Following the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG’s) abolition of the National Indicator Set, it seemed that Local Government was to be freed from the world of top-down targets, burdensome data collection. In it’s wake CLG outlined the publication of the ‘Single Data List’ which would list everything that Local Government would be required to provide to Central Government. It’s been published today, here.
However, one of the common criticims was that once you delved beneath the surface, a lot of the substance showed that it was still a massive wealth of information. Whilst the targets may be gone, the data provision burden most definately isn’t. Yet. Given the massive push going on in Government around open data, I was pleased to find that all of the comments were served up in CSV for some quick analyisis. Following a little data cleansing, this was the result:
So not too well received then? Well, to be fair to CLG, it’s now at the point of saying ‘Well what do you think’s too much?’, so hopefully we’ll see a reduction in the next year or two, leading to more satisfaction. However, it’s clear for now that there’s a good proportion of people who aren’t too happy…
I guess one final realisation I had was that as a result of OpenData, it’s going to mean that press statements are a lot more evidence based than before. If I can check if the evidence of a press statement is backed up, within 5 mins of it being released, surely that’s got to keep people honest? Thoughts anyone?
