Communities ASD

Dissemination of Housing Statistics

David McPhee

Communities ASD

Background

• Effective Dissemination is a key part of the Code for official statistics

• There is a need to meet a wide range of user needs including (but not limited to):– Expert users who want to carry out their own

analysis– Informed users who want the detail but not to

carry out individual analysis– Casual users who just want to know the main

messages and to be shown “the housing and planning story”

Communities ASD

Background

• We currently have at least 5 websections of interest on SG website:– The Housing Statistics web section– The Planning Statistics web section– The SCHS web section– The SHS web section– The homelessness web section

• All of these statistics currently include statistics produced by Scottish Government

Communities ASD

The Problem

• All of these websites hold vast amounts of information and are extremely useful to those who know how to find information

• Based on internal structures rather than what people want to know

• The do not link well together• They do not link to other relevant information• They assume the users knows what they are

looking for

Communities ASD

The Solution?

• Create one web section which pulls together all currently relevant web sections

• Base the web section on topics rather than collections

• Link to other relevant sites (within SG and outwith SG)

• Continue to have detailed tables available for expert users.

Communities ASD

Publications

• Currently statistics are generally published based on the way they are collected

• This can mean that statistics relevant to one another can be published completely separately

• Also many publications only provide a small part of “the story”

Communities ASD

Publications

• Looking to move to a topic based publication system

• The exact details have yet to be worked out

• Regular updates would still occur with topic reports being updated with the most up to date data

• Would help to tell the full “story” around housing and planning statistics

Communities ASD

Views

• We would welcome thoughts on:– Would a redesign of the websites and

publication help you?– Would the topic based approach be helpful?– Do you see any concerns around the

proposed approach?– Are their other concerns with the website?

• We plan to carry out a more formal consultation later in the year.