GSS Presentation & Dissemination Committee
WHAT’S NEW DASHBOARD – DECEMBER 2016 UPDATE
Progress has been made in the following areas this quarter (October to December 2016). Please see Annex A for who to contact in each Department for more information and Annex B for the detailed returns.
Publishing
Ofsted, Defra: HTML publications
Ofsted: data view tool
NHS Scotland: open data tool
NHS-D: alpha for new publication system / Content/Commentary
DCMS: new handbook
ORR, NHS: new compendiums
HSE, VOA, PHE, MOJ: redesigned publications
DWP: web analytics as official stats
MOD: audio commentary planned
SG: stats blogging site / Training and workshops
DCLG: scrum, ArcGIS
DWP: data vis training
MOD: conference on ‘telling the story’
DfT: Full Fact workshop
NHS: data vis workshop
SG: user research, R, data vis
DfID: webinars
MOJ: user personas
Social Media
DfT: growing use/promotion of stats account
ORR: work with comms on strategy
NISRA, DfID: promoting work via Facebook and Twitter
GPT: new social media guidance / Infographics & charts
DCLG: new infographics
DWP, NRS:interactive visualisation
MOD: data vis competition
DfID: improved infographics
ONS: collaboration with BBC
DfT: road casualty dashboard / Reviews/Strategies/Groups
Defra, NHS-D: consultation response
NHS-D: new publication advisory board first meeting
HSE: gathering feedback
BEIS: user consultation
ONS: ‘style council’ established
Guidance
Defra: guidance on creating datasets
Ofqual: ‘infocard’ guidance for writing releases
NISRA: user engagement best practice / Other
DCMS: automated analysis and QA
UKSA: launch of new Office for Statistics Regulation / Software
DCMS: D3
WG, DfID, NHS-D, ORR: Power BI
Ofqual: Plotly, R Shiny
MOJ: Tableau

CURRENTLY TRENDING

Open data (DCMS, WG, SG, NHS-S, NISRA, BEIS)
  • DCMS and ALBs discussion with ODI
/ Data science (Defra, DfT, DH, NHS-S, NISRA)
  • Defra – first GDS Accelerator graduates
  • DH – data science demos via webcast

Interactives and dashboards (DCMS, DCLG, DWP, DfT, ONS, WG, DWP, NRS, SG, DfID, MOD)
  • DfID using Power BI for corporate visualisations
  • ONS visual – baby names tool
  • DfT new road casualty dashboard
/ Infographics and posters(DCLG, HSE, DfID, NISRA)
  • DCLG - new infographics and posters produced to showcase latest figures
  • NISRA - promoting infographics and statistics on social media - Facebook and Twitter (over 3,500 followers).

/ CHAMPION OF CHAMPIONS
Is awarded to Scottish Government for the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation publication ( ), including interactive maps and clear commentary /

ANNEX A – List of Presentation Champions and PDC Representatives

Below is a list of each Department’s Presentation Champions and PDC Representatives. If you would like to find out more about the work being carried out that is highlighted on the dashboard, please contact the colleagues listed below. If there are any changes required to the list, please let the Good Practice Team know and keep the information in your “What’s New?” return up-to-date.A list is also kept at the following link:

Response rate was 83% (25 out of 30 departments). Responding departments:

Department / Presentation Champion / PDC Rep
Ofsted / /

BEIS /


Ofqual /

DCLG / /
DEFRA /
DCMS / /
DfT /
/
(group Chair)
ORR /

DWP / /
HSE /
MoD /
DH/NHS England /
/
NHS Digital (formerly HSCIC) / /
Public Health England / tbc
DFID /
ONS / elizabeth.mclaren.gsi.gov.uk


/

Welsh Government /

Scottish Government / /
NHS Scotland /
NRS /
VOA / /
OME /
HMRC /
GSS Good Practice Team / /
NISRA / /

Non-responding departments:

Department / Presentation Champion / PDC Rep
DfE /
/
Home Office / /
MoJ /
/
Cabinet Office / tbc /
HMT /
/

