Open Data Policies for Citizens

With a population of 262,000, the London Borough of Camden is one of the twelve boroughs of inner London,. The southern tip of Camden forms a small section of Central London. There are about 31 districts in Camden.

Policy Cloud will address social services policy planning in Camden by predicting risk factors across four distinct domains:

• Housing and adult social care 
• Children, schools and families
• Culture and environment planning 
• Building and parking services 

The Council is committed to the publication of open data and adheres to the Council Open Data Charter which is underpinned by the notion that residents have the right to access data which does not compromise individual privacy. 

The plan is to apply predictive analytics techniques to data sourced from the target domains in order to identify risk factors across the full range of services offered by the Council. Examples of information to be obtained using these techniques include: 

• The extent of the relationship between housing repairs required and other higher cost services such as social work. Such information would enable the Council to identify potential cases where early intervention in one area could prevent cost escalation in another, related area. 
• Car licensing data. Providing this information to the parking services department would enable planning for temporary events which might require additional resourcing. 
• Data which enables forecasting of the numbers of people requiring adult social care services in future, principally older people, in order to plan future services.  
• A comprehensive overview of the totality of each resident’s interactions with the Council. 

Using the information harvested from data analytics, the Council will be able to design evidence-based policies and evaluate their economic feasibility, their political viability and their legitimacy, thereby improving the quality of the services offered to citizens, and achieving the efficiency and effectiveness which are key elements of good governance.