LG Inform data benchmarking tool – 2022/23 highlights

Overview

In 2022/23, we supported councils to access the tools and resources they needed to access and analyse research and data on council performance, demographics, and live trends and issues through our Research and Data programme, which includes our free data benchmarking platform – LG Inform – and our analytics-focused training and development opportunities.

 

Highlights

During 2022/23, programme highlights and achievements included:

• in recognition of its continued valuable contribution to the local government sector, LG Inform received ‘Highly Commended’ awards in both the Local Area Research and Intelligence Association (LARIA) Awards and the Analysis in Government Awards
• LG Inform reached the milestone of having over 12,500 metrics of council performance that can be analysed within its system
• LG Inform received more than 750,000 page views and reached the milestone of five million total views since 2013
• LG Inform continued to provide current performance data relating to councils and local areas, and we launched new LG Inform themed data reports in response to live issues
• during the year, LG Inform reports were released on financial hardship and economic vulnerability (including fuel poverty), health and wellbeing with a focus on children (including those affected by low-incomes), health and wellbeing in your area with a focus on obesity, housing affordability and understanding homelessness
• LG Inform's updated local area special educational needs and disability (SEND) report, developed in conjunction with the Department for Education, remained one of its most used reports
• LG Inform was widely utilised by the sector, achieving more than 750,000 views during 2022/23.
  
   

Case study – Support for councils following the launch of Office of Local Government (Oflog) data explorer

LG inform has been supporting councils following the launch of the new Office for Local Government (Oflog) data explorer. The data explorer is the start of work to deliver the vision for Oflog – to support local Government improvement through provision of authoritative, accessible data and analysis about performance.

In the coming year, Oflog will develop the data explorer further. To help, in the meantime, we have used the metrics in the Oflog dashboard to create a new Oflog Dashboard LG Inform report. This means users can use the LG Inform functionality, like bar charts, to help them understand and use the metrics even more effectively. It also means that Oflog’s metric identifiers can be used for councils' existing reports, or they can be imported directly into their systems via our API.