Briefing papers: Community Insights

Throughout 2019-20, the David Hume Institute’s Action Project brought people across Scotland together to discuss what was needed to progress towards a more prosperous, sustainable, inclusive and fair country. We spoke to people from all walks of life, including many from smaller communities in Scotland which retain a strong sense of identity but feel they are not heard or understood by government and policy-makers.

Building on the Action Project and a Scotland of Better Places, in autumn 2021, we embarked on a new project in partnership with the William Grant Foundation. The aim was to gain new insights from correlating open data about Scotland’s communities.

The research aimed to draw on a range of open datasets. However, it quickly became clear there was less open data available than expected. Consequently some information was collated manually from other sources, and we were not able to include information if it was not available Scotland-wide.  Read more about the research process on the project blog.

The key findings from the analysing the data:

• Positive relationships between the number of businesses per capita and the number of charities per capita in intermediate zones

• Positive relationships between the number of charities and community spaces per capita in intermediate zones

• Fewer charities in communities defined as more deprived by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD)

• Fewer businesses in communities defined as most deprived and least deprived by the SIMD

• More community spaces in communities defined as more deprived by the SIMD

By bringing together data from this project and the Action Project, we were able to illustrate how using qualitative and quantitative data alongside each other can produce a more detailed insight to an area. Using local knowledge allowed us to question some of the assumptions which underpin other correlated datasets such as the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) and the use of data more generally. 

A key conclusion was that only using quantitative data analysis could lead to misunderstanding and reinforce assumptions about places, and the people who live in them.

The three Community Insights briefings below demonstrate the potential benefits of combining different types of data to achieve a fuller picture of an area for decision making.

Using open data sources to investigate Scotland’s communities highlighted the slow progress being made towards an open data culture in Scotland, despite the proven benefits of doing so and the cost of not doing so.

We produced a briefing in partnership with Open Data Scotland to increase understanding of this critical area. DHI will continue our work in this field, aiming to inform and accelerate publication of open data in Scotland. 

Briefing paper: What is open data and why does it matter?

Open data that can be freely used, re-used, and redistributed, has the potential to drive innovative solutions to some of Scotland’s biggest challenges. An open data culture leads to improved government, economic growth, insight, and a more participatory democracy.  However, despite the benefits demonstrated by those leading the way in open data, Scotland is moving at a glacial pace and the gap with other countries is widening.

In 2015, the Scottish Government launched its Open Data Strategy which set out its vision that, by 2020, Scotland will value data and responsibly make use of it in order to improve public services and deliver wider societal and economic benefits for all. 

Since 2015, Scotland’s data has been ‘open by default’ but progress remains slow and over half of councils still make no open data provision. Although the Scottish Government permits the reuse of core website content, 30 of the 32 local councils do not. Our briefing paper indicates that over 95% of the data that could and should be open is still locked up, at an estimated annual cost to the Scottish economy of just over £2bn.

Globally, governments and political unions, including the EU, prioritised actions which in many cases overtake Scotland’s progress in the delivery of Open Government data plans. This includes creative use of open data from countries including Kenya, Romania, Mexico, Honduras, Paraguay and Uruguay. Urgent action is needed to ensure Scotland doesn’t miss out. 

Our briefing paper, published in partnership with Open Data Scotland by lead author Ian Watt, calls for a number of specific actions from national and local government, as well as large institutions such as the NHS and Scottish Universities, to address the issue including:

• Scottish Government adopting open data as a core part of their digital strategy with appropriate resource

• Creation of a national open data portal

• Development of common open data publishing standards for Scotland

• Working together with UK Government and commercial partners to accelerate superfast broadband provision as called for in DHI’s previously published paper on Levelling up high speed broadband