AGI Local Public Services SIG member survey results

In late 2011, we asked for your views on the main issues, priorities and occurrences with GI in local public services. And you responded. The results of the survey are in, with some interesting results.

What has become increasingly clear from the results is that in these times of austerity, public services are looking for better communication, more assistance on policy and greater use of case studies and practical advice to influence best practice in the use of GI in a constantly changing business environment.

This includes use of GI for business intelligence, how we can influence the decision makers of our organisations and how we can use all our combined knowledge and hard data to create more efficient, better public services. See the headline results below for more details:

1. What type of organisation do you work for and what kind of AGI membership do you have?

	Emergency Services	Government Department	Local Government	NHS	Private sector	Other
AGI Corporate Member	11.1%	11.1%	77.8%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
AGI Local Corporate Member	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%
AGI Individual Member	0.0%	0.0%	90.0%	10.0%	0.0%	0.0%
Ex AGI member	0.0%	0.0%	50.0%	0.0%	0.0%	50.0%
Non Member	0.0%	0.0%	71.4%	14.3%	0.0%	14.3%

2. Approximately how many GI users are in your organisation and of these users how many can be described as superusers (managing and analysing GI)?

	1 to 5	6 to 10	11 to 20	20 plus	Other
GI Users	14.7%	2.9%	8.8%	67.6%	5.9%
Number of GI superusers	53.1%	9.4%	21.9%	12.5%	3.1%

3. What does your organisation primarily use GI for (tick all that apply)?

	Use	Don't use
Address management	84.4%	15.6%
Asset management	84.4%	15.6%
Business intelligence	89.7%	10.3%
Customer insight	78.6%	21.4%
Cartography/map creation	100.0%	0.0%
Data maintenance and updating	96.9%	3.1%
Planning and conservation	90.0%	10.0%
Publishing	73.1%	26.9%
Route optimisation	58.1%	41.9%
Service delivery (where is my nearest?)	83.9%	16.1%
Traffic management	51.6%	48.4%
Other	55.6%	44.4%

4. Is your GI offered as part of a shared service in your organisation?

	Part of shared services?
Yes	17%
No	83%

5. Do you provide or use web mapping services in your organisation?

	Yes	No
Web catalogue	20.0%	80.0%
Web download services	13.3%	86.7%
Web mapping	73.5%	26.5%
Other	9.1%	90.9%

6. Do you have a geographic or Geographic Information background?

Yes: 85.3%; No: 14.7%

7. Which issues do you feel are the highest priority with the use of GI in LPS (1=highest, 5=lowest)?

Issue	Average Rating
Resources/cutbacks	1.7
Data creation and capture	2.12
Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA)	2.17
Lack of senior management buy-in	2.32
National Addressing Gazetteer	2.32
Open data, open source	2.45
Shared services	2.94
INSPIRE	3.63

8. Would you be interested in attending an LPS GI event?

Nearly 86% of respondents expressed a desire that you would be interested in attending a LPS GI event, in particular a regional conference/seminar or a mapping camp event.

9. What event topics would you be most interested in attending?

Most commonly mentioned, in no particular, order include:

• National Address Gazetteer Management

• Common problems with GIS

• Web mapping,

• Shared services

• Customer insight and analytical business use of GI data

• Practical sessions in how others are using GI data and programming

• Senior management buy-in

• Efficient GI Data Management

• INSPIRE data and open data

• Mobile apps

10 (I) What are the future potential and innovative uses for GI in LPS?

• Making efficiencies from exploiting well understood GIS concepts

• Potential to improve services through public engagement and efficency

• Use of crowd sourced data and user self service tools

• Web mapping,

• Asset management

• Establishing local sdi

• Shared services

• Model building, time series analysis.

• use of GI in voluntary networks

• Mobile apps

10 (II) Are there any other GI related issues not covered here that you feel LPS should be concerned with?

• Realising the benefits of GI

• Basic information on GI for all levels of management

• Organisational integration

• Metadata specification

• Affordability and sustainability of open data and free access to data

10 (III) What role should LPS SIG play?

• Promoting innovation and sharing of best practice

• Consultancy/support to prgressive LPS users

• Coordination and thought gathering, leading to lobbying and promotion to senior management teams

• Networking and learning opportunities

• Lobbying and raising awareness S

• Sharing tools/explanations of finalised policy,

• To be the central voice on issues by networking, discussing and to be the opinion former

10 (IV) What do you expect from the LPS SIG

Two real issues emerged from this question namely expertise and continued and timely communications with members.

The NHS is in a state

The NHS is in a state…..of flux.  With Andrew Lansley taking over in the health hot seat after the last general election, he took no time at all in letting us all know his vision for the future of the NHS.  So radical were these plans that they did not make their way into the Conservative Party election manifesto.  You can read about these changes in the many papers he has published but two of the most pertinent are Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS and Healthy lives, healthy people: our strategy for public health in England.

