer work is a great model for making data more transparent, accessible, and user-friendly for less technical teams (e.g. Comms!) 🔍Treating analytics as a living system that’s continually maintained, monitored, and improved ensures GA4 delivers more actionable insights for policy and service design. It’s a thoughtful, practical read for anyone using (or planning to use) GA4, or looking to make more from their data. 👏 Read the full post on the GDS blog 👇

1

1 Comment

Member News ⬇️ Government Digital and Data has launched a new User Research course, designed to help teams understand user needs, run effective research sessions, and deliver better public services through evidence-based design. https://buff.ly/2pabRtl

1

We kept hearing from policy analysts that finding relevant UK government datasets was taking entire days of manual work. For policy analysts who need to build comprehensive evidence bases for policy recommendations. The Data.gov.uk Scraper automates the discovery of government datasets across all departments. It extracts metadata, publisher information, download links, and contact details, processing hundreds of datasets simultaneously instead of requiring manual page visits. You used to spend days clicking through government portals and copying dataset information. Now you get structured evidence discovery delivered in minutes. This means you can spend time analyzing policy implications instead of hunting for data sources. Filter by department and topic, then set up weekly runs to track new policy relevant datasets. Built on Apify. Link in comments #PolicyAnalysis #GovernmentData #PublicPolicy #DataDiscovery #EvidenceBasedPolicy

Last month, the East Sussex VCSE Alliance launched the findings of research it commissioned on the state of the VCSE sector in East Sussex. The co-funded project was led by the Alliance on behalf of voluntary sector organisations, East Sussex County Council and Sussex Community Foundation. Research was undertaken by Colligo Labs, in partnership with Ideas Alliance. To find out more and to read the full report please visit: https://ow.ly/UwWF50XtVFS

3

Last month, the East Sussex VCSE Alliance launched the findings of research it commissioned on the state of the VCSE sector in East Sussex. The co-funded project was led by the Alliance on behalf of voluntary sector organisations, East Sussex County Council and Sussex Community Foundation. Research was undertaken by Colligo Labs, in partnership with Ideas Alliance. To find out more and to read the full report please visit: https://lnkd.in/eC9fVkGE

1

This week brought two great pieces of news: a journal article acceptance and a conference paper acceptance, from my phd research at the Surrey Institute for People-Centred AI (PAI)! 💥 "Towards Efficient and Accessible Geoparsing of UK Local Media" has been accepted by the Computational Humanities Research journal as part of their Expanding the Toolkit: Large Language Models in Humanities Research call for papers. This is the work I will present as part of Data Methods Initiative's upcoming seminar, on October 1st. "Mapping News Geography: A Computational Framework for Classifying Local Media" will be presented at the CHR conference at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) - University of Luxembourg this December. Both papers explore how computational methods, including LLMs and unsupervised learning, can help us better understand local journalism and media geography. Links, full details, and perhaps even a Substack post to translate my findings coming soon!

34

1 Comment

Jeremy Horne, organizer of the Birmingham (UK) R User Group and founder of the data and analytics consultancy Datacove, recently spoke with the R Consortium about rebuilding Birmingham’s R community as an inclusive space for learning and collaboration. https://lnkd.in/gQvvNm9J #rstats #opensource #community

24

1 Comment

Will the National Data Library deliver for the public sector? The idea that data is one of the UK’s most valuable national assets is no longer contested. What remains to be seen is whether the public sector can organise, govern and use that data in ways that genuinely improve public services, support the NHS, delivers savings and create the conditions for economic growth - without undermining public trust - https://lnkd.in/e89X9cFi

1

Lovely post sharing insight on the work one of our data teams does for Department for Business and Trade 👇👇👇

22

1 Comment

The Scottish Library and Information Council has called for “urgent sustained development” to help secure the future of Scotland’s libraries 👇

3

1 Comment

Lots of great examples here of how councils can take advantage of open source (and sector owned) software to improve user experiences!

2