Data Bites | Data for communities

Sam, Programme Development Manager at Open Data Manchester, spoke about how getting citizens to play with data and take part in its collection and use could empower communities. By bringing data out of spreadsheets and into their real life experiences, data became something they could do something with, rather than something done to them.

Examples included Our Streets Chorlton, which included counting traffic and measuring air quality, and Joy Diversion, where journeying through the streets can change how people think about their local area.

Alex Blandford introduces his presentation in front of a screen that reads "warning: this work is anthropological in nature"

You can’t API your way out of politics

Alex Blandford shows his qualitative research into civic technologists, painting them as “radicalised nerds” trying to fix broken systems.

Council Climate Action Scorecards

Isaac Beevor, and Alex Parsons talked about their work on measuring UK local authority climate action through their bi-annual Council Climate Action Scorecards.

Duncan Brown shows a graph on screen with the results of a survey showing that a majority of people feel that AI will impact them either negatively or neutrally.

Data and AI Federation

Duncan Brown, head of software engineering at the Incubator for AI (i.AI), explored what a federated approach to data sharing, access and use might look like

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Decision making with data

Ryan, head of insight and analytics at DWP Digital, talked about the ‘hub and spoke’ operating model suggested by the DWP Data Strategy.