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…
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…
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…
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…
Getting Down to Brass Tacks: Practical Data Sharing and Problem Solving in London December 21st, 2016 by Alan Lewis The latest in our series of London Borough Data Partnership meetings was held last week at the London Fire Brigade HQ. The Partnership aims to bring together London’s Government to share, discuss and create data projects to solve some of our public service challenges. An interesting set of speakers, along with the promise of festive…
Are Thirtysomething Londoners Really ‘Fleeing’ the Capital? December 20th, 2016 by Monica Li There have been a number of media reports[1] in recent years about the exodus of young adults from London. One report from 2014 suggested that the number of thirty-somethings ‘fleeing’ the Capital was the highest on record. Rising housing costs are commonly cited as the main reason behind this apparent recent exodus of Londoners in…
LODA Pilot Update December 19th, 2016 by Nevena Dragicevic (Nesta) and Wil Tonkiss (GLA) In June this year the GLA’s Intelligence Unit began working with Nesta on the pilot for the London Office for Data Analytics (LODA). As the year draws to a close, this post provides an update on the key milestones we have already achieved and looks forward to some of the next steps being taken in…
Exploiting The Potential Of Data: How Changes To The Statistics Code Of Practice Can Help Achieve This December 16th, 2016 by Vivienne Avery This week saw publication of a Stocktake Review of the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. The recommendations from this report are a big step forward in helping us to implement the Mayor’s manifesto commitment to comply voluntarily with the Code as part of his pledge to run the most transparent Mayoralty. As well as…
Redeveloping the GLA’s modelling framework November 23rd, 2016 by Wil Tonkiss For over 40 years the GLA, and its predecessors, have produced population projections for London and the boroughs. These projections form the foundation of much of the GLA’s strategic planning and help to shape a wide range of policy decisions. The projection models themselves are continually evolving as new data and methods are incorporated into…
Organising and Mobilising for Change: Observations and Lessons from America’s leading Data Cities November 4th, 2016 by Andrew Collinge Last week I attended a gathering of the Civic Analytics Network. This was an incredibly useful and hard-working event, supported by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. This quick report sets out a series of observations and reactions. If you are interested in increasing data and digital capabilities…
The GLA’s data science journey October 20th, 2016 by Marta Lapsley Over the past couple of years the Greater London Authority has been developing its data science capacity. This blog post aims to give a brief snapshot of where we are and where we are headed, in terms of skills, organisation and infrastructure. Skills The Intelligence Unit at the GLA comprises a number of teams with…
School rolls projection: moving foRward September 26th, 2016 by Marta Lapsley 2016 has seen some big changes in our school roll projections service with the development of a new projection model which has been written in the statistical programming language R, allowing us to harness R’s power to make use of much bigger datasets and a more complex model. Every year the GLA intelligence unit produces…
Where to draw the Line in Use of Personal Data? A New Experiment to understand Public Acceptance and a Call for Help September 21st, 2016 by Michelle Warbis Today – sometimes knowingly, most of the time almost certainly not – people share, or depending on your point of view, give away, the data they create simply as a result of passing through a normal day. This data is drawn from a wide array of sources, in both the public and private sectors, in…
Developing Data Infrastructure for London August 15th, 2016 by Larissa Suzuki Earlier this year we published the Implementation Plan for the GLA’s City Data Strategy. The Implementation Plan is a key organising element of our work, needed for the realisation of the priority actions we have set out in our strategy, all of which are designed to help us to deliver maximum social, economic, environmental and…
London Office of Data Analytics Pilot: two weeks of showing and telling to focus the data science and sharpen the overall approach August 12th, 2016 by Lora Armstrong It’s been 6 weeks since our kickoff workshop for the London Office of Data Analytics (LODA) pilot programme, a joint venture between the GLA and Nesta, with involvement from nearly half of the London boroughs. The broader context shows a real sense of growing intent and purpose around data sharing for impact. In the same…
Offices of Data Analytics: next steps for London and the North East July 28th, 2016 by Eddie Copeland, Director London Office of Technology & Innovation As announced in previous blogs, Nesta is working with the GLA and more than a dozen boroughs in London – and with local authorities, the Digital Catapult and Sunderland Software City in the North East – to pilot data analytics projects that address public service challenges. This post provides a brief update on the latest…
