Data makes a difference

Data Makes a Difference - making the best use of data helps to improve services to our citizens

Data underpins everything that we do as a council - it supports both our policy and operational decision making and can help to improve lives and save costs.

It is of huge importance to us and how we work - many of our decisions are based on evidence and research. When we get quality data to support a programme of work, we can reap many benefits - for both our city, our citizens and our organisation.

If we get poor insight data, this can have devastating consequences for our projects and also impact the lives of our citizens.

So what does data mean to you and why is it important to us?

Data (factual information) helps the council to improve the services we deliver to our citizens - this can be wide ranging from protecting vulnerable children to collecting bins, gritting the roads and helping businesses to develop.

Data can include all the types of information we collect, store, analyse, and use and can be recorded in many formats such as numbers, text, images, video, maps.

For example, it might include:

• information about our citizens such as the council services they use and where they live
• financial information such as our outgoings and income
• specific employment records on our staff, volunteers and contractors
• our strategic outcomes/impact measures
• environmental and population information such as health records

Why is data so important to us?

The use of data plays an increasing role in helping to design, deliver and transform our services to our citizens. Making the best use of accurate and efficient data can help us to improve outcomes and drive efficiencies within current financial constraints.

We all need to better understand the value of collecting, processing and using data across the organisation as data really does make a difference.

Case studies - you tell us how you are using data to make a difference

Making our neighbourhoods more liveable

As part of the Glasgow Neighbourhoods programme, NRS and SIIT are using data to gather information from citizens to make local communities more liveable places. The aim is to understand how communities use their neighbourhoods and to work in partnership with communities to improve their areas by developing Liveable Neighbourhood Plans.

There are four Liveable Neighbourhood themes, and these are:

• Local Town Centres: making local centres help communities meet their everyday local needs bringing vibrancy, activity and jobs.
• Everyday Journeys: improve the quality of journeys which are part of everyday life such as the work commute, the 'school run,' or a trip to the shops.
• Active Travel:  make sure we have streets which provide safe walking and cycling journeys.
• Streets for People:  make sure streets are places for people not just cars.

Pierre Jablon, Information Officer, SIIT Team, said:"Liveable neighbourhoods are areas of a city that are developed to be people-centred and more 'liveable'. We want our communities to be safe, healthy, inclusive, and attractive places where everyone can breathe clean air, have access to better quality green spaces and safe spaces to play, and feel a part of the community. The improvements in a liveable neighbourhood aim to make it easier to catch a bus and to walk or cycle, with improved infrastructure and less through traffic. Designing changes with data provided by the people who live in the local community means they will meet local needs."

"In partnership with the Liveable Neighbourhoods team in NRS, I have developed an online platform where citizens are able to share their views and ideas about their local communities. By gathering data, we can identify what is good about an area, and what could be improved. The platform includes an interactive map where citizens can share their ideas on specific locations. This information provides the NRS project team with valuable data to put forward plans that support the development of the four Liveable neighbourhood themes - to see streets and communities transformed into safer, more attractive spaces." 

Craig O'Holleran, Project Officer, NRS said:"The interactive map encourages the public to put forward their suggestions and proposals which enables council officers to identify the needs of the local communities to support the development of proposals based on the information gathered and funding available."   

More information

You can find out more about how we are making healthy, accessible and safe places that bring people of all ages out to play and socialise in their local community at Liveable Neighbourhoods

You can find out more about why data is important on our Data Makes a Difference Connect pages.

Supporting housing Pressures and demands across the city

Teams across Social Work/HSCP, NRS and SIIT are working together to look at the increasing pressures and demands for housing across the city and how it can be best managed. As part of this work, there was a requirement to make better use of our data to provide a real time picture of housing demand in the city and housing pressures.

Stephen Sprott,Project Manager, SIIT, said:"Teams from across the council family are working in partnership to better understand the pressing demands for housing. This includes supporting people who have presented as homeless, such as displaced Ukrainians, former asylum seekers and native Glasgow residents. The demand is assessed alongside anticipated supply to manage housing pressures." 

"One example of this is to track in real time the number and details of housing lets turned over by social landlords to homelessness services each month. This enables homeless services managers to work with landlords to manage the supply of properties across the city. This approach is based on managing the data in a more agile way and using technology to produce dashboards that provide insights into how to improve service delivery."

"A second example uses data to better inform housing strategy in the city - how to plan house building and supply across Glasgow to support the development of sustainable, neighbourhoods. On understanding the needs of the Housing Strategy team, a suite of dashboards have been created providing real time data on critical measures such as house building supply, existing stock, empty homes, private rents and housing repairs."

