Bookmark us at esd.org.uk/placescommunity

Well the summer has arrived (at last) and with it scorching hot data sets delivered in Places (ouch sorry for that I had just could not resist making the summer-y connection!)  Please see this link to issue #5 of DataSource Summer 2010.

By now you would have heard of the Transparency agenda – ah, but do you really know what it means? We summarise its objectives and time delivery plans on pages 4 and 5.

As part of our on-going look at the Pan Government Agreement suppliers, in this issue Ordnance Survey presents some of their mapping products and a case study on their client the Environment Agency on pages 6 and 7.

On page 3 you will read a summary of the new services GSE has introduced in the Places Community Programme – including the new windows for Local Spending Reports and Housing and Planning View. Learn more about their datasets and our improved mapping facility to enable you to do clever ‘whizzy mapping’ things with your data for easy-to-understand reporting on page 9.

As you would expect with this being a Places Community newsletter, we have dedicated the majority of pages in this issue to all the work achieved over the past six months and there is a lot to tell you about.

We start with an interview with Anthony Campbell-Butler on page 10. Anthony heads up the Data Service Management Team and we put him under the spotlight and ask the question that might make some people wither and wilt… ‘So what is it that you actually do?’

In addition to the Local Spending Reports and our improved mapping facility, our biggest success of the summer is the launch of the Housing and Planning View on pages 12 – 13. We show you where to start and if you don’t have an interest in using the data for work, go and take a look at it even if it’s only to find out about the housing prices in your area!

There is a consultation underway for the new Indices of Deprivation report scheduled for 2011, and in the meantime we have useful links to other new associated datasets on page 14.

Across government there is a web rationalisation programme going on and one web site being considered is our Floor Targets Interactive. First introduced in 2000 as the social equivalent of the Minimum Wage, the web content has developed over the years to what it is today. However with almost 75% of the same data being available in the Places Analysis Tool (PAT), it is our plan to migrate FTI users over to PAT by the end of September. Do you have an opinion? If you do then let us know by 31 August – see page 15 for more details.

Neighbourhood Statistics, a division of the Office for National Statistics launched Local Profiles in March, see page 16, and an update on how your IT department can get involved in the NeSS Data Exchange.

Finally, the Places Community five-star highlighter pen has proved to be so popular with readers since we launched in September 2008 that we are down to our last 150. To be sure that you become a proud owner of this coveted item just complete our Places mini-survey (see back page for link). Once gone they cannot be re-ordered!

Enjoy the lazy-days of summer and I’ll see you again later in the year.

Best wishes,
Louise Day
Programme Manager, Places Community
Communities and Local Government