The future is GP lead commissioning with the removal of PCTs and SHAs.  OK, fine.  Are all GPs in it for the love of the job or are they in it to make money?  Do they want to give the face to face bad news to a patient that they think the money they could spend on some life extending drugs for them, will actually be spend to fund operations to save the lives of 4 children.  Tough call.  This kind of bad news is currently handled faceless administrators in the PCTs.

Traditional geography will disappear in the form of Primary Care Organisations and Strategic Health Authorities.  How will health use Geography – or not – when the NHS is restructured?  It is certain that the lowest geographical unit will be the GP Practice, but that doesn’t have a defined geography.  A patient can now register with any GP, anywhere they like.  Each GP must organise himself into a GP Consortia creating a cluster of GPs, again, with no defined geography.  The Public Health paper does state…. p. 62 Paragraph 4.5 GP consortia will have responsibility for the whole population in their area.  How?  The population that are registered with a GP are covered, what about those that aren’t?

Do we need defined health geography as we have had?  Perhaps not.  A GP Consortia will have to report to a Local Authority, could be more than one, but to report health statistics at Local Authority level would be unhelpful for health inequalities and health needs analysis, regeneration, service planning.  Would publication of health information be better at lower levels?  I think so.  Make more use of Lower Level Super Output Areas.  These are well established building blocks which are small enough to identify areas of need within a Local Authority.  Small numbers may be a problem, but there lies another issue.  Information Governance around health information is tight to say the least.  Should it be?  To be honest if I thought my health information was being analysed and would inform decision makers on more appropriate service provision or targeted intervention programmes, I don’t care.  I’d probably already have posted it on Twitter or Facebook anyway!

A post on the Guardian DataBlog Few patterns in GP commissioning pathfinders on 12th January 2011, reveals a lovely map, using Google.  Last month the DoH named the first 52 pathfinder consortia. Information from eight of England’s 10 SHAs revealed GPs have grouped into around 260 consortia, suggesting there will be 300-350 nationwide.  DoH national clinical commissioning network lead Dr James Kingsland warned the figure was ‘frighteningly similar’ to the original number of PCTs. There were 302 PCTs before mergers in 2006 created the current set of 152

Each Pathfinder Consortia does include a geography, mostly Local Authorities or Counties.  An interesting point is raised “…The range of sizes and types of consortia allows for experimentation. It might cause problems later as the remaining GP practices have to choose a consortia to join, and could be forced to fill in the gaps – although it’s possible they would be able to join existing consortia. And health secretary Andrew Lansley is clearly more interested at this stage in trying new models and seeing what works, rather than keeping the picture tidy.”

In my day job I have been trying to engage with Policy people but with little success.  It would appear that the NHS restructure does not consider Geography to be very high up on its list of things to do.  What I find worrying, is that resolving the issue of Geography within Health may be a done deal already without any consultation or expert advice.

Perhaps DoH has a Plan B up its sleeve anyway and the reforms are just too big a deal?  Time will tell.

Republished with thanks from Graham Hyde's blog: http://allthingsgeo.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/what-about-the-geography/

Some GI links

Just a quick update on some of the GI related links that have popped up in the last few weeks. These vary with a broad set of topics from planned changes to the PSMA, copies of the presentations from the Share to save LPS event, to the full report on the Value of Geospatial Information from the LGA.

Click to read more ...

Local public services event - One day to go!

Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow at our Local Public Services Event event "Share to Save: How GI can equip the public sector to do more with less".  We have had a great response and are now fully booked with delegates from a range of professions and industries, so the conversation should be interesting to say the least.

To those of you who can't make it in person, follow us on our Twitter account (@AGILPSSIG) or just use the event hashtag of #sharetosave to stay up-to-date with what is happening and to join in the conversation.  Looking forward to hearing from you.

Presentations and findings of the event will be published on our blog and LPS SIG web pages.

Talk soon

Hendrik Grothuis

Chair, LPS SIG

Welcome to the Local Public Services SIG - Hendrik Grothuis of Cambridgeshire County Council (SIG Chair)

And a hello from me. My name is Hendrik Grothuis and I am the chair of the newly formed Local Public Services Special Interest Group (LPS SIG). This SIG was set up in early 2010 to bring all local public service GI under one umbrella group and it is here to represent the interests of GI professionals working in local government, Health and Emergency Planning. In fact, it represents everyone working with geospatial information in public services of all shapes and sizes. There is no ‘one fit’ anymore and as government restructures and rebrands, we must evolve with the needs and demands that this puts upon us. This is where this group can assist: in helping each other share knowledge and develop solutions for best practice in the utilisation of GI and raising awareness of the potential of GI in tackling so many of the issues that the public services encounter.

Click to read more ...