The document discusses standards for publishing and sharing local government data. It introduces the Local eGovernment Standards Body (LeGSB), which promotes standards for efficiency, transformation, and transparency of local services. Examples are provided of publishing planning, toilet, and community register data to common schemas at increasing levels of openness from 3 to 5 stars. The last part discusses using URIs and a data model to query impacts identified for a specific community from a repository of local impact reports.

1. Getting more from Data with Standards
Really Useful Day
St. Albans, 27th
March 2015
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Paul Davidson, CIO Sedgemoor District Council
Director of Standards for the Local eGovernment Standards Body (LeGSB)

2. Introduction to LeGSB
• Operating since 2006
• Funded by Central Government Departments – currently
– Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG)
– Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
– Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
– Projects with Councils
• Mission
– To promote Standards for Efficiency, Transformation, and Transparency of Local
Services
• People
– All personnel are employees of local authorities, and central government departments.
• Web Site
– http://www.legsb.gov.uk
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3. Context
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Operational - about real people and places, with real
needs and circumstances, using real services, e.g. case
work;
Statistical - aggregated operational data, organised
using common classifications and segmentations;
Analytical - the conclusions drawn from an analysis of
statistical data;
Political - the decisions taken to shape services, e.g.
budgets, strategies, priorities, targets etc;
Reference - master data to give common identifiers and
definitions to objects that can be used to link data;

4. Scope
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• Semantics the meaning of information
• Syntax the format of information
• Data Quality the confidence to re-use information
• Rights permission to use information
• Trust who is accessing information
• Transport how to move information
• Information Governance - the behavior and culture to protect and
exploit information

5. Standards for local Open Data
• Schemas
– E.g. for Spreadsheets, column names, permitted values
– Application Profiles
• Identifiers
– Consistent references to refer to the same thing
• e.g. Companies House Registration Number, a Ward, a Council
– URIs. Using the Web to define a ‘thing’ and provide more information
about it.
• Definitions
– Ontologies, Relationships, Lists of Terms
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6. Syntax - Publishing up to step 3
http://www.legsb.gov.uk/resources/publishinglocal5stardata/

7. Syntax - Publishing up to step 5

8. 3* Example - Toilets
• A combined list of public toilets data, harvested from many
councils who publish their data to a common ‘csv’ schema
– http://opendata.esd.org.uk/
– Schemas, Datasets, Inventories, URIs
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9. 3* Example – Planning Applications
• A combined list of planning applications, harvested from many
councils who publish their data to a common ‘csv’ schema
– http://opendata.esd.org.uk/
– Common Lists for ‘type of application’, ‘classification’
– Thousands of records, historical and current
– Status changing daily
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10. 5* Example - Planning Applications
• Hampshire Planning Applications
– https://www.mysociety.org/2014/09/30/making-planning-applications-more-open-with-the-hampshire-hub-partnership/
– We’ll be helping people answer some of the most common questions they have about planning applications: What
applications are happening near me? What decisions have been made in the past on applications like mine? How
likely is it that my application will be dealt with on time?
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11. Example 3* Community Register
• Devon Community Register
– http://www.directory.devon.gov.uk/kb5/devon/directory/home.page
• Also available as data, in CSV format, and XML format.
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12. Example – 5* Community Register
• Also as 5* data to query, without having to download
Find Services for ‘Looking after someone’ in Teignbridge
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13. Example – 1* Impact Report
• “The increase in vehicles travelling to the HPC
Site during construction will increase the
potential for collisions on the local road network
as well as causing congestion. Given the limited
route choices for those living within the village,
this will increase local journey times and cause
disruption to local road users”
– http://www.sedgemoor.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=9845&p=0
– http://data.sedgemoor.gov.uk/id/impact/12
Local Impact Report – page 103, referring to Combwich

14. A repeatable structure
• Sedgemoor - Impacts of Hinkley Point C
– http://data.sedgemoor.gov.uk
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15. A Place
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16. What do we know about Stockland Bristol?
• URIs
– http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/id/7000000000010637
– http://id.esd.org.uk/neighbourhood/NN461a
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17. The data model
http://data.sedgemoor.gov.uk/overview.pdf 17

18. Query the data
• What impacts have been identified for the residents of Stockland Bristol?
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SELECT DISTINCT ?label ?statusLabel ?agentLabel {
?proposal community:community <http://data.sedgemoor.gov.uk/id/community/1>.
?proposal a project:Proposal .
?proposal rdfs:label ?label .
OPTIONAL {
?proposal project:proposalStatus ?status .
?status rdfs:label ?statusLabel .
}
OPTIONAL {
?proposal project:proposedBy ?agent .
?agent rdfs:label ?agentLabel .
}
}

19. Thank you
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- Paul Davidson
- paul.davidson@sedgemoor.gov.uk
- Director of Standards for the Local eGovernment Standards Body (LeGSB)
- http://www.legsb.gov.uk