{"id":4367,"date":"2022-07-14T08:29:07","date_gmt":"2022-07-14T08:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/?p=4367"},"modified":"2022-07-14T08:29:07","modified_gmt":"2022-07-14T08:29:07","slug":"next-steps-for-scotlands-official-statistics-open-data-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/2022\/07\/14\/next-steps-for-scotlands-official-statistics-open-data-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"Next steps for Scotland’s Official Statistics Open Data platform"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blog by Victoria Avila and Martin Macfie, Data Division, Digital Directorate <\/strong><\/p>\n

In the Open Data team within Scottish Government, part of our role is to manage the publication of open datasets on statistics.gov.scot<\/a>. This is the open data publishing platform for Official Statistics in Scotland.<\/p>\n

The platform contains around 300 datasets and reference datasets published Scottish Government and a range of partner organisations. Many of the datasets are well-described and published at the highest level of openness<\/a>.\u00a0 We launched the site in 2016. Since then, we have continued to improve the site and increase the number of relevant datasets which it holds. As the site has been live for a number of years, we wanted to review it.<\/p>\n

Last year we worked with a company called User Vision<\/a> to carry out user research on the site. The main objectives were to determine what tasks users came to complete on the site, and whether they were successful in doing so. This research indicated that people have not always been able to complete the tasks they intended to do on the site.<\/p>\n

As a result of this research, we have committed to review the front end of the site as part of the data commitment within Scotland’s Open Government Action Plan, 2021-25<\/a>, which was recently launched.<\/p>\n

We have now launched a new home page for statistics.gov.scot<\/a>, which is more simplified than before. We used the findings from the user research to identify the problems.\u00a0 We made improvements after consulting with users and designers. We are seeking to follow the Digital Scotland Service Standard<\/a> in our improvements.<\/p>\n

This improvement is the first of a series of longer term activities to develop the site. We intend to work in an iterative, \u201cagile\u201d manner to achieve further improvements. We recognise that some of these changes are likely to be substantial.\u00a0 Future improvements to the site which we are now considering over the coming years include:<\/p>\n