Download as PDF: Lichfield District Council – Open Election Data Project Case Study

In central, regional and local government there is an increasing desire to share data more widely to improve transparency and accountability and to reduce duplication. An early adopter Lichfield District Council has been actively sharing a range of local data for some time. In March 2010 the Council was the first authority to make its local election results openly available as part of the Open Election Data Project. By making small changes in how their local election results are displayed local authorities can jointly work towards creating a free national database of local election results and undertake a low risk, low cost pilot in implementing the open data agenda.

Background to Open Data in Local Government

Like the open source movement in software development, open data as a practice and philosophy proposes that non-personal public data should to be freely available to everyone without any control mechanisms.

The Government is committed to making much more public data openly available. On 22 March 2010 the Prime Minister announced that the Government was going to ‘use digital technology to open up data with the aim of providing every citizen in Britain with true ownership and accountability over the services they demand from government.’ Current and planned initiatives include:

• data.gov.uk which is a single, easy-to-use website for access to 3,000 public data sets
• Office for National Statistics (ONS) opening up access to over two billion data items at the local neighbourhood level
• In March 2010 the Department for Transport and the transport industry shared the datasets for all 350,000 bus stops, railway stations and airports in Britain
• On 1st April 2010 a substantial package of information held by the Ordnance Survey was made available to the general public
• From Autumn 2010 the Government plans to publish online an inventory of all non-personal datasets held by departments and arms-length bodies, with the programme managed by the National Archives.

Open data in local government involves, as a first step, local authorities putting raw data such comma-separated values (CSV) files, database dumps and data feeds online to improve access to the information and transparency. The next step, known as linked data, involves using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI’s) web addresses to identify items and link to related ones, making it much easier to combine data from different sources.

Why should it matter that local authorities make their data available? There are philosophical and practical reasons.

Firstly, much local authority data is about local residents and local issues and paid for by taxpayers. There is wide consensus that making public sector data more widely available will aid transparency and accountability. Access where possible should be free to allow better access and permit the use and re-use of the data.

Secondly, access to data gives people the ability to improve their lives and for government to reduce duplication (e.g. re-presenting data in many forms).

Thirdly Local Government will struggle to keep up with an online world that is changing rapidly where there is a risk making poor investments. Increasingly people are using smart phones, widgets, social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and desktop applications that rely on online data or web pages that look like desktop applications. The data is used not just in the new smart phones but in creating new applications that make the data useful and relevant to the user’s location. For example this has included innovative ways of displaying complicated data (e.g. WhereDoesMyMoneyGo) and sites that bring the data together (e.g. OpenlyLocal). OpenlyLocal assembles data from council and government websites and then makes the data available to very local communities, through Google gadgets (small applications that can be put on other web pages) and other websites.

And finally, there is the potential to transform internal processes and the sharing of information between organisations, and between local government and central government.

Lichfield District Council’s Open Data

An active supporter of the open data agenda, Lichfield District Council already makes a wide range of their local data available to developers and website owners. By being able to access the data easily their local data can re-used, linked and shared. Provided in various formats the data that Lichfield District Council makes openly available includes:

• News: the latest news including comments (RSS feed).
• Planning and development: the latest planning applications (widget), locally listed buildings (GeoRSS) and listed buildings (XML file).
• Food Safety: the latest food safety inspections (GeoRSS feed) and food safety inspections (Comprehensive API)
• Council and democracy: current and archived committees (XML file), committee details (XML file), list of councillors (XML file), polling stations (KML [Google Earth] file) and parish councils (XML file)
• Leisure: local sports clubs (XML file), leisure centres, parks, libraries, tourist attractions (all KML [Google Earth] files) and events (iCal format)
• Education: primary and secondary schools (KML [Google Earth] file)
• Recycling: recycling centres (KML [Google Earth] file)
• Miscellaneous: car parks (KML [Google Earth] file)

By making this data available a local resident is, for example, able to find the library that is closest to them regardless of the council boundary and to find out who their county councillor is. The next milestone was when Lichfield District Council made their election data from 2007 openly available through their website at the end of March 2010.