These solutions have been created by Piero Matassoni, lead developer in the SIIT Data Team, using ArcGIS (web-based mapping and analysis software) and Microsoft Power BI (data dashboards) applications, both of which are powerful tools used by the council to bring data to life in a visual way.

The feedback from the services who use the solutions has been positive. Kevin Howe, Homelessness Services Manager in Glasgow HSCP, said: "The social landlord data dashboard has been instrumental in Homelessness Services being able to visualise and monitor our strategic aim of securing 60% of social housing lets for homeless households. In addition to this, it has also helped us to compare social housing turnover year-on-year and better understand trends within the social housing sector."

Traffic is the heartbeat of the city - using data to keep traffic flowing

Since 2021, the SIIT data team have been working to support Traffcom operations in NRS on how best to report traffic data for the city. The challenge has been how to capture and store the large volumes of data generated in real time by the city's Urban Traffic Control platform (Traffic Management System) and turn it into information which can be used by traffic engineers and others to inform decision making around the city road network such as improving traffic routing and reducing congestion, achieving more accurate predictions and travel time estimations and supporting more effective infrastructure planning

Traffic flow data from over 1,000 sensors gets captured daily and stored using the Microsoft Azure platform (cloud-based computing solution). By collecting data and using visual techniques, the SIIT Data Team have been able to create applications to analyse traffic flow data in real time and historically - helping Traffcom to make better informed decisions.

Stephen Sprott,Project Manager, SIIT, said:"The challenge for Traffcom has always been around how to get the most out of the 'big data' it generates - and to increase the use and application of the volume of data generated every second of every day."

SIIT team members have worked with them to understand their requirements, create tools that enable them to query their own data and to compare changes in traffic flow between the present, recent past and further back. Making this data easier to analyse and understand is significant - for example, it enables engineers to see how traffic flow has been impacted by issues such as road works and road closures, the weather, or large-scale sporting or entertainment events. It also provides the public with information on the traffic flow across the city, so commuters can identify congested roads and consider alternative routes"

The feedback from those using the solutions has been positive. Brian Davidson, Engineering Officer in Traffcom, NRS said: "Traffic data is important for understanding where people are coming from and where they are going. The data informs decision making and policy on where to build new roads and public transport routes and how to improve the way that existing roads are used. The SIIT team have been instrumental in helping us navigate the complex world of big data, creating useable solutions that make it easy to understand the traffic data for the city - data needs to be received in real- or near-real time to make smart, impactful decisions."

You can view traffic flows in Glasgow here Live Traffic Data

Piero Matassoni, Information Officer (GIS) , SIIT Team: Providing insights into our communities and planning applications

Data is important in the Planning Applications process because it supports the council and the planning department to make informed decisions on various forms of construction, local regeneration requirements and the needs of our citizens.

Piero Matassoni, Information Officer (GIS), SIIT Team, said: "I worked in partnership with the NRS Service Development Team to look at the specific data requirements of the Planning and Building Standard Departments case management system - which stores all the data for planning applications. This could only be accessed by Planning Officers or other authorised users, meaning if other council departments were looking for information, they would have to put a request into the team to get the data they needed."

"I worked with the team to implement a Geographic Information System (GIS) solution, a digital mapping tool which merges with the data in the case management system - creating easy to view charts and insights into our communities.  Now the team has a real time view of the work, volume, location, demands and details of what they are delivering at any one time.  It also provides a self-service solution for sourcing and sharing data across multiple council departments - ensuring more evidence-based decision making."

Sara Shaw, Head of Planning, said: "There have been a number of benefits to integrating GIS with our case management system - the data is available on a map and is live, this helps us to monitor and track ongoing proposals and make this available to Councillors and communities. For example, as part of this work a visual dashboard was created for Major Planning Applications, and another for our Weekly List of all incoming applications; this displays by electoral wards used to update councillors, and Community Council wards.

Both dashboards show live information at any time and are map based rather than a list which is more engaging and shows information across boundaries. It also shows information for the last 10 years, supporting the forecasting of future trends and demands."

Stephen Sprott,  Project Manager, SIIT: Supporting Ukrainians in our city

Teams across Social Work/GCHSCP, NRS and SIIT are working together to look at the increasing pressures and demands for housing across the city and how this can be best managed.  As part of this work, there was a requirement to provide a live picture of the Ukrainian Displaced Persons (UDP) in the city and their housing needs.

