Open Government Action Plan commitment 3: improving how we share information

1

Publish all datasets underpinning the National Performance Framework on statistics.gov.scot

The National Performance Framework measures and keeps track of how Scotland is performing in relation to the Scottish Government's purpose and national outcomes.

The government's purpose is to focus on creating a more successful country with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish through increased wellbeing, and sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

Although we do not yet have data for some of the indicators which are used to report progress in the National Performance Framework indicators, we have developed an approach for publishing datasets and their relevant equalities data breakdowns on the National Performance Framework onto our Official Statistics Open Data Publishing Platform.   We have agreed this approach with the analysts responsible for the National Performance Framework and we have delivered training to the analysts.   

We do not envisage this being a substantial piece of work. We anticipate all available background datasets which underpin the National Performance Framework will be published onto statistics.gov.scot by the end of 2019. 

🙂 On track

2

Assess the suitability of all official statistics in the Scottish Government’s publication schedule for publication on statistics.gov.scot 

The Scottish Government publishes a  12 month calendar  of its forthcoming statistical releases in spreadsheet format; this includes both Official and National Statistics publications; this is in line with the requirements of the  Code of Practice for Statistics.

We are developing an approach to consult with all Official Statistics producers in Scottish Government and relevant agencies to ask them to report on the appropriateness of publishing their statistics as open data on statistics.gov.scot.  

As at mid-August 2019, we have yet to achieve this milestone, but we do not feel this will be an especially onerous exercise and we intend to conduct it later in 2019.  Once this collection is set up we intend to review annually.

🔴Delayed

3

Increase the number of datasets available for small areas (such as data zone and intermediate zone levels)

Since the launch of Scotland’s Open Government Action Plan 2018-2020 on 31 January 2019, we have published sub council level data on the number of deaths – specifically at 2011 Intermediate zone and data zone level.

We intend to publish a number of datasets which are used to produce the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) as linked open data at data zone level when it is published in late 2019 and we are collaborating with analysts who work in this area to ensure that these datasets are published.

We are keen to identify more uses of small area data.  We are working across business areas in Scottish Government and with partners such as the Improvement Service to identify and prioritise small area data sets which would be published on statistics.gov.scot.  These will be assessed on the basis of policy and topic coverage and user need.

🙂 On track

4

Develop statistics.gov.scot as a tool for publishing public sector management information

We have met with Scottish Government procurement colleagues who are keen to publish contractual expenditure data onto statistics.gov.scot.  We can currently publish these datasets as flat files, from which our colleagues are keen to produce interactive apps which illustrate expenditure.  We are working with our open data publishing contractors to develop improvements in the publishing system so that this type of data can be more easily published as 5* linked open data.    This will ultimately determine the success as how well we achieve this milestone.  We are also in discussions with Transport Scotland around publishing vehicle charging data on statistics.gov.scot. 

We have already published data on energy performance certificates as flat files on statistics.gov.scot, and these data are kept regularly up to date.

🙂 On track

5

Use open data to create publicly available infographics and interactive apps.

We have recently delivered training for analysts to produce visualisations and apps and profiles directly from our open data portal, statistics.gov.scot.   We asked analysts to identify a business need for building products from statistics.gov.scot.  We ran a follow-up event in which analysts learnt from each other when developing products from statistics.gov.scot.  The intention is to build capacity and skills across data producers in the Scottish Government and elsewhere. There are 6 products in progress.   A number of apps have now been built directly using data from statistics.gov.scot – for example the Scottish Household Survey app

🙂 On track

As mentioned above, we have recently delivered training for analysts to produce visualisations and apps and profiles directly from our open data portal, statistics.gov.scot.    

The Scottish Government sits on the Profiles Collaboration Group, which is represented by a number of public sector organisations who produce local area profiles.  We encourage people building profiles to use common standards and definitions, to allow easier reuse of data and discoverability. 

Users of official statistics data often need data from many sources, and find it both frustrating and time consuming to have to search for data across multiple portals/websites, and then process into a consistent format ready for analysis.  We are working with other organisations such as NHS Scotland and DWP to automatically harvest their data across from their open data portals using APIs onto statistics.gov.scot.  This means that data only need to be uploaded once, and the data can be reused.   This allows us to meet user needs by letting them get their hands on data about Scotland, covering diverse topic areas and in a consistent format on statistics.gov.scot. At the same time, it minimises the burden on teams of data loaders in other organisations by only requiring them to publish to one data portal, for which they have internal support.  We have almost completed a successful pilot study using a number of care home datasets which have been initially produced by NHS Scotland.  

We are working with data suppliers to improve their metadata when they produce new datasets or when existing datasets are being updated.    We are working with data owners to illustrate examples of good practice in producing metadata, and encouraging users to reuse existing metadata which they have already published in other publications.  So far, the uptake of the metadata has been encouraging. 

We will be conducting a systematic review of metadata in all datasets and we will working with data providers to ensure that the metadata are of sufficient quality, and highlighting examples of good practice to users.     We ask users to include the following details as part of their metadata.    

• Description of dataset
• Confidentiality Policy
• Quality Management
• Accuracy and Reliability
• Coherence and Comparability
• Accessibility and Clarity
• Relevance
• Timeliness and Punctuality
• Revisions

They should be consistent with common data standards and protocols wherever possible. This allows for better interpretation and reusability of data.

We have not yet started the systematic metadata review but this might take place in conjunction with the assessment of Official Statistics for publishing on statistics.gov.scot as discussed above.

On 26 April 2019, the Scottish Government chaired a roundtable meeting on Open Data and Data Literacy. This featured over 30 representatives from central and local government, the private sector, academia, the third sector and community groups and we discussed the challenges people are facing with data literacy and in accessing open data.  This will help shape how we make our data more discoverable and useable going forward.   We have published minutes from the meeting along with a short blog  https://blogs.gov.scot/open-government-partnership/2019/06/19/roundtable-on-open-data-and-data-literacy/.  

Following on from this meeting, we are setting up a small working group with community groups and local authority representatives to discuss the opportunities of using, accessing and understanding data for empowering communities at a local level for decision making.  The aims of this group is to:

• see how we can inform data needs at a community level
• see what we can best do to understand the barriers to data literacy
• establish what the drivers for these are from a top-down and community level
• flesh out more definitive case studies

More broadly, we have continued to promote open data at events such as DataFest, the Gathering and the Scottish Household Survey user day.  For example, these have included workshops such as “Getting your hands on data about Scotland”, which includes demonstrations of our open data platform so that people can find out more about their local area.