Content that is currently hidden from the public must be made visible in the most useful way.
All portfolios/directorates should be on the constant lookout for things to make usefully visible to the public, to help citizens understand and help the staff to make the community better.
The design guidelines that apply to the website should include recommendations on the use of visualisation techniques including:
Being able to see how all sorts of content relates to local area.
The ability to see content according to related locations on a map can not only reveal understanding about information that was previously hidden, but it can also help people related to that information.
A mapping tools service should be provided that allows structured and unstructured data to be analysed and plotted on maps. The service should be able to take data in various formats (spreadsheets, XML, text, URLs) and return the locations in that data as a list or as a map.
This service should also be integrated into the content creation toolset to allow content creators to insert an interactive map into the content.
Providing citizens and businesses with access to Local Authority data delivers greater value for all citizens. When in re-usable and easily consumed formats data enables the large community of technically adept citizens and businesses to create new tools and visualisations that can extract greater knowledge and understanding from it. This is in alignment with open.gov.uk, championed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt.
Initiatives like this are designed to show the potential economic and promotional value of government data by making it freely available to the public in formats that allow and encourage the data to be re-used.
Knowledge may be power, but too much information stops you from gaining any insight into it. The Local Authority’s website should provide the ability for users to choose what information they wish to see and the information should displayed in ways that allow it to be understood quickly. This implies the need for a consistent dashboard interface data using visualisation techniques and good interface design practises. Dashboards as a collection of widgets, often overlaid on the pages they refer to, are an engaging way of showing metadata, analytics etc.
The Connected City 