ANNEX B – Full “What’s New” returns – December 2016

Response rate = 83% (25 out of 30 departments)

Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy(BEIS)

  • Peter is leading on the CBAS Trial on the ex-DECC IT systems. The platform will allow all analysts to use a range of software from a cloud based hosting with ex-BIS colleagues already have access to.
  • Due to the merger both ex-DECC and ex-BEIS are in flux but things are happening across both sitesas roles and networks are looking to be consolidated in the near future;
  • Access to BEIS stats twitter account which ex-DECC colleagues can also make use of,
  • Potential to organise a session with Full Fact to help BEIS statisticians gain a wider understanding of how their stats are used and accessed,
  • Colleagues in electricity stats are working hard on a user consultation
  • Will be looking to work with colleagues experienced in achieving 5 star Open Data to see if we can run internal sessions on open data and publication formatting in the New Year to share skills and experiences across the wider department

Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted)

  • Publication of official statistics in HTML.
  • First release of ODS files for early years official statistics.
  • Work underway on Data View tool. Relaunched earlier this year but problems with data feed meant some remits missing. Due to refresh tool in early December with full data set.
  • Cleanup of Ofsted files on data.gov.uk underway.

Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG)

  • Peer review scrum of data visualisations in DCLG stats publications have been completed with more organised for the new year.
  • Training on 'Introduction to arcGIS' for all staff with more advanced sessions planned in the near future
  • Training offered to learn arcGIS online in order learn how to produce interactive maps
  • A successful launch of our new 'Go figure' series where staff are encouraged to present the key findings from their latest statistical release to the rest of the department
  • New infographics and posters produced for within the department to showcase latest figures from statistical releases
  • The departments new Implementation unit has been working on a new automated Online Performance dashboard. It's aim is to provide easy access to the latest performance data on priority policy areas, in the office, at a meeting, or on a visit. This offers automatic data updates, export functionality and can be accessed through a variety of devices. This is being developed in several stages and work is currently underway to expand the policy areas covered within the dashboard.

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)

  • We have recently published the summary of responses to our recentconsultation on proposed changes to a number of official statistical releases across the Defra group.
  • We exceeded the target to publish 8,000 datasets by June 2016. In the end this figure exceeded 11,000. We are now reviewing user uptake and feedback with an Unconference in Birmingham 29 November to further refine our data publication offer.
  • Finalised guidance on creating datasets - now moving forward with some re-working of some important datasets on the environment and farming side.
  • Contributed to 2 day ONS led Discovery project – the drill-down exercise covered the Defragroup releases and will help the project team gain an in-depth understanding of our data and processes from collection to publication.
  • First rural publications in HTML available on Gov.UK
  • Food and Rural statisticians amongst the first to graduate from the GDS Data Science Accelerator programme
  • Undertaken a review of our website analytics reporting and presently refreshing our internal regular update on key statistical releases provided to the Secretary of State, Ministers, top of the office and wider as requested.

Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)

  • D3 visualisation of DCMS sector economic metrics has been published at dcmsblog.uk
  • We've released a handbook of DCMS & ALB statistics from the previous year
  • We've started a project with GDS to automate the analysis and QA of our economic estimates statistics, with the aim to reduce burden of production and free up time for commentary and presentation work
  • A further two analysis tools for Taking Part have gone online
  • Meeting with ALBs to discuss open data with the ODI
  • We hosted a Taking Part survey user event on data access

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)

Template for releases. Use of the template is going very well, all but one of our releases in the last three months has used the template, to varying degrees of compliance. The one off releases of analysis are also using the template.

Web analytics. We're looking at the use of web analytics as official statistics, working with the UKSA to write guidance about their use internally and the publication methods. For some websites we regularly release data using the GDS Performance Platform. We released a one-off analysis last month to enable the minister to reference website usage in an oral PQ response. We'll share our approach to the guidance once it's fininshed.

Interactive visualisations. We're planning to release some interactive data visualisations alongside the benefit fraud stats, at the start of December. We're still negotitating with press office and comms about the content and context.

