City University London has just published the results of an extensive survey of 8000 citizens about how they feel the Leicestershire City Council (LCC) is doing in the area. Targeting everything from access to public resources to public perception of the region, the resulting interactive visualization is a wealth of information broken down by responses, demographics, and regions.
An array of information about Leicestershire can be explored – from how satisfied residents are with the quality of refuse and recycling collections to whether they feel well-informed about how their council tax is spent. The degree to which responses vary amongst groups of people with particular characteristics or from particular places can also be considered, for example: comparing the views of 66-75 year olds to those of 18-25 year olds; contrasting the opinions of people who have lived in the same place for more than 20 years with those of recent arrivals; or seeing whether people in one district are more satisfied than those in another.
Get all the details after the break, or go check the visualization out yourself.
City University London helps local authority improve public services through data visualization
City University London has teamed up with Leicestershire County Council (LCC) to create an online resource that enables its staff and citizens to better understand public satisfaction with local services and amenities. Using an innovative combination of interactive maps and graphics, the authority can now tailor its services according to feedback from its residents.
Coming at a time when the public sector is under pressure to reduce costs and improve transparency, LCC is the first UK local authority to use this approach. It has been piloted using a survey of 8,000 citizens, which asked how happy they are with their area and the services they are offered by the council, as well as partners such as the emergency services and the NHS.
The new website, developed by City’s giCentre, allows employees and the public to interpret the survey results using data visualization – an increasingly important series of techniques that present and provide access to data through graphics. These are manipulable, enabling specific information to be extracted rapidly and previously unnoticed trends to be uncovered. It is available at www.lsr-online.org/placesurvey.html.
Responses from residents across Leicestershire’s 134 electoral wards are visualized. Participants were asked their level of satisfaction with 57 aspects of life in the county, as well as personal characteristics such as gender, age, ethnicity and health, although no individuals can be identified from the results.
Dr Aidan Slingsby, Willis Research Fellow at City, says: “The volume and complexity of data generated by resident surveys means that it is difficult to analyse in its raw format. Using data visualization to interpret the results, however, enables citizens to explore them in more depth than usually provided. We hope that this will help people to reflect on what they value about their community and to find out what neighbours think across the county.”
Robert Radburn, Research Manager at LCC, adds: “With the public sector facing cut-backs and being encouraged to open up its data, the application is timely – it gives our residents a greater understanding of what the Council is doing in their immediate locale, while enabling us to see which areas of our provision are doing well or could benefit from increased investment.”
An array of information about Leicestershire can be explored – from how satisfied residents are with the quality of refuse and recycling collections to whether they feel well-informed about how their council tax is spent. The degree to which responses vary amongst groups of people with particular characteristics or from particular places can also be considered, for example: comparing the views of 66-75 year olds to those of 18-25 year olds; contrasting the opinions of people who have lived in the same place for more than 20 years with those of recent arrivals; or seeing whether people in one district are more satisfied than those in another.
An introductory tutorial greets users when they first begin exploring the survey results, making the information accessible to as wide an audience as possible, despite the novelty of the graphics, interactions and modes of discovery that are being used in this innovative approach.
The work has been supported by the Department for Communities and Local Government’s (CLG) Timely Information to Citizens initiative, which is funding 20 local authority pilots to test a range of innovative methods through which local authorities can improve citizens’ access to their information. LCC hopes to use similar approaches in future to visualize the results from other surveys and data sets, making these available to citizens and council employees to tailor services.
The giCentre has recently received national and international recognition for its innovative, applied data visualization research, including two awards at the Geographic Information Systems Research UK (GISRUK) Conference 2010 and four awards at the world’s leading visualization conference, IEEE VisWeek, held in Salt Lake City in October 2010.
ENDS
Notes to Editors
For further information, please contact Luke Nava in City University London’s Press Office on 020 7040 8782 or email [email protected].About the giCentre:
The giCentre is one of the largest UK research groups focussing on mapping, analysing and visualizing information with a geographic component. It comprises around 15 staff and PhD students, who develop theory, solve problems and design solutions in geographic information (GI) science in partnership with government, industry and research organisations.Understanding and utilising GI effectively is fundamental to decisions wherever geography is important, for example, in navigation, the prediction of natural hazards, planning transportation options or analysing crime patterns. The giCentre takes its expertise in the theory, practice and technology of GI and applies it to real problems.
Its partners include organisations such as Willis Re-insurance, eCourier, go2 Directory Systems, News International, the RNLI and local authorities. It is a member of key international partnerships including the Willis Research Network, the Location and Timing Knowledge Transfer Network and the VisMaster Consortium.
For further information, please visit www.gicentre.org.
About City University London:
City University London is an international University with a reputation for academic excellence and a central London location. It was placed in the top 5% of world universities by Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2010.The University leads London in education, research and enterprise for business and the professions and is ranked 10th in the UK for both the employability of its graduates (by The Times Good University Guide 2011) and graduate starting salaries (by The Sunday Times University Guide 2011).
City is broadly-based with world leading strengths in the arts, including journalism and music; informatics; social sciences; engineering and mathematical sciences; business; law; community and health sciences.
The University attracts over 22,000 students from around 150 countries and academic staff from around 50 countries.
City was founded in 1894 and in 2016 will celebrate its first half century since gaining University title.
