Local Public Data Panel – sub group meeting on Spotlight on Spend 20 July 2010

Posted on 28/07/2010 0 comments 2 Attachments

Meeting note - actions

Panel attendees: Professor Nigel Shadbolt (Chair), Tim Allen (Local Government Association), Chris Taggart (Openlylocal.com)

Other Attendees: Andrew Larner (IESE), Ian Carbutt (IDeA), Luke Spikes (Spikes Cavell), Hulya Mustafa (CLG), David Plant (CLG) (meeting note).

Meeting held to resolve issues that had arisen over publication of expenditure data via Spotlight on Spend.

Professor Shadbolt started by setting the context. The Public Sector Transparency Board is driving forward the central government agenda, but Francis Maude is keen to ensure there is no disconnect between central and local government, which is where the Local Public Data Panel would continue to have a key role.

Andrew Larner and Luke Spikes set out the background to Spotlight on Spend, a project originally conceived to utilise data from various local authority accounts and procurement systems, and re-present it in a way which would inform local residents of their councils spending. This predates the Secretary of States letter of 4 June. As the original aim was not specifically to support councils in providing data for reuse, the site was not designed with public data transparency principles in mind. However Spikes Cavell have agreed to make amendments to the site and seek permission from the authorities involved to make their data openly available. The data that would be available would be the raw data after Spikes Cavell had undertaken initial cleaning to redact personal information ie it will be the same input data that Spikes Cavell uses as the base dataset for its propriety services. This will ensure the open data community has access to the data on an equal footing.

Technical changes to the Spotlight on Spend site will be made which will allow the data to be open re-useable data, published under a licence that echoes that of the data.gov.uk site, however the intent will be to adopt the new Open Government Data Licence, currently being developed by The National Archives, when available. These changes may take a couple of weeks to put into effect, because of the need to seek the agreement of each council involved to the publication of the raw data, and the need to adapt process and data management infrastructure, however in the interim an open standardised raw data file format should be available by the end of w/c 2nd August. The intent is that the resultant data would also be accessible through data.gov.uk. though this will take longer to put in place.

Spikes Cavell agreed to provide an early sample of a open dataset to Chris Taggart for his consideration and comment, as well as detailing their data extraction process. An invitation was made to visit the Spikes Cavell site if this would be helpful.

Given that Spikes Cavell have had some 7 years of experience with standards for finance, Professor Shadbolt was keen that this experience should feed into the wider work on standards.

Andrew Larner also notified he would be putting together a paper on open data issues for the Elected Member Board of IESE, and asked for help in the drafting, as well as someone from the panel who could present to the Board.

Actions

  • Spikes Cavell to ensure basic cleaned data is available in an open re-useable form by end of w/c 2 August.
  • Spikes Cavell to provide an early sample of a resultant dataset to Chris Taggart as soon as available.
  • Secretariat to liaise with Spikes Cavell over best practice on standards.
  • Andrew Larner to circulate the Memorandum of Understanding when available and the Spikes Cavell Data Specifications (details of data requested from councils).
  • Panel members to liaise with Andrew Larner over the drafting of a paper on open data issues and presentation to the IESE Board.

By Local Data Panel

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