London Office of Data Analytics: Documenting the Learning Process July 7th, 2016 by Andrew Collinge As regular readers of this blog will know, the GLA and Nesta are working together to run a pilot to demonstrate that performing data analytics on datasets sourced from multiple local authorities and other novel sources can help reform public services in the capital. This short blog provides a link through to a more detailed…
Sharing Cities Update: What on earth is a SEMS and why does it matter? July 4th, 2016 by Rick Curtis ‘SEMS’ (Sustainable Energy Management System) is a key deliverable of the Sharing Cities programme. At its simplest, SEMS is the joining up of smart energy infrastructure and services (e.g. a river source heat pump and associated district heating scheme) with a data platform (in the case of Sharing Cities, our Urban Sharing Platform). Achieving the…
Three lessons on City Data Analytics from Mike Flowers June 30th, 2016 by Eddie Copeland, Director London Office of Technology & Innovation I’ve previously written about plans by the GLA’s Andrew Collinge and Nesta to run a pilot for a London Office of Data Analytics, inspired by the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics (MODA) in New York City. Last week saw significant progress when 15 London boroughs came together for a workshop with the GLA to select a…
Open data and design thinking – new tools to tackle social challenges June 24th, 2016 by Andy Hamflett and Lucy Kimbell Over the past 18 months, the Trussell Trust, the UK’s biggest foodbank, has been exploring its data in new ways. Working with researchers from Hull University Business School, data science firm Coppelia and social innovation agency AAM Associates, the project honed in on new insights and ways of viewing its network, which has undergone rapid…
London to pilot LODA with Nesta June 9th, 2016 by Eddie Copeland, Director London Office of Technology & Innovation If you’ve heard me speak at a conference or read one of my blogs, you’ve probably gathered that I’m a big admirer of New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics (MODA). At times I may have sounded like a broken record. In my defence, there are good reasons to be excited about the model…
Implementing a City Data Strategy: The Data for London Road trip starts here May 19th, 2016 by Larissa Romualdo-Suzuki On the 1st of March 2016 we published our City Data Market Strategy – a document that aims to be both technically competent and persuasive to a political and senior leadership audience in London about the need to actively integrate and mobilise all the ‘working parts’ of the city data economy. Over the intervening weeks,…
Steal with pride and share with passion May 18th, 2016 by Nathan Pierce When is stealing something the right thing to do? We learn from a young age that society frowns on the concept of stealing. Yet, in the case of the Horizon 2020 programmes, I would argue that we should actively borrow from each other, with transparency and with pride, in order that we can combine, build,…
A barometer of London Government’s digital and data capacity? May 17th, 2016 by Alan Lewis Response to our recent call for London Boroughs to get involved in a London Office of Data Analytics (LODA) pilot have been very positive, with over half of the 33 Boroughs expressing an interest. This in itself demonstrates a real willingness and appetite to try and do things differently. Next step will be a series of…
Championing the better use of data May 5th, 2016 by Emma Christie The GLA recently submitted a response to the Cabinet Office’s consultation on the better use of data in government. As the London Datastore team will attest, the ‘better use of data’ is a perpetual endeavour of the GLA’s Intelligence Unit – it’s the business we are in. While we are a modest bunch, and not…
Small steps towards a London Office of Data Analytics? April 21st, 2016 by Alan Lewis The message was clear and a show of hands required: 5 boroughs willing to take part in a pilot project with ourselves and Nesta to demonstrate the benefits of a London Office of Data Analytics (LODA). This was the ask of Andrew Collinge (AD of the GLA’s Intelligence Unit) and Eddie Copeland (Director of Nesta’s…
The London Landscape: supporting Policing and Community Safety in a data-rich city March 17th, 2016 by Richard Fairchild Launched today by the GLA and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), the London Landscape is an interactive and easy-to-use collation of over a million data points – covering a wide range of thematic areas from emergency services through to finance and population – providing an overview of London to support police and…
From poetry into prose: Early stages delivery for Sharing Cities March 9th, 2016 by Francisco Goncalves From the 2nd to the 4th March, Fondazione Politecnico di Milano held two important technical meetings in the early stages of our H2020 Smart Cities and Communities Programme, “Sharing Cities”. During three days, all the relevant partners, responsible for the demonstration of tangible technology measures (in our ‘Place’ work package) and for their integration in…
A House Divided: Talk to the Alan Turing Institute Cities Summit February 9th, 2016 by Andrew Collinge Last week I was privileged to give a talk to the Alan Turing Institute Cities Summit, hosted by UCL’s Bartlett School of Planning. Knowing that I would be speaking alongside some of the best in the data science business, I opted to cover the cultural and organisational blocks on the adoption of data science in…
