Tag Archives: health

Finding data in Scotland

I’ve delivered data journalism training in Scotland twice in the past few months, and thought I’d share some tips on what data is available there, given that most guidance on data journalism focuses on data in England or the US.

General statistics and data

Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics has a ‘data download’ page which allows you to download data on a range of topics, each of which has dozens or hundreds of indicators, from ‘Physical environment’ (24 indicators) to ‘Economic activity, benefits and tax credits’ (377 indicators).

Subjects covered include health, housing, access to services, community care, crime, education and ‘special interest’ reports (these include sea fisheries, poverty and cultural event attendance).

Once you’ve downloaded the data you may find that it doesn’t name each local authority but instead uses a series of codes. These are ONS (Office for National Statistics) codes – you can find a master list on Wikipedia.

The Scottish Government Statistics page also provides access to a range of topics, including agriculture, business, tourism, transport and travel.

The Equality Evidence Finder is particularly interesting: this is an attempt to show the equality of different industries across measures such as gender, disability, income and so on. This, for example, is the page summarising the picture for ethnicity in Scottish business, enterprise and tourism.

The General Register Office for Scotland has broad statistics about births, deaths and marriages (known as ‘vital events‘), life expectancy, migration and elections.

And of course don’t overlook Data.gov.uk, where you can subscribe to an RSS feed for new datasets mentioning ‘Scotland’.

Health data in Scotland

ISD Scotland – the Information Services Division of NHS National Services Scotland – provides a range of health data from the right hand column of its home page, from specific conditions including cancer and mental health, through to the NHS workforce, eye care and dentistry, maternity, and prescriptions.

Rather helpfully, NHS Scotland has its own domain at scot.nhs.uk, which means you can a search for Scottish health data on Google by adding site:scot.nhs.uk to any search terms. Using your particular health board (e.g. ‘Grampian’) will also help.

NHS National Services Scotland is another useful domain at nhsnss.org – adding site:nhsnss.org to your search (and, for example filetype:xls) might also bring up some useful data – I found data on gifts and hospitality, payments to GP practices, and cancer waiting times using those.

Health Protection Scotland has regular data reports and publications. And there’s the Scottish Health Survey and Inpatient Patient Experience Survey on the Scottish Government statistics pages.

Education data in Scotland

Education Scotland publishes school reports, publications, and provides school-level information through the Scottish Schools Online portal. Some of this data is available as datasets through the Scottish Government statistics page too, such as this page on school meals.

Environment data in Scotland

Scottish Environment Statistics Online (SESO) publishes datasets on a wide range of indicators from recycling and conservation to air quality and noise pollution.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency monitors environmental conditions and waste, most of which is linked from here.

And Scottish Natural Heritage has a page linking to statistics and reports.

If you are interested in data which has any sort of environmental impact (this can include things like housing and construction) then it may be worth looking into the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations (EIR).

This is similar to Freedom of Information laws, but have fewer exceptions and apply to a wider range of public bodies. The book EIR without the Lawyer is a useful guide for journalists.

Data on crime, justice and fire

The Scottish Government statistics pages on crime and justice, covering everything from perceptions of crime to numbers of police, racist incidents, the prison population and re-offending.

They also have data on fires and fire and rescue servicesAudit Scotland also has performance data on the fire and rescue services.

The Judiciary of Scotland has been more open than its English counterpart, with data including judicial expenses, and judgments and sentences – although these are provided as PDFs and feeds rather than more easily downloadable data.

Local government data in Scotland

Audit Scotland’s Council performance pages are a fantastic resource if you’re interested in the performance of services under local authority control. This includes schools, housing, social work and hundreds of ‘performance indicators’, with a spreadsheet for every council.

You can also look at the same data for all councils by service on the services page.

Local government finance data can be found on the Scottish Government statistics site – including council tax collection and budgets.

On housing some local authorities have passed over some or all of their housing responsibilities to housing associations. You can find data on these on the Scottish Housing Regulator site including inspection reports, accounts, performance returns and performance profile, regulation and rules.

The Scottish Parliament

MPs’ allowances are published on the Scottish Parliament website. It’s not particularly easy to download and compare. In these situations it’s often worth searching to see if you can find someone who’s tackled the problem – and Owen Boswarva did (at least, he did in 2011/12), providing a link to the bulk data. If he did it once, he may do it again, if you ask nicely…

Freedom of Information in Scotland

Scotland has its own Freedom of Information Act and its own Information Commissioner, who has a reputation for enforcing the Act more strongly than his equivalent south of the border.

To complicate things, many bodies operating in Scotland will also be subject to the UK FOI Act and the UK Information Commissioner.

