Agenda item

Item six was introduced by lead member Mayor Dave Hodgson MBE, who stated the LGA’s agreed policy on local authorities publishing data, outside of specific data returns to government, is that it should be published in any way they choose. Lead member, Mayor Hodgson stated the report discusses the growing view across central government of more and more data being published in a standard format, and asks board members to consider how the local government sector should respond.  Lead member Mayor Hodgson made particular reference to paragraphs 19.1,19.2 and 19.3, which were the recommendations set out in the report. 

Following the introduction of the item, members then discussed the following:

Members discussed the recent implementation of GDPR, and agreed that this will not work with top-down approach, and needs to be led by local areas.  The Chairman discussed national data sets that are already available for the public.  However these are costly, particularly when setting up a new one [data set]. 

Members stated that in an ideal world, systems and platforms talking to each other is the optimal positon to be in.  Members agreed that this is a good principal, however, a significant cost involved.  Members then discussed at length the benefits of migrating data sets, however, did reflect also on the significant cost to this approach. 

To conclude, member and the Chairman made opted to go with option three, which is laid out in paragraph 19.3 in the report.  Members also stated they were interested in option two (paragraph 19.2 in the report), as a second option. However, the Chairman stated officers should take a default position of questioning why are government requesting this information, and what will it be used for?  Residents should always be at the forefront of this decision making and data use.

The following actions was noted for this update:

-       Officer to take forward option three, which is laid out in paragraph 19.3 in the report.

-       Members noted the update.