The newly established Office for Local Government (Oflog) has unveiled an online Local Authority Data Explorer.
The digital tool, currently in beta version, brings existing data together with functions to make it contextualised and comparable between councils and help users understand the performance of the sector and national trends.
Secretary of State for the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Michael Gove announced the setting up of Oflog as the performance body for the sector and launch of the Data Explorer in a statement to Parliament.
“Through this data and associated analysis, it will enable understanding and interpretation by its three main audiences – citizens, local government, and central government – of local government performance,” he said.
“By fostering accountability through increased transparency, Oflog will help support the improvement of local government performance.”
Service indicators
The launch version of the Data Explorer includes indicators on waste management, adult social care, adult skills and finance for local authorities in England, with functions to compare performance against all others in the country, selected authorities or the nearest neighbour councils, as defined by the statistical indicators of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA).
The policy paper on the launch says this is a starting point and there are plans to provide data on a wider range of local government data for a more holistic picture. Oflog will also aim to improve the existing metrics and help to boost the use and interpretation of the data based on feedback it receives.
It will also use the data itself to detect local authorities at risk of potential failure and set up dialogues between them and expert local leaders.
Gove said: “By collating, analysing, and publishing existing data about the relative performance of councils, it will help councillors and the public have the information they need to scrutinise more effectively local decisions; it will ensure council leaders can compare themselves against their peers and find examples of good practice to learn from; and it will allow central government and its partners to identify where there might be challenges and a need to step in to give support, where appropriate.”
LGA response
The Local Government Association responded to the launch with a degree of scepticism.
Its chair, Cllr Shaun Davies, commented: “Councils are responsible for shaping their places and to do this effectively they need data about the activities and performance of the rest of the public sector (including central government) in their local authority area. Therefore, the new Local Authority Data Explorer should include a wider set of metrics in future and not just those about council performance.
“Co-production with local government will be important in future iterations of the dashboard, to make it more meaningful locally, and we would urge government to deepen its engagement with councils to identify and define subsequent sets of metrics.
“There remains the need for clarity around how this platform fits together with dashboards proposed by the Department for Education and other work on indicators being undertaken by the Department for Health and Social Care.
“Local government has a very strong record of transparency. This includes our award winning data tool, LG Inform, which is freely available to councils and the public and contains much of the existing data which is already collected and published."
Gove added that Oflog will work closely with DLUHC and other partners, particularly the mayoral combined authorities, but it will not attempt to micro-manage councils or establish and expensive compliance regime. Instead, it is producing guidance, to be published after a consultation is complete, on themes of good practice to achieve continuous improvement.