Data visualisation training courses: We continue to deliver training to lots of staff. We're training non-statisticians across the Management Information and Human Resources commuity. And across other departments, we've also trained analytical staff from OfQual and the Department for International Development.

Health and Safety Executive (HSE)

Publishing (all user persona groups): Early November saw HSE’s annual statistics release, with the redesigned summary booklet (see as the new flagship publication (see August update for more details). As per last year, an A2-sized poster (costing £10) summarising the main statistics is available. The poster last year sold around 2000 copies. Additionally, the data tables had a make-over to improve usability.

Reviews/strategies/groups (all user persona groups): Full data analysis for our web-based survey carried out at the start of the year has now begun – this has been delayed due to staff sickness. Also, there is an internal consultation to gather views and experiences of the HSE team who contributed to the processing and production of the annual release. In addition, a short on-line survey to gather feedback on the new-style documents is planned for December and January.

Ministry of Defence (MoD)

Pocket book stats compendium- In September Defence in Numbers pocket book was published. This was nominated for a civil service award.

Audio commentary- Obtained new audio software. Now planning first audio releases to accompany Official Statistics, presenting key facts and figures.

GSS in MOD conference- this years conference had the theme ‘Telling the Story’ and included presentations and workshops from analytical professions inside Defence and guest speakers from outside of the Department, many of which focused on presentation and dissemination.

Data visualisation competition- Following the GSS in MOD conference, Director of Performance and Analysis held a data visualisation competition ‘Telling the Story’. There were three joint winners, two using R Shiny and one using Sway.
Department for Transport (DfT)

Presentation: Shared chart formatting macro with MoJ and its bodies to help them develop their own chart standardising tool.

User engagement/social media: Continued to promote our statistical publications via our @DfTstats Twitter account. We have now sent out 216 tweets and have 687 followers and are on track to meet our target of 1,000 followers within the first year. Transport Statistics Great Britain: 2016 is being published on 8th December and will be promoted heavily via @DfTstats with over 30 tweets sent out over 2 weeks under the hashtag #TSGB2016.

Dissemination/ New approaches to dissemination/Data Science: The road safety team have launched a road casualty dashboard at: to enable users to generate their own queries using road safety data. Feedback on the dashboard has been extremely positive.

Presentation of official statistics/ promoting best practice within non-statistical teams: statisticians at the Department for Transportparticipated in a workshop ran by Full Fact. This included a practical session on how statisticians can help ensure that data is communicated in a way that avoids misunderstanding, in particular for the media and general public. There was also a session where statisticians were able to try their hand in a live fact checking exercise. This required us to look through sources to check statistics quoted in an episode of Question Time. This session emphasised that it can sometimes be difficult for the media and general public to find and use official statistics. Everyone who attended the workshop felt that it was extremely enjoyable and useful and would recommend other Departments organising similar events.

Office of Road and Rail (ORR)

User engagement:Published an annual compendium which combines key findings on all the statistical releases, each on one pageand using data visualisationtechniques:

Dissemination: Improvements made tolatest quarterand annual statistical releases following training session on improving statistical commentary

Cross-working: Pro-active engagement with Comms team to develop their social media strategy Data

Portal replacement project - consultants have recommended a SharePoint site with visualisations delivered through Tableau or PowerBI.

Ministry of Justice (MoJ)

  • A template for quarterly bulletins has been developed and is due to be signed off in December, for use in MoJ’s publications from next year
  • MoJ are planning a session on user personas at their December GSS Quarterly meeting. DfT ran a similar session a earlier this year, and we have discussed the session with their Presentation Champions
  • MoJ published a blog on the GSS website about the work we have done to create and publish interactive visualisation tools in tableau: The tool is due to be presented at the 14th December PDC meeting
  • We have arranged some training to be run by ONS on effective charts and tables for December.

Department for Health (DH) / NHS England

Data Science - The DH Data Science Hub have been presenting a series of short data science demos to DH analysts via webcast. For example, the first one showed how to plot data on a Google map. There will be 6 of these Data Science Shorts in total.

