Bringing the numbers to life- DWP's use of data

Mike Payne, Information Directorate, DWP

DWP administered benefits

Jobseekers AllowanceIncome SupportIncapacity Benefit / Employment Support AllowancePension CreditState Pension

Housing / Council Tax BenefitEmployment Programmes

Cover over 17 million individuals

Publish quarterly

Based on ‘complete’ administrative data, back to 1999

Tabulation Tool

Tabulation Tool

NOMIS

Excel tables

Traditional DWP model

Make statistics available

via

Tabtool / NOMIS / Excel

Exploration / analysis by user

via

Excel / other specialist software

Why improve?

• Increased user expectation

• Visualisation helps transparency

• Fits with GSS Web Dissemination Strategy

• More aware of our own statistics

• Can help quality assurance

• … and little additional resource needed !

Google Public Data Explorer

• Launched in March 2010

• Experimental, in Google Labs

• Uses Trendalyzer, acquired from Gapminder

• official Dataset Directory

Importing Public Data

• Need a Google account

• Create dataset using Dataset Publishing Language (DSPL)

• Add XML metadata file to existing CSV data files

• Zip dataset and upload

• Set access permissions … and enjoy!

DWP …

• … are developing a first dataset to go into Public Data Explorer

• Client Group breakdown for main DWP benefits

• Contains local authority breakdown, and data back to 1999

DWP on Public Data Explorer

Example screenshots …

Line chart

Bar chart

Bar chart – click play to animate time series

Bubble chart

Bubble chart

Bubble chart

Bubble chart

Maps

Bringing the numbers to life- DWP's use of data

Mike Payne, Information Directorate, DWP