Local Information Systems Network Event 14th July 08

Here’s my post-event thoughts from attending the Local Information Systems (LIS) Network Event on 14th July 2008 sponsored by CLG, LGAR, IDeA and the Audit Commission. More detail and outputs from this event are on http://tinyurl.com/5z6nvj.

The day was intended to address the central role for LIS in a new policy making environment and the way LIS can influence local decision-making to improve performance and service outcomes. Looking at the list of attendees there was a suprisingly large number with 'performance' in their title. Maybe the message is starting to filter through to this community that they need to be actively involved in LIS applications as well as their Research & Intelligence colleagues? In my view the objectives of the seminar were highly topical yet very optimistic and I'm not sure it succeeded in addressing either to any great degree.

My useful snippets from the day include:

(1) A report called "Supporting local research and analysis: understanding demand an improving capacity" commissioned by CLG, LGAR, IDeA and Audit Commission is to be published in the Autumn of 2008 by CLG and should provide some excellent material to support the process of building a business case for LIS developments.

(2) The Audit Commission Report "Reporting Performance Information to Citizens", perhaps unsuprisingly, contains plenty of evidence about why it is important to present performance outcomes at a spatial scale that if of relevance and interest to the citizen. I believe there is great scope for LIS to provide the solution for reporting performance related data out to the outside world - rather than more inward-facing corporate performance management systems. If you haven't read the full report I recommend you do at http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/communities/performanceinformation.

(3) Malcolm Morley, Chief Exec of Harlow District Council, emphasised that senior managers get inundated with informational reports - in effect 'reports' will compete for time and those writing them should appreciate this and make sure they are relevant, interesting, succinct and appealing. I would like to have asked him whether his senior management team spend any of their time looking at data either on hardcopy reports or a PC screen. Or whether he just wants pre-compiled 'answers' from his staff. Anyway, sign him up for the LARIA 2009 Annual Conference - this is really where this presentation should be delivered.

(4) David Onions at Worcestershire CC is one of our long-standing customers but it was good to be reminded about all the areas they contribute to in delivering local intelligence services. It stuck in my mind his figure of 14 staff in their central research and intelligence unit. I know this does include some secondees working in areas like Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour. However it represents a sizable capacity with a wide range of skills and a corporate research and information capability which many other authorities can only dream about. I can only conclude that senior management at WCC are seriously committed to an evidence-driven approach to their business and value the contribution that David's team can make across the board.

(5) Adam White suggested there is a strong role for LIS applications to support the 'youth agenda' but you need to be clear on your audience and purpose. I agree – I think there are great things you could do. However, our experience (including with national statistics bodies) is that this type of audience, much like external citizens, is often not considered to be 'high priority'. The business case for spend on this area is not clear (let alone the available extra budget) despite all the hype around empowering communities with information and stronger democratic purposes. And yet the public are far more likely to go to the web site of their local authority as their first point of contact in the 'web of Government'.

(6) Adrian Laughton highlighted the work going on to demonstrate inter-operability benefits. However benefits from the CLG Performance Hub are still some way off given it is not clear if/when they will support more local level data – it sounds to me like it remains an ‘aspiration’ and in reality the hub could go no further than its current role in supporting the NIS process for data summarised at the level of local authorities. I don't mind this so much but there is great potential to utilise their LGDx schema very widely across Government to improve data transfer processes - it would be a shame if this schema got locked to the Interchange Hub and never got more widely utilised.

In my view some key benefits could come from an operational ONS Neighbourhood Stats data service (also now supporting this LGDx schema). This is currently in pilot stage and allows LIS applications to pull those national datasets that you don't receive locally across to your local system from NeSS. This all sounds simple but the in practice it is not. Firstly many LIS sites we've talked to would prefer to get their data from local providers sooner and at higher levels of grannularity than wait for it to appear on NeSS. Secondly, there are lots of technical issues that still need to get ironed out for this joined-up data sharing service to become a reality. To date the pilot service has been built to respond to on-the-fly requests for relatively small packets of data. This is far from ideal from our perspective. We are hoping the current pilot work will be extended to support a data harvesting model of bulk data transfers giving customers confidence that data can be sync’d between NeSS and local LIS applications thereby avoiding the risks inherent with reliance on remote web services, notably service failure or poor performance.

