Thanks again for all of the feedback on those open data posts recently.
Just to recap, I’m helping to organise an open data project for some school pupils within the a London borough in the new year. online pharmacy no prescription One of the big tasks is to flush out all of the data that may be available.
I’m going to be taking subject areas such as crime, health, education/children’s services separately and posting on each of them, using the links and a few ideas that have come from different directions.
My first subject, though, will be on voluntary/civil society activity in a particular borough – in this case, Barnet.
This is a good example of a data-set that isn’t generally available yet in any standardised form, but one that may be of interest to school pupils in mapping some aspects of their locality.
In terms of drawing down experience of a local voluntary sector and open data, Jo Ivens in Brighton has pointed me to the Data for Neighbourhoods and Regeneration site here – a very good set of signposts – along with her own Databridge site.
I started to try and summarise a few good points from this site but ended up finding all of it worth reading – it will prove to be an incredibly useful resource for everybody involved in this schools project. As a taster, I’m shamelessly pinching this video, but the whole site is worth a visit.
I’ve also had a helpful conversation with Ruth Mulandi, CEO of Community Barnet – the local voluntary sector hub – and this is what I found out.
Firstly, they hold most of the data that may be useful within their website Content Management System (the tool that they use to maintain their website).
This includes their directory of community organisations called InBarnet. They have over 1,000 community organisations registered within the borough – around 850 of buy cialis online which are active.
Being able to download this would be very useful, and I’m told that it’s possible, subject to a few caveats:
- The database includes information that individual groups have submitted to CommunityBarnet, but of it is on a ‘not for publication’ basis (in some cases individual phone numbers, contact details etc) and it is subject to some data protection rules
- CommunityBarnet don’t have the resources to regularly run bespoke dumps from this database at no cost– they have one person managing all of this and it’s not a full-time job by any means so additional data work needs to be resourced somehow
- It is an ongoing project to get all of the info about all of the groups that they ideally want to provide, such as what each group does, where, when, what type of service they provide and how etc etc, and to keep this up-to-date for all of the 800-odd active groups on the borough
- The database on the website is searchable, but obviously not all of the data is there (if groups have not provided it yet)
However, leaving aside some of the data that cannot be fully shared with third parties their website gives the undertaking that…
We can provide more specific reports , including:
Type of service provided: one to one support, counselling, after school clubs, befriending, advocacy, day care services, mentoring, training, and many more groups and individual needs served: children, adults, carers, parents, mental health, learning difficulties, cultural and faith specific and many more
Some of these groups provide specific services (lunch clubs, advice, day-centres, etc).
My contact at Community Barnet has offered me any reasonable amount of help in extracting this information in a useable form, but I’ll have to bear in mind the constraints that they are under in doing this.
So, what else is there?
In this document, we see some results from a 2009 survey in which 25% of the active organisations on the database provided a response outlining what they do, who they do it for. Again, Ruth tells me that this is all held within that unified database held within the website management system, so it should be very simple.
I suppose my big question is this: How long before some government agency starts to standardise the collection of data about voluntary sector activity for publication? Mapping these services would surely have some use – not least to the local authorities concerned.
With the ‘Big Society’ as such a priority for the current government, it can’t be too far off, can it?
Many questions here Paul, and many different approaches.
Historically data on your local voluntary sector will have been collected in different ways, usually held by the local infrastructure organisation, which is often but not always a Council for Voluntary Service. Their umbrella body NAVCA (www.navca.org.uk) may have more info about quality and extent of local databases but it will usually be down to whatever resources each CVS – which are all independent and therefore independently funded – has managed to generate for this kind of function.
While sharing information about what organisations are out there is useful, one of the big questions about Open Data is, is it really fair to expect charities to give up their own data for general use? Aren’t they just giving away their competitive advantage? This is particularly important in the context of the Localism Bill and opening up of public services – and increased competition with private sector, or larger providers.