Open Election Data Project

In contrast to the general elections there is no central or open record of local election results in the UK. As a result it is not possible to compare voting over time or to compare turnout between different areas. A commercial database is held by Plymouth University but the data has to be entered manually. Local Authorities already publish election data online but in a wide range of formats, some of which are restrictive (e.g. PDFs ).

With support from the Local Public Data Panel, SOCITM, the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) and the Local eGovernment Standards Board the Open Election Data Project involves local authorities making some small changes to how their election results are presented on their website so the data can be openly accessed Rather than using HTML or PDFs the authority uses HTML with machine readable information added using RDFa, a format that gives the information meaning and structure. It should be a straightforward technical task for any Local Authority webmaster to mark up their HTML in their Content Management System, taking no more than a day’s time. By drawing all the individual area results together over time it is possible to develop a national database of local election results. Authorities can put past results online as well as the forthcoming results from May 2010.

To mark up their local election data a Local Authority has to do a simple series of steps:

1. Mark up the Election Results landing page. Each election has to be marked up as data and the links correctly annotated.
2. Mark up the Individual Election Results that are to be exposed as linked data. While the focus is on the 6 May 2010 other elections should also be marked up.
3. Mark up the Ward Result pages before election day leaving blanks for votes cast and making sure the political parties are uniquely identified from the Open Election Project database.
4. Make sure the Election Results landing page is listed with LocalDirectGov in its services directory.
5. Check what the data looks like (using the RDFa Parser).
6. Get the Open Election Data Project to check the pages.

What are the benefits of the Open Election Data Project?

There are a number of benefits for a Local Authority that wants to take part in the Open Election Data Project:

• By working together Local Authorities will create a free national database of local election results and help to support democratic renewal.
• A Local Authority has the opportunity for a small, cheap and easy experiment in providing local data more openly. The election results are already published in different formats and there are low risks if they make errors. After taking part the local authority will have a better understanding of the technical and organisational issues with providing open data.
• A Local Authority will be able to review the adaptability of their content management systems including the responsiveness of their vendors and any IT outsourcing arrangements. A Local Authority will be able to learn from their experience when commissioning the next content management system or outsourcing contract.
• Many Councillors are highly supportive of the improved provision of local election data as a way of improving engagement with the local electorate.
• Councils will be able to explore ways of making efficiency savings by learning from the open data project. Tendering and scoping of tightly defined IT systems remains an expensive activity. Having a more flexible system that allows small projects to be implemented rapidly can save money in the long run. Additionally, providing the same data in different formats for different periods (e.g. calendar year, financial year and academic year) for different organisations is expensive. Open data can reduce these data provision costs as well as stimulating the development of innovative applications that use the local data, often from within a Council’s local business and academic community.

Some Local Authorities may have problems with their content management systems if they are linked to customised databases where there is no access. Plug-ins are being developed for the content management systems that are commonly used by Local Authorities (such as Jadu and Moderngov).

The Future: How the Knowledge Hub could help with Open Data

To further develop their online learning facilities IDeA proposes to develop a Knowledge Hub that builds on the success of IDeA’s Communities of Practice platform which has over 55,000 members. The Knowledge Hub will allow local government to produce and capture its own knowledge more directly and bring together more relevant content sources including blogs and twitter feeds.

There are a number of ways that the Knowledge Hub could help Local Authorities to implement the open data agenda. Firstly, the Knowledge Hub could help to develop awareness of open data generally and the open election data project specifically as well as providing the necessary free tools, plug-ins for various content management systems, examples of code and templates. Secondly, the Knowledge Hub could be used to help to develop data standards across Local Authorities. And thirdly, the Knowledge Hub could be the location where one Authority is able to share its solution to a problem with other Authorities (e.g. a customised modification to a specific content management system).

Further Information

Stuart Harrison (Lichfield District Council)
T 01543 308779
E stuart.harrison@lichfielddc.gov.uk

Chris Taggart (OpenlyLocal)
E countculture@googlemail.com

• Open Election Data Project
• Lichfield District Council
• Open Datasets provided by Lichfield Council
• OpenlyLocal
• Local Government Data Panel Blog
• SOCITM
• WhereDoesMyMoneyGo
• Building Britain’s Digital Future – PM Speech 22 March 2010