Development of new compendium- The Workforce Analysis Team have developed a Health & Social Care Workforce Compendium. This brings together a range of statistics on health care workforce and analyses them. They are collated from sources including: statistical publications from NHS Digital, NHS England (Picker), pay bill statistics produced by DH, other statistics and analysis produced by NHS Employers, health Education England, and NHS improvement. It has been produced in Excel and shared with the Pay Review Bodies, HMT, NHS Employers, NHS Improvement and Health Education England on the DH Xchange platform.

Data Visualisation Workshop - Neil Riley (NHS England) chaired a workshop on skills building for health data visualisation with colleagues from the WHO, Norway Institute of Public Health and the Dutch Institute of Public Health at the European Public Health Conference in Vienna.

NHS Digital (NHS-D)

Dissemination / new approaches to dissemination: work exploring the use ofPower BI continues.

Engagement with Users: Final response to consultation published at the end of September. Full response is given in the link below. Teams are working through to implement the changes agreed over the coming months.

Discovery phase for replacement publication system has completed and Alpha phase started. Looking to prioritise the user needs and demonstrate possible solutions to users over the next 8 weeks.

System wide Health and Care Publication and Advisory Board established and held its first meeting. This will advise on publication issues across the health and care sector, as part of the work of the English Health Statistics Group.

Public Health England (PHE)

  • Developed new stats bulletin format for PHOF and hope to roll this out to other tools:
  • Still transitioning legacy websites
  • Continue to develop the fingertips platform and add to the number of official stats releases and commentaries
  • Continuing discussions with comms around use of twitter
  • Looking to set up a newsletter through GovDelivery to keep users updated about official stats releases

Department for International Development (DFID)

  • Improved DFID's annual Statistics on International Development publication, with the inclusion of new infographics
  • Supporting the first ODA Ministerial meeting (cross-department Ministerial meeting) with strong but simple visuals to communicate effectively to Ministers
  • DFID statistics adviser seconded to the United Nations Development Programme has been working with staff in headquarters touse webinars as a means of training staff in 140 country offices on accurate reporting of data against key results indicators, including live and recordeddemonstrations of results reporting systems using Skype for Business.
  • DFID Zambia using a range of infographics in social media posts to create awareness of DFID's work.
  • DFID using Power BI for corporate visualisations - will download the software onto all DFID computers in December.

Office for National Statistics (ONS)

  • Launched a Style Council in November, made up of Publishing, business areas and GPT to evolve and discuss changes and amendments to the ONS Style Guide
  • Published in November three articles in our series looking at GDP. The series includes an interactive timeline of GDP and a GDP explainer.
  • Publishing Group set up in Newport in October where business areas and Publishing will meet once a month to share information and discuss challenges. Titchfield group to start in January.
  • Visual and the BBC are working on their first collaboration project - the risk of crime calculator - to be published on the BBC News website Interactive content for Personal Wellbeing has been syndicated far and wide across national & regional media in October
  • Publishing meeting business areas to advise of upcoming open data changes and to refresh our understanding of their data processes
  • Looking at how visual content (Visual.ONS) should be integrated into main ONS website
  • Visual and the Household Income team worked together to turn an idea into a Visual post within 2 days to capitalise on an adhoc data request and broadcast of a C4 programme using ONS data.
  • The article on 20-somethings and earnings has been a big talking point in the media in recent months. Launch of Visual.ONS dashboard in November to dynamically reflect key economic and social indicators with a small amount of accompanying text to provide an overview of post-referendum UK.
  • Publishing and Quality teams discussing an approach to future QMIs and reflecting methodology work
  • Visual.ONS published a tool which let people explore the changing trends in baby names over time. This proved to be very successful, linked to by the BBC and embedded by the Independent, it has delivered more than than 250,000 page views.
  • Working on Data Discovery Alpha - allowing people to slice/dice the data on ONS website. Undertaken user research testing for this in London

Welsh Government