Other sources of data on the voluntary sector are the charity commission (http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk), Guidestar (http://www.guidestar.org.uk/) both of which should be able to generate reports based on geography. Also useful is the National Survey of Charities & Social Enterprises (www.nscse.com) which used a sample frame constructed of charities register, registered Companies Limited by Guarantee, CICs and Industrial & Provident Societies. If you’re trying to get a picture of the non-registered sector, that is much harder, and you will find yourself back with Community Barnet.
More broadly there has been some exploration of open data useful to the sector on http://data.ncvo-vol.org.uk/ – contact David Kane for more on their vol sector Open Data ambitions.
Hope that helps,
Jo
I meant to say also that I would be surprised if there was central government standardisation of vol sector data, in spite of the current interest in open data. Not least because all indications with the recent consultation are that the government is strongly focused on open data in order to stimulate economic growth and activity. My own view is that public data should be used for public service improvements, and social growth should be the focus.
Of course, this depends on what data exactly you have in mind –
Local authorities (currently strongly encouraged to publish spending data over £500) may publish data about who they give grants to and contract with – but often this is limited, and what sector certain commissions or contracts are let to is not often held, so not easily produced without additional work.
Central government departments may publish similar information on their spending, but each department operates a different system to record this. As part of the work on the Compact, we had a long debate with departments about them publishing what percentage of contracts went to third sector organisations under the previous administration and most departments said they didn’t know and would have to set up a new system to find out.
Localism would suggest that central government should have no part in saying what data should be collected, but the ‘tight/loose model’ gives Ministers the ability to decide what should be localised and what should not…!
But what next? Tim Davies did a great assessment of the Autumn Budget statement from an Open Data point of view on his blog at http://www.timdavies.org.uk/2011/12/02/3090/
Thanks Jo.
I saw Tim’s post earlier – it’s very good. His point about ‘cloaked agendas’ may be illustrated by your ‘competitive advantage’ point – some sectors have more transparency foisted upon them than others.
Some sectors are less favoured by governing parties than others.
I wonder if there’s any correlation?
Hey Paul,
There have been past efforts to centralise collection of various forms of local community data – often data that would have been drawn from databases like InBarnet through sector specific databases like the Family Information Systems (FIS) that the last government required local areas to have. The FIS data was standardised, and aggregated through a product called Family Information Directory (FIDy) and then Parent Know How – but the funding for that program was axed by the new government. In the case of the Family Information Directory, a community effort to recreate the national aggregation service out of people’s now-standardised Family Information Systems has been established at http://www.openfamilyservices.org.uk/ofs/ which could have some useful data in.
The Plings project (http://www.plings.net/) also looked at creating some standard format for describing positive activities for young people – but again that has suffered funding cuts – as most local databases need strong incentives to move towards a common standard
I suspect in practice the standardisation of voluntary sector activity is less likely to come from government, and more likely to be successful if it was a community-driven effort. Bringing together a community of local community database providers to think about open data and shared standards could certainly be an interesting thing to do…
i agree with previous comments – you’re unlikely to see govt standardisation of vol sector data, if only because no attempt would be likely to succeed. With the advent of computers in the eighties and nineties there were several attempts which faded. Even the most locally-respected and influential CVS finds it very hard to persuade local groups to comply with simple requests to update their data. The more professionalised groups and orgs will do so, thereby skewing the available data of course. There are reasons why phrases like ‘herding cats’ and ‘shovelling smoke’ have long been used in the sector – there are many independent groups driven by independent people who often have lots of other stuff going on in their lives, with priorities not aligning with those of external systems, and absolutely no obligation to comply: you’d have to come up with some good wifms (‘what’s in it for me’). At the present time, many are going into hibernation. If the CVS network had more comprehensive coverage across the country and was decently funded, you could possibly establish a basic minimum for the info to be collected. But don’t expect it all to come pouring in, nor for it to be respresentative of the broader community and vol sector.