(7) I was less bowled over by Andrew Hudson-Smith's presentation than Ingrid Koehler (who also reviews this event on her blog at http://ideapolicy.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/networking-lis/ - her Blog is well worth reading by the way for those interested in Policy and Performance). There is no disputing the CASA fly-through of London is amazing but I saw something very similar many years ago at a GIS exhibition (although not presented through a web browser). I agree with him in terms of the pace of change of "all things Internet". However I would strongly disagree that organisations like those in the audience should have 6 month timeframes for their applications based on a model where you build your application over a few days using freely available mashup technologies and then throw it away and start again 6 months later. At least that's my understanding of what he said. Maybe in the case of very simple map-based applications that could be feasible but the whole 'throw-away' culture would challenge so many of the current operating processes within government bodies. I know of no public organisations that have this mentality nor are anywhere close to it. His Second Life presentation was very whizzy but I was left feeling "so what? - how does that apply to the real problems that the people have in this audience right now? Is this really relevant to all the Performance Officers in the audience or was it just a refreshing interlude from all the Powerpoint?" It was refreshing, visually stimulating and, as this post shows, thought provoking so really I should be a lot more positive! As Ingrid says, it's not everyday you get The Clash played at an event like this!

(8) Although my break-out group was supposed to focus on how to build a successful business case, we actually got a very useful insight into work by Sheffield City Council in producing their neighbourhood profiles. Of critical importance, in their view, was the creation of approx. 100 logical neighbourhood zones, each one built up from multiple Lower Super Output Areas. I started to see just how critical this was to Sheffield - if you haven't got logically defined reference areas with recognizable names then how are you supposed to report any data to this external audience effectively. Most organisations have not done this in my experience. It rather re-inforces the previous point that reporting to an external audience is not the priority for most.

On the subject of break out groups at this event - like many events this one tried desparately to cram the content in order to finish early. Do people who give up a day to attend seminars like this actually want the day cut short? Do they expect to get home at the normal time? Are they ever asked? In this case it meant restricting feedback from the break out groups to about 30 seconds! This seriously negates the value of break-out groups whose purpose is to report back to the group as a whole on their discussion - that's the whole point of them! You have to wonder whether CLG actually saw this session as a means of getting input for their research rather than transferring knowledge to the rest of the audience.

I spoke to someone from Rocket Science at the tea session. They have been commissioned by CLG to product a toolkit to support the process of building a business case for LIS. I am due to be interviewed but I understand the outputs should be available before the end of the year and hopefully it will be of great help to those at this stage of the process. Great job CLG LIS Team – while you’re at it, how about commissioning a review of the critical nationally available datasets that every LIS should include?

My conversations with attendees at the end of the day suggested a mixed response - there was criticism from some that many of the presentations which were 'poor' and did not appear to address the objectives of the day. Personally I felt it was a mixed bag - a few good ones but really we need more LIS Managers to come forward at these events to talk about their successes...and failures. I know it’s not easy to persuade people to give their time for presentations and the CLG LIS team has a challenging job on this front.

I would also suggest that such an audience can be neatly divided into two - there were members of the audience that have been involved in intelligence and LIS related work for almost 10 years while many others are only just starting down the road. It is a situation crying out for two streams: those that want to take their services to the next level and those that want help building a business case. How about offering them workshops where they decide which level to attend?

The reality is that it's still early days in this local intelligence area and even those sites that have been around longest are still relatively immature. It's all about developing core business processes that utilise LIS capabilities so they become a key resource that the organisation couldn't be without. Take it away, albeit temporaily, and they'd be an outcry. Hopefully as LIS applications mature an increasing number of core business processes will be wrapped around them making it easier to demonstrate tangible benefits. This requires LIS Managers to reach out pro-actively and understand these processes and how they might be improved with better local information.

The Audit Commission are adamant that better information will lead to better decisions (see their 'In The Know' report at http://tinyurl.com/28k8an ). Certainly staff do need to have easy access to information of sufficient quality and in a form that is of value. They also need to have the skills to make good use of it. However, the real challenge ahead (and interestingly this is backed up by 2 'experts' in this area - see http://perswww.kuleuven.be/~u0025631/pdf/IntheKnow_PMM.pdf) is that organisational change is probably required to overcome major cultural barriers of using information within existing business processes. If you really want your LIS to influence organisational strategy and policy, to impact on decisions about targeting of resources and to guide senior management on how to improve their performance on the ground then you may have to change the culture of your organisation and the way it makes decisions - no small task for a LIS Manager!

Read more about the real process of decision-making and the factors that impact on the use of information in the Audit Commission report on Making better use of information to drive improvement in public services at http://tinyurl.com/5b9lny (June07).