Public Sector news
Jane Inman, Communications and Information Manager, Environment and Economy, Warwickshire County Council
Election maps
www.election-maps.co.uk/index.jsp
Ordnance Survey has launched an election maps website which show a variety administrative and electoral boundaries:
• Westminster Parliamentary (existing until next General/Elections)
• Westminster Parliamentary (revised-from next General Election) and current Welsh Assembly Constituencies
• Scottish Parliamentary Constituency
• Local Authority
• European Region
• Scottish Parliament/Welsh Assembly Electoral Region
• London Assembly Constituency
It can be searched by postcode or asked to display a particular constituency by name. Be warned that a post code search will bring up the constituency covered by the post code and you need to search again within that to narrow it down to the exact post code location.
Transformational Government
Direct.gov.uk has continued to develop and to attract increasing numbers of visitors. Work continues to rationalize government websites and to focus official information on directgov for the citizen, Business Link for the business sector and NHS Choices for health information.
Legislation
www.opsi.gov.uk
Since 1999 all public acts have been published with explanatory notes, which are designed to make the legislation easier to understand. In April this year the Equality Bill was published with the explanatory notes interleaved and an alternative HTML version was published on the Parliament website. This approach is to be rolled out for all legislation on the OPSI website in due course.
Local data
Pressure to release local authority information for re-use is growing, and the demand is for it to be made available in machine-readable format so that it can be easily reused. We now have a situation where the legislation (Re-use of public sector information regulations 2005 ), the customer expectation and the technology make it inevitable that more and more information and data will be made available for reuse in numerous applications.
Public Sector News is supplied by ALGIS in LARIA (The Affiliation of Local Government Information Specialists in Local Authority Research and Intelligence Association) which represents information professionals providing information services to local authority staff and elected members. Jane Inman is currently Chair of ALGIS. ALGIS welcomes anyone with an interest in public sector information who feels they would benefit from being part of a community working in the same area. For more information go to www.algis.org.uk
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