Open data, tech and doing social good

 

 

Ever wondered whether housing prices (and inaffordability) is increasing in Brighton & Hove faster than other cities in the UK? Or how crime levels are changing? Or whether levels of inequality across the city are improving or getting worse, and how they are affected by local economic growth?

 

These are the sorts of questions our clients ask in order to ensure they are directing their projects and resources to those most in need. We use our expertise in data, social research and technology to support local authorities, central government agencies, charities and the social housing sector to make evidence based decisions and tackle social inequality. 

 

We provide support through tools such as Local Insight, which gives quick and easy access to hundreds of datasets for local areas. Brighton & Hove City Council and Brighton & Hove Connected have commissioned a public facing version of the tool if you want to get a flavour of what we’re talking about.

 

Separate to this, we also provide bespoke analysis to organisations as well as being the team behind the 2015 English Indices of Deprivation. Think of the Indices as the Beyonce of the open data nerd world (we may be pushing it there, but it is certainly a strong, independent dataset). The Indices of Deprivation are one of the most important open datasets published by government, and are used to target hundreds of millions of pounds of public & private resources every year. Since being released at the end of September, they are the most-downloaded government dataset,  and on the day of publication were the top news story on BBC (albeit for a brief period of time!). As an aside to this, we have also developed a resource hub as a place to share case studies and real-life uses of the Indices of Deprivation

 

We’re based just by Brighton Station if you ever want to talk open data, tech and doing social good - get in touch!