Leicester City Council creates a data-centric organization through internal & external data sharing

The council is committed to increasing transparency and using data to constantly improve the services we provide. We therefore aim to make our data available to citizens, staff and councilors, automating sharing while increasing engagement.

At Leicester City Council our focus on data sharing has three aims:

• To increase public transparency, providing engaging and understandable information around our activities
• To share data internally to enable greater efficiency and increased collaboration
• To increase efficiency by digitizing processes and automating data flows, backed by strong data governance

We began sharing open data from 2015, and in 2017 selected Huwise to power our new Open Leicester open data portal. The program initially focused on increasing transparency by publishing legally required datasets on council activities, such as spending and tender processes.

Following the creation of our marketplace, we have accelerated our data sharing strategy, with the aim of publishing all relevant data from across the council, in ways that make it easy for users to engage and understand. To ensure that data is high-quality, and consistent an in-depth governance policy was implemented. This is backed up by a clear process and support to help departments share their data, making publication as simple as possible for data owners.

The marketplace’s 380 publicly available and a further 50 internally available datasets are now accessible through a range of maps, dashboards, and data visualizations, covering information generated by the council itself (such as planning applications) and relevant data from external sources, such as the UK Census, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and government departments. This has allowed us to create dashboards around key areas such as unemployment, the cost of living, COVID-19 and census data.

Unemployment dashboard

One key priority is to address unemployment in Leicester with a focus on jobs and skills so residents can secure better paid work with better conditions. Leicester’s unemployment dashboard brings together data from the city and the ONS to provide a full picture of unemployment rates, broken down by criteria such as electoral ward, age, and gender. It enables Leicester to be compared to other cities and areas, providing vital information for key decision makers, residents and departments such as economic development.

Data is also digitizing previously manual processes, such as applying to rent allotments in the city. When citizens fill in online forms they are automatically cross-checked against relevant datasets in order to provide a real-time estimate of when an allotment will become available. This removes the need for people to call the council and allows us to focus on other areas.

Now that there is a pipeline of new datasets being added to the portal, we are extending sharing by looking to partner with external audiences. These include the city’s two universities, who are interested in using council data for research projects.

Leicester City Council has a strategic objective to use and share data across the organization to improve services for our residents and businesses as well as increase efficiency. The open data portal is a central part of this program, which also involves sharing relevant datasets between the council’s 21 different departments. Some open data, such as the unemployment dashboard is used internally as well as externally, but an additional 50 datasets are only shared internally. These include sensitive information such as COVID vaccination rates in particular areas and demographic groups, which was used to target specific campaigns to boost uptake.

Wel originally selected Huwise in 2017 and extended the relationship following a mandatory competitive tender process in 2022. In both cases our decision was based on the combination of Huwise’s technology strengths and in-depth support. We are benefiting from three features in particular:

By using the Huwise data product marketplace, we have created a strong foundation to underpin data sharing internally and externally at Leicester City Council. We are seeing results in three key areas:

• Greater transparency with all audiences

Relevant, up-to-date information is now available to residents, businesses, partners, and council staff through the portal. Each audience can access data in a variety of self-service formats, from visualizations to APIs. This increases internal collaboration between departments, ensures data-driven decision making, and informs the public of council activities. The number of datasets has increased by 50% over the last year, with 33% more people accessing the data marketplace.

• Increased efficiency in data sharing

By automating data flows and embedding information within council processes, We can extend data sharing across stakeholder groups while reducing manual administration and duplication of effort as all data is in a single location.

• A platform for active travel and transport

We already collect and publish a range of sensor data, such as around vehicle, pedestrian and cycle traffic in our transport dashboard. Moving forward we are investigating making publication real-time, aggregating data and then publishing it on the data product marketplace.