Monthly Archives: May 2013

What data does the Fire Service collect? Notes from a datablog meetup

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Cat stuck up a tree

Image by Jonas Lowgren

On February 28 the Birmingham Datablog Meetup hosted a visit from Vikki Holland and Debbie Whittingham from the West Midlands Fire Service. They answered questions on how the Service uses data in both fire prevention and monitoring its activities. Here is a summary of the meetup.

The Fire Service are one of the most advanced users of data in the public sector. With much of their work centred on fire prevention, they draw on a range of data sources to identify and prioritise different risks in different communities. Continue reading →

When is a leak not a leak?

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Over on Help Me Investigate Education Beth Ashton writes about her experiences of discovering what appeared to be a data leak by the education regulator Ofsted – and the ethical decisions which followed:

“In the end, this was a story about Ofted’s own rules not working retrospectively, or taking into account the permanence of the internet. Ofsted themselves did not seem concerned about the information being available online.”

Read the whole post here.