33 boroughs, two babies and one city modelling platform February 2nd, 2016 by Elisabeth Weise We’ve been hard at work since our last update – in that time we’ve delivered our first release of Witan, and two babies! Our city modelling platform is now live and our first users in London have been given access this week. On-demand demographic projections to meet housing demand Witan is now able to generate…
Sharing Cities – the Importance of Values and Behaviours in amongst the Science and Process of Programme Delivery January 27th, 2016 by Andrew Collinge Last week, we launched our H2020 Smart Cities and Communities Programme, “Sharing Cities”. The two day event brought together 70 people, from 30 partner organisations, 6 countries, all working in splendid harmony across 8 highly connected work packages – well that’s the plan, eventually. With a desire to do things differently (representatives of the European…
London leads on a bold initiative to generate €500m smart city investment funds from €25m EU seed funds January 19th, 2016 by Graham Colclough If there was one city that should be able to deliver on such a bold goal then it would be London – the city with more financial muscle than most. The good news is that this goal is one that is shared. It is one of ten bold goals that are shared with Lisbon, Milan…
GLA Intelligence and Analysis Unit January 14th, 2016 by Gareth Piggott The Intelligence Unit sits at the heart of the GLA, providing the Mayor and the Authority with world class evidence and analysis which support the formation of policy and strategy in London; and developing the technology and people-driven narrative for London, the smart, innovative, digital city. We have published a short summary of our key…
London School’s Atlas Update January 4th, 2016 by Alan Lewis and Ben Corr In 2013, the GLA launched the London Schools Atlas. This was a ground-breaking new resource for parents, planners and policy makers – providing a unique view of patterns of attendance across the capital’s schools together with a wide range of contextual information. Two years on from release, we recently refreshed the data behind the Atlas…
New estimates of projected demand for school places in London November 24th, 2015 by Wil Tonkiss Understanding the relationship between population change and demand for school places is crucial if public authorities are to plan effectively for future place provision. Over the last ten years London has experienced exceptionally high birth rates – annual births in the capital rose by almost 30,000 (28 per cent) between 2001/2 and 2011/12. Initially this put pressure…
Where were London’s mothers born? November 18th, 2015 by Monica Li An analysis of data on mothers’ country of birth, based on ONS data, shows that in 2014, 58 per cent of live births in London were to mothers born outside the UK, compared with 27% in England & Wales. However within London there are still considerable differences between boroughs – in Havering, only 28 per…
Blow out the candles: London Datastore in its new form is one year old today October 26th, 2015 by Andrew Collinge It’s a full year to the day since, with the able assistance of Datapress Open Data Publishing, we relaunched the London Datastore. As one tends to do as the smoke of the extinguished birthday candles invades your nostrils, the London Datastore team were for a few moments nostalgic about the journey of Datastore this past…
Will Big Data Be the Solution to the London Tube Strike? October 16th, 2015 by Larry Alton Several times a year, London will experience a Tube strike in which thousands are unable to ride the rails. As a result, Transport for London (TFL) has been working round the clock to provide extra transportation routes and networks to accommodate those people. Because people have a harder time getting to work, businesses experience the backlash of…
From Waste comes Value: Transferring New York’s expertise on waste-related Analytics October 13th, 2015 by Alan Lewis We haven’t checked but it’s a fair bet that the words big, data, smart, and analytics would appear in the top 10 most frequently used words in our Datastore blog posts. With this in mind we’d like to share an example of a project from across the pond that certainly ticks all these boxes, whilst proving the value these things bring…
Update on the Witan Project October 5th, 2015 by Ben Corr The Witan project kicked off this summer with a flurry of meetings, workshops, brainstorming sessions and lofty aspirations. Out of this frothy mix came the pragmatic decision to aim for concrete deliverables which both demonstrated the project’s potential and offered real benefit to stakeholders. Demography was chosen as the field on which to focus first…
Hey, Big Spender – Using linked data to inform the management of public funding September 28th, 2015 by Andy Hamflett Hey, Big Spender – Using linked data to inform the management of public funding Here at AAM Associates we’re exploring how various data sources and approaches can be used to drive social impact. Earlier in the summer we supported a short open data project with London South Bank University and the Big Lottery Fund, who recently…
What will be the next Streetmapper? September 24th, 2015 by The City Data Team Everyone has a transport app on their phone nowadays – they’ve been extraordinarily successful. But what’s next? What are the new combinations of data that will transform our lives and drive successful new businesses, products and services? We at City Hall have been working with London-based startup DataPress to develop a new API for the…