You can follow public FOI requests mentioning ‘Scotland’ made using WhatDoTheyKnow, or of course specify a different region like ‘Dundee’ or a related term like ‘Scottish’. And you can look for Scottish public bodies’ disclosure logs, where they may be publishing the latest FOI requests answered.

Scotland also has the INSPIRE (Scotland) Regulations, which provide access to mapping – “spatial” – data.

And more broadly you may be interested in Public Contracts Scotland, which provides access to data on contracts awarded by local authorities, health bodies, education agencies, emergency services and national government.

I’ll be adding to and updating this post as I think of other sources. If you know of any please let me know.

Get involved in a new HMI project: investigating CCGs

CCG structure image from BBC

This year a collection of new groups will be given responsibility for £60m of public health spending in England. Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs).

It’s a journalism basic to ‘follow the money’, but with over 200 of these groups and very few health journalists in the UK there’s an opportunity for student journalists and concerned citizens to play a key role in understanding what CCGs do – and scrutinising their activities.

There are a number of potential avenues to explore, from concerns about potential conflicts of interest in the new arrangements, to issues of accountability, whistleblowing, and efficiency. 

In partnership with news organisations, we’re building a network of journalists, students and citizens to start pulling together information, exchanging tips and leads, and pursuing questions in the public interest.

If you want to get involved, contact me on paul@helpmeinvestigate.com or add your name via the form here.

*image from the BBC

7 ways to follow a field you want to investigate

Here’s a part by part guide to how you can follow different ‘streams’ of information as a journalist to understand what’s going on in a particular field, and how they can inform your real-world digging. Most of them involve using an RSS reader like Google Reader to follow feeds to keep in touch with developments.

1. Prepackaged news

While much is made of the ‘exclusive’ in journalism, and students will be harangued for recycling work done by other journalists, the truth is that the first thing most journalists do every day is check out their competitors, and get a feel for the current news agenda. A journalist has to balance being ‘on top’ of developments that others are covering (“Why don’t we have something on this story?”), while also reporting information that others don’t have. Continue reading

Video: using the Data Protection and Freedom of Information Acts – Heather Brooke

Following the previous video of Heather Brooke on the Help Me Investigate blog, Heather provides further tips on using the Data Protection Act on Help Me Investigate: Health and Help Me Investigate: Welfare.

Her advice on investigating health, welfare and crime:

And on using the Data Protection Act:

Roundup: HMI Networks latest

Since the last time

In Help Me Investigate Health we've had the first of the 'Who's Who' series, kicked off with profiles of?Bill Morgan (special adviser on policy development) and Mark Simmonds.?

The roundup of key information from recent stories include questions over selling health data, the closure of walk-in centres, and the link between pepper spray deaths and stimulants.

In Welfare we've highlighted the community on the DWPexaminations message board, while Chie Elliott's investigation into the demise of the Travel for Interview Scheme has been picked up by Oli Conner,?who added Jobseekers' Allowance claimants data.?

Chie visualised the regional variations?that emerged, and?Carl Plant has since mapped the data too (blog post to come).

We're looking for people to publish regular links to relevant news stories on Help Me Investigate Health, Welfare and Education – if you want to get stuck in, email me on paul@helpmeinvestigate.com

Roundup: HMI Networks

Here are the latest posts across the Help Me Investigate: Networks sites on healtheducation, and welfare. Highlights include Ben Harrow’s series following the money that universities receive for students, Rebecca Ratcliffe’s investigation into the special education system, and Kristina Khoo’s background to her investigative documentary on homelessness. If you want to contribute to any of the sites, or the main Help Me Investigate blog, email paul@helpmeinvestigate.com. We are particularly looking for someone to manage the Health site, so if you have an interest in that area, please let us know.

HMI Networks: highlights from the blogs

There's been plenty of activity across the Help Me Investigate: Networks sites on health, education, and welfare since they launched last week. Here are the highlights:

If you want to get involved with any of the sites drop me an email on paul@helpmeinvestigate.com or on Twitter @paulbradshaw

Announcing Help Me Investigate Health

Today we're launching a new site to help people investigating issues relating to the health service.?

Help Me Investigate Health will provide resources on sources of data and information on the health service; profiles of key players; useful laws and regulations to be aware of; and updates on health-related stories and investigations both in the mainstream media and blogs.

The site is part of the new Help Me Investigate: Networks project. Already on the site is a video of tips on investigating health from British Medical Journal reporter Deborah Cohen, and data on GP surgeries. We'll be publishing further data and other posts in the coming months.

If you are curious about the health system and want to get involved please get in touch.