SSRG Newsletter - October 2001: From E-Government to G-Government - GIS is up your street

Readers of this publication will by now be used to buzz words and acronyms which have caused considerable acrimony to those of us trying to make a buck in Local Government; PAF/RAP/PSSE have been duly assimilated into the Social Services psyche but g-government??, GIS??: -come on what are they all about?

If you read the Guardian magazine on Saturdays you will have seen a map produced by a GIS (or Geographical Information System) which perhaps shows a breakdown of something like pie-eating by county. All well and good, but what's the point of that? Not a lot unless you're a baker, but substitute pie-eating for (for example) expenditure on home care/distribution of older people by council ward and you can start to see where I'm coming from.

There is a much bandied about figure by GIS evangelists that 80% of all Local Authority data has a spatial element to it. This means simply that it describes a location, ranging from 'this is where the social services office is in our borough' to 'we have 730 home meals clients who live at these places, Mrs X needs menu 7, Mr Y needs menu 2 etc and the best route for delivering them, factoring in real-time traffic conditions is this one. Each scenario however can be represented using a GIS map which has the advantages of not only being easily understood but also extremely useful and efficient as an analysis tool.

So how does it work? We all work with data. In order for that data to be able to be mapped we must associate it with a geographical reference (a map reference) which can relate to a simple point on a map or the outline of, for example, a building. We might want to look at profiling an area in order to apply for funding for example.

By aggregating data up to ward or neighbourhood level we can start to see what an area is like according to various local or national indicators. In fact the 2001 census results will come from ONS in CD- ROM form with a kind of on-board GIS to do just that with census data. But for those of you who are 'GI-curious: go to the Governments own statistics site at www.statistics.gov.uk/neighbourhood/home.asp. Here, by clicking on the map of the UK you can 'drill down' through the data to ward level and obtain information on a range of national indicators. I am planning to develop an initiative in Kensington and Chelsea called 'Stats-to-GoTM where we can use local indicators and information, all obtainable from one central easily accessed data source.

This article can only be a quick view of a complex subject that takes time and resources to develop. However, to conclude, there are many potential reasons for developing GIS in social services

• To allow reception staff and the public to find their nearest facility
• To present data in an understandable form via an Intranet or a public website
• To assist in decision making and best value reviews
• To increase the quality and management of data
• To drastically reduce the amount time taken in satisfying internal and external data requests.

Go to www.upmystreet.com. Here you can find all sorts of information about your area. Some of the best happens when you click on the 'ACORN profile' option where you will be presented with information about your area as seen by the market research 'profession': what paper you might read, what car you might drive, whether you eat pies...

Andy Holt

Andy Holt is the GI data manager at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea but this article is written in a personal capacity