The Fog of War: The problem with queueing and why data is important September 17th, 2015 by James Swanston In the military there is a great expression – the fog of war – which is all about how confusion can reign on a battlefield because of all of the unknowns that happen. There was a recent article in the Washington Post about the issue of waiting in line, and how the typical first-come, first…
Spotlight on London – What Do Millennials Desire in a Property? September 2nd, 2015 by Alexandra Coumas The housing market has undoubtedly suffered negative coverage in the media in recent years and with millennials (people reaching young adulthood around the year 2000) struggling to get onto the property ladder, it has become a cause for concern for many. With this in mind, it comes as a surprise that a recent study reveals that…
Integrating infrastructure data – publishing a first version of the London Infrastructure Map August 28th, 2015 by Madalina Ursu Today we publish a first version of the London infrastructure map. UPDATE: April 2016 now replaced by guest version of the Infrastructure Mapping Application (IMA). The aim is to create a database to better understand the phasing of projects, the synergies and tensions that arise when looking at the cumulative impact of development, the potential…
Big Data and Cloud Computing Are Fundamentally Changing London and Other Major Cities August 27th, 2015 by Larry Alton For the better part of a decade, IT experts have discussed the imminent impact of big data and cloud computing on the very cities we live in. It wasn’t until recently that the deeper effects of their forecasts became apparent, however. Now, in the second half of 2015, the question arises: How have technologies backed…
An update on Witan – the flexible city modelling platform August 19th, 2015 by Fran Bennett As I mentioned in my previous blog post, Mastodon C is working together with the Greater London Authority to develop a flexible approach to city modelling. The aim is to take forecasting beyond the limitations of Excel, while providing modellers with the benefits of sophisticated data management tools, such as version control, security levels and scaling…
Building the City Data Market August 11th, 2015 by Andrew Collinge We need to make smart cities and smart government real. To do so, we need to take city data seriously, and give shape to a complex marketplace. An elderly man sits comfortably in his housing association flat. As usual, his son is having a busy day. Both are content that (aided by an integrated health…
Know your Place, realise your Value: exploring the Concept of Data-Driven Value Networks August 5th, 2015 by Larissa Suzuki This is the third in a series of blogs we are writing as we create a City Data Market Strategy for London. In the most recent post, we presented a new leadership pattern to create data infrastructures for smart cities called “middle-out” approach. This new leadership pattern is formed on the basis of social influence and…
The Middle Out Approach – A New Leadership Pattern to create Data Infrastructure in Cities July 27th, 2015 by Larissa Suzuki The need for data infrastructures (by this we mean data platforms, marketplaces, open data portals and so on) for smart cities is well established. Cities of today must be prepared to cope with population growth, scarcity of natural resources and environmental issues. The answer to these problems can be found in high quality contextualised data.…
London’s Mortgage Lending Hotspots July 24th, 2015 by Alasdair Rae A number of extremely useful new housing datasets have been opened up in recent years, including those on mortgage lending and house prices. So, at the risk of saturating the market in blog posts on housing in London, in this short piece I examine London’s mortgage lending hotspots by looking at changes in mortgage lending…
Data Suggests London’s Love with Contactless Payment is Only Beginning July 22nd, 2015 by Anna Johansson Smart Cities are progressive cities – and that’s especially true for London. For the last year or so, London has been seen as the unofficial contactless payment capital of the world. Most of this reputation comes from the widespread adoption of contactless payments on the Transport for London (TfL) network, which reports more than 1.2…
A City Data Market Strategy: creating a Knowledge Infrastructure for London July 20th, 2015 by Larissa Suzuki The modern city should provide an environment in which information flows rapidly and easily, making of itself a platform for both the dissemination and active consumption of innovation to improve the way it works and peoples’ lives. It needs to. Every day nearly 180,000 people move to cities, creating more than 60 million new urban…
Study Suggests London Appoint a Data Tsar July 17th, 2015 by Larry Alton The next mayor of London needs to appoint an official Data Tsar to collect and organize data in a more efficient manner. At least, that’s what a new report from Capital City Foundation says, having reviewed New York City’s data set monitoring practices. The Pursuit of Becoming Smarter While many cities drastically need better data…
The Morning after the Night before: international recognition for the London Datastore July 10th, 2015 by Andrew Collinge Last night, my colleague Paul Hodgson and I attended the ODI Annual Open Data Awards. The event took place in the striking Bloomberg headquarters – a good choice of award partner because there was a guy who understood the potential of data. The GLA, and more specifically the London Datastore, had made it through the…