Stephen Sprott,Project Manager, SIIT, said:"Various teams from across the council family are working in partnership to support displaced Ukrainians that arrive in the city. This involves capturing important data as soon as they arrive to make sure they have access to the right support at the right time, for example age, where they are accommodated, are they hosted by Glasgow families, are they being supported financially, have they moved on, if so where to - enabling a household profile to be created.  This data is critical to our decision making and helps to prioritise our plans around their accommodation needs, alongside future education, finance and job requirements."

"Through supporting displaced Ukrainians, the large volumes of data we capture needs to be maintained and shared across multiple Services to make sure the right solutions are put into place.  The SIIT Data Team supported this process by implementing a technical solution, Microsoft Power BI platform - which merges different data sources together into a single database which then creates an easy to view graphs or charts of the data.  The platform helps to give us a timely 'data driven' picture of Ukrainians in Glasgow."

"Using this platform has improved the way in which we can share our housing data across multiple council departments.  It has provided senior management teams with a way to view and analyse data in one place - to make more informed decisions around the overall housing demand and supply in the city now and over the next couple of years. The system has also allowed us to provide a more responsive service to meet the immediate needs of Ukrainians currently residing in Glasgow and is helping to support longer term plans for jobs and education needs."

Margaret Murphy, Catering Assistant, St Maria Goretti Primary School

"Data is incredibly important to my role as a school catering assistant.

Every day I record the number of menu items that have been prepared on a product control sheet. This information that I gather helps us to identify which products have been popular with the children in the canteen that day. The data helps us to make informed future menu decisions to make sure the children are served healthy and nutritious meals each week.

Keeping our children happy and well fed is our primary aim and if we didn't collect this data we wouldn't know which items were the most popular to help us create a health and varied menu."

Billy Tweddell, Dispatcher, Eastgate, London Road

Fly tipping is the illegal dumping of waste onto land that has no licence to accept it - it can be as little as one bin bag of household rubbish up to larger quantities such as piles of tyres or even bulky construction waste.

I use data and images from our Public Space CCTV network to cross reference with data and images of fly tipping submitted by members of the public - which are logged into our Remedy system. The images I use provide visual verification of the data in the system and provide an exact location of where the fly tipping has taken place - this creates a more joined-up approach to tackling this issue.

Having access to these data sources enables me to verify the information quickly and efficiently which helps to make sure our council resources are then targeted at the right locations - so we can deal with issues in a timely and effective manner.

The data I use daily is essential to identifying areas of concern and helps our Service teams assess the appropriate course of action that is required. I work in partnership with colleagues in Cleansing, Enforcement and Graffiti Removal to achieve the best outcomes for the city. By working together we help to keep Glasgow clean and a safe place for all our citizens.

Ben Hardie, Team Member, Revenues and Benefits, Financial Services

The Revenues and Benefits Team uses data to help support and issue payments to families who are eligible to receive the School Clothing Grant.

In my role, I obtain data from internal sources such as, our Council Tax System to help to identify families who are eligible to receive the School Clothing Grant to purchase school uniforms. By sourcing and using this data I can make sure that the grant payment is made in advance of the new term starting in August - to help families plan ahead.

The accuracy of the data I use is essential to make sure that any families, who are eligible, receive the right financial support they need to purchase their child's uniforms. The data we use as a team allows us to make payments to over 30,000 families per year.

Donna Thomson, Reablement Home Carer Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership

"We look after people who have spent time in hospital recovering from injuries and illnesses and need our support to help them get better and get their independence back.

I use key data every day to help me carry out my job to support others.

Handling and using accurate information is incredibly important to my role. Not only do I need to know where I'm going and who I am going to visit, but I also need to understand how to handle sensitive information to help aid their recovery - such as what their illnesses are, their current medication and their previous hospital visits.

I work with a lot of vulnerable people and without key information we would not be able to deliver our services to them. Information is vital to delivering a positive experience for the service user - for example understanding their likes and dislikes can make a real difference to helping them on their road to recovery.

The data I handle everyday makes a difference not only to the service user but also to feedback to their family members about how their loved one are doing on a particular day."

Getting Started with Data - GOLD course

A new "Getting Started with Data" course is now available on GOLD - this has been developed with the Scottish Government working in partnership with other councils, as well as Glasgow.

Organisations rely on information to see what has happened in the past and to support good decisions being made in the future. People using information need to be able to trust it.

This course will introduce you to the types of information used in our organisation and your impact on the information we use.

This is an introductory level course which is suitable for everyone.

You can access the course on GOLD here Getting Started with Data