LG Inform Plus

A premium information service for managers in local government.


LG Inform Plus provides subscribers with a suite of diverse online services to help understand customers, improve service provision and reduce costs, all in one accessible place.

Allowing greater access to more detailed information gives a better understanding of an authority's business challenges and performance. LG Inform Plus is based on the tried and tested framework of local government information sharing standards making information easy to use and giving consistency across the sector.

As well as subscribers being able to access some 1,500 data items, LG Inform Plus also provides a range of integrated services and assistance from a dedicated support team.


Data and reports

While LG Inform lets you compare your authority's area with others, LG Inform Plus looks within your borders, providing information for each ward and smaller areas of geography. This can then be compared with other wards in your region and nationally.

The full feature report writer, including enhanced search, charts, maps, tables, dynamic text, supported by 1,500 regularly updated metrics, gives you an easy way to present key information about your citizens and locality to decision makers. Embed your reports, making new content available to colleagues and residents with current data and your contextual insight.

Search for and download prebuilt reports for individual metrics and subject themed reports written by the LGA.


Record of Processing Activities (ROPA) tool

The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires organisations to maintain a RoPA, covering the ‘legal basis’ for holding personal data, how it is processed and with who it is shared. Using LG Inform Plus’ existing records retention tool, we have created a customisable RoPA template which you can complete with local information to form your council’s full RoPA.

The template meets ICO guidelines and describes each type of record that an English council is likely to hold to meet legal and business records management requirements. This is then broken down into greater detail, with more standard information pre-populated for GDPR purposes, allowing you to:

  • download the template RoPA
  • upload and download a spreadsheet of your RoPA
  • maintain your RoPA online
  • share with other authorities.

The RoPA tool has been built by and for a community of councils working with the LGA. Legal and records retention guidance is provided by Kent County Council and delivered via the LG Inform Plus records retention and RoPA tools. We expect these tools and data to be refined as experience builds across the community.

The RoPA template is provided as an initial starting point and we recommend you involve your council’s experts when reviewing and approving your final retention schedules and RoPA.


My Local Metrics

My Local Metrics is a new data service allowing LG Inform Plus subscribers to add their local data items, or local performance indicators, to the LG Inform database for use alongside the 5,500 publicly available data items it already holds.

Using the LG Inform Plus secure platform, users can define new metric types and upload their values for use within the LG Inform, LG Inform Plus and LGI API standard tools. Once upload these metrics can be used to create anything from simple charts, tables and maps to complex reports to better reflect local needs and priorities.

Subscribing organisations have an automatic allocation of 5 database spaces ready to store their local metrics with their standard subscription. More database space, for additional metrics can easily be added by upgrading your original subscription.


Additional services

LG Inform Plus offers a number of useful tools, focusing on simplicity of use and close alignment with LG Inform.

Natural neighbourhoods

Instead of standard geographies, create new custom areas defined to your needs, such as community zones, for more meaningful reporting and greater insight. Use these new geographies in your own reports to show data for your area, or view any of our prebuilt reports through your new area. Natural neighbourhoods also works well alongside data added under the ‘My Local Metrics’ service.
Records retention guidance

Save money on your council or fire and rescue service’s records retention by using LG Inform Plus’ 1,700 retention schedules for every service in the Local Government service list. In partnership with Kent County Council’s legal service team, the records retention information guides English councils on the types of records that could be kept for each service to ensure compliance with the Code of Practice on the management of records issued under section 46 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (issued by DCMS in July 2021) on the management of records and to meet likely business needs.
Power and duties tool

The power and duties tool looks at the legal duties and powers councils must understand to deliver services for each type of English council. Over 6,000 links to current legislation will help guide your authority when making decisions about which services to provide. Produced in partnership with Kent County Council’s Legal Services team, the information ensures compliance with statute in England and Wales for many different bodies of local government.
Standards

The local government sector has been working for more than 15 years to develop these information sharing standards. These Standards, developed by the sector, underpin service delivery, allowing councils to take a 360-degree view of local government: from services and functions to changes in circumstances and reshaping service provision.



LG Inform Plus standards are used widely in corporate data systems and support many initiatives that require individual local data sets to be brought together and used in combination for regional and national purposes. They are used to drive public facing national data services like gov.uk and local themes in data.gov.uk and provide a fundamental building block to linking data in an open published way. The standards are seen as the "home of local government semantics" and provide a reputable source of uniform resource identifiers (URIs – essential to linked data) for local data publishing.



Classifying data within these controlled lists (in their human or machine readable forms) allows data consumers and app developers to view business information from any angle or starting point. The contribution that these standards are making to open linked data publishing and the demands of the transparency agenda is significant.
Supporting tools and materials for open data publishing

The open data pages within LG Inform Plus provide the local government sector with guidance, helpful tools, searching aids and access to core inventories, schemas and data harvesters/aggregators in support of the local open data publishing processes for the transparency agenda.



Each local authority and fire service creates huge volumes of data for the effective running of their business. With the increasing move to open government and widespread publishing of last data stocks, there is a need for central coordination to facilitate basic standards against which such data should be published. Without this central coordination, most local data will be in many disparate forms and it will be impossible to locate, aggregate, analyse in combination and reuse in the vision set out by open transparency.



LG Inform Plus provides a central platform (managed and enhanced in close collaboration with sector-wide information managers and standards bodies) for data publishing strategies to be deployed along with search and analysis tools to provide means harvesting local data and combining it in combination for regional and national re-use by data consumers.

LG Inform Plus training videos on Power BI

View a series of training videos from LG Inform Plus on how to use Power BI


LG Inform Plus case studies

The case studies below provide examples of the available functionality in LG Inform Plus.


Subscription

Subscription rates for the programme are summarised here

Subscription for one authority covers everyone who works for it (with same domain email address).

Email [email protected] for more details about subscription to LG Inform Plus.