City DataStore: Data Sharing for Impact from London’s Data Ecosystem November 22nd, 2017 by Andrew Collinge and Paul Hodgson London has taken another step towards creating a more frictionless data sharing and governance environment this week with the launch of the City DataStore. The simplest way to describe this is as “a private twin” to the London DataStore – an environment in which new forms of data from a wider variety of sources, can…
GLA Economics forecasts subdued economic growth for London November 21st, 2017 by Mark Wingham GLA Economics has recently published its latest economic forecasts for London. This uses our bespoke forecasting model to estimate London’s economic output (as measured by gross value added or GVA), workforce jobs[1], household income and household spending up to 2019. At the headline level, we forecast: London’s economy is expected to grow by 2.1 per…
Big data to plan for council tax reform September 26th, 2017 by Mark Wingham In early September, the third annual Data for Policy international conference took place here in London. The objective of these conferences is simple: to share learning and knowledge about using data in the public sector. I went along as the representative for the Intelligence Unit at the Greater London Authority (GLA). I presented a paper…
The impact of the roll-out of Universal Credit on the Claimant Count September 13th, 2017 by Daryl Rozario Summary The Claimant Count is a measure of the number of people claiming benefits principally for the reason of being unemployed, based on administrative data from the benefits system. It provides a timely indication[1] of unemployment and allows for detailed analysis to be produced. Before 2013 it was measured using the number of people claiming…
London labour market projections 2017 August 31st, 2017 by Daryl Rozario In August GLA Economics published its latest employment projections for London. The projections use updated employment and GVA data to project the number of jobs in London broken down by sector and at the borough level. The central projection estimates that jobs in London will grow from 2016 at an annual average rate of 0.78…
The facts about transport spending in London August 9th, 2017 by Daryl Rozario By Mark Wingham. You often hear in the media that London receives a lot more in transport spending than any other region. And yes, more is spent in London in total than anywhere else in the UK – around £8.5 billion was spent by the public sector in 2015-16, more than a quarter of the…
London’s creative industries – 2017 update July 25th, 2017 by Daryl Rozario By Christopher Rocks, Economist. Since 1998 the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) has grouped together sub-sectors as wide ranging as visual arts, advertising and computer services to classify and measure the ‘creative industries’. These sub-groups are described as: ‘those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have…
Getting the Show on the Road: Report from the first London Office of Technology and Innovation Stand Up July 25th, 2017 by Andrew Collinge A few weeks back now, we announced a scoping exercise for a London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI). We’re committed to being open about what we are doing and this blogpost is the first step in that direction. The idea behind the scoping study is to turn the talk about the transformative effect of…
Safeguards and Sharing in ‘DataSmart’ Cities July 19th, 2017 by Matt Clifton: Programme Partnership Manager for Sharing Cities The Digital Economy Challenge The exchange and protection of personal and non-personal data is a critical challenge facing all cities across Europe. In London, Lisbon and Milan, the Sharing Cities programme[1] is working to develop robust approaches to data security in the design and implementation of smart services. Our work aims to meet the requirements…
The 2017 General Election – the numbers behind the result June 29th, 2017 by Joseph Colombeau It feels like groundhog day as Britain went to the polls and produced a result that few saw coming. Read below for some analysis of what happened and a link to download the results in full. The 2017 General Election has resulted in a hung parliament, with no party able to win a majority of…
Delivering Data Value and sharing the GDPR Load: a Data Sharing Alliance for London June 27th, 2017 by Andrew Mobbs, London Fire Brigade Do you ever feel that some mountains are just too difficult to climb? In these cases I’m often reminded of a scene from Mission Impossible: Mission Commander: Good morning, Mr. Hunt. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves getting all of the London Boroughs, health trusts, emergency services, voluntary organisations and all of…
Some economic uncertainty but London’s economy likely to continue to grow June 26th, 2017 by Daryl Rozario Gordon Douglass from GLA Economics goes through the latest economic forecast for London. Since our previous forecast was published in autumn 2016, economic events have calmed down to some extent although Article 50 has been triggered formally starting the ‘Brexit’ process. Despite the economic uncertainty this has caused it has so far had limited impact…
OrganiCity Open Call June 15th, 2017 by Simona Ciocoiu & Duncan Wilson (Intel) Be part of the next wave of experiments in urban data and IoT in London. Are you a citizen, a community group, a local authority, a public sector body, a business, or a researcher looking for funding to change London for the better? And do you want to use data to do so? Funded by…
City Data Analytics: what’s actually possible? May 4th, 2017 by Eddie Copeland Much has been promised about data’s potential to help local government and public sector bodies deliver more and better with less, predict and prevent problems, and even make a success of city devolution. But what’s the truth behind it, and what more can be done to support it? On 17 May, the innovation foundation Nesta…
The ‘Start of the Possible’? Announcing a Scoping Exercise for a London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) May 3rd, 2017 by Andrew Collinge A couple of weeks back, Councillor Theo Blackwell, Cabinet Member for Finance, Technology and Growth at LB Camden and the Local Government Information Unit produced a report. You can read it here (supporting survey outputs included) to find out more about how, far from being ‘digital dinosaurs’, among local councillors there is a growing appreciation…
Poverty in London 2015/16 April 5th, 2017 by Rachel Leeser Official government figures show that the total number of Londoners living in poverty has risen a little over the last few years with the growing population and now stands at around 2.3 million people. In percentage terms, the rate has stayed the same, at 27 per cent of all those living in the region, averaged…
From Smart Cities 1.0 to 2.0: it’s not (only) about the tech April 4th, 2017 by The Conversation This blog was taken from The Conversation. Read the original article here. The blog authors are: Sarah Barns, Western Sydney University Donald McNeill, Western Sydney University Ellie Cosgrave, UCL Michele Acuto, UCL This is the second article in The Conversation’s series Making Cities Work. It considers the problems of providing critical infrastructure and how we might produce the…
When is an address not an address? Working with A&E data on violent incident locations April 3rd, 2017 by Richard Fairchild This is a question the GLA Intelligence Unit’s Strategic Crime Analysis team have had to consider in relation to the locations of violent incidents provided by victims on attending hospital. This data is part of the Home Office Information Sharing for Tackling Violence (ISTV) project, where hospitals are encouraged to record additional information at their…
Digital Transformation: Bringing the Census into the 21st Century March 8th, 2017 by Erica Chin The census is the largest collection of socio-demographic statistics on the nation’s population. It occurs every ten year and provides not only a population count of England and Wales, but also detailed characteristics and attributes at small geography levels that government and non-government organisations utilise to underpin their decision making process. In a move to…
London’s relationship with Europe February 21st, 2017 by Daryl Rozario Gordon Douglass, Supervisory Economist, GLA Economics Since the 23 June referendum vote for ‘Brexit’ there’s been a high demand for data and statistics looking at London’s relationship with Europe and also how London sits in the UK as a whole. Fortunately lots of data sources are available to the GLA Intelligence Unit and we have…
Using household-level data to understand the drivers of poverty in the capital February 9th, 2017 by Giovanni Tonutti Policy in Practice are embarking on an ambitious project to track over half a million low-income households in London to understand how they are impacted by welfare reforms and other government policies over the course of almost two years. Using councils’ anonymised household level data, the project ‘Low-income Londoners and Welfare Reform’ will track the…
Introducing the new online job postings data for London: FAQ January 25th, 2017 by Nye Cominetti The London Datastore is piloting a new job postings dataset. This blog introduces the dataset and answers potential questions relating to its source, scope and quality. The data provides detailed information on the skills employers are looking for, the roles they’re seeking to fill, and the employment package they have on offer. We hope it…
