Linking up – learning from the Data Quality Working Group

The first meeting of the Plings/PKHD Data Quality Working Group took place last Thursday – exploring the opportunities to share learning and data between these two local data projects.

The results of a survey carried out across the local authorities involved in the Plings project highlighted that the teams responsible for collecting and publishing information on positive activities are mostly working separately and independently of the Family Information Service (FIS) staff who are responsible for much of the content in the Parent Know How Directory (PKHD). However the face-to-face meeting last week demonstrated that there are many opportunities for collaboration and building links between the two projects.

Linking agendas to get prioritised

Plings is, in the scheme of things, a small budget research project. Some members of the Data Quality Working Group have found that, compared to PKHD, with it’s top-down mandate, and funding to support local authorities to adapt to it, it can be harder to secure management support for work on Plings and promoting positive activities to young people.

By finding the links between positive activity information and PKHD, there are opportunities to benefit both projects – and secure increased support for positive activity information work.

Linking learning

One of the big challenges both Plings and PKHD have been exploring is ensuring data quality. There is a balance to strike between only having information in a database when it has been quality assured, complies with quality standards, and is complete information (which would dramatically cut the amount of information that could be added to the database), and putting all information into a database regardless of whether it can be checked out easily or not – and publishing it with caveats explaining to the end-user how they can verify the information.

This challenge becomes particularly acute when sharing information between local authorities – where different policies to govern how information is collected and added to the database may be in operation.

In the PKHD project, a simple field to explain what standards have been applied in the collection and publishing of data by any LA has been used – so policies and processes can differ across authorities – but end users have basic information on how to respond to the data they are given.

Through the Data Quality Working Group, members were able to discuss learning from Family Information Services about putting in place processes and procedures to ensure the quality of data – and were able to discuss the sorts of standards that would be necessary to allow data from Plings and PKHD to be easily exchanged.

Linking locally and nationally

The sorts of information the PKHD may hold for parents, and that Plings contains for young people, can often overlap. It makes sense then, to explore how there could be integration between the two systems to prevent double-entry of information.

Integration can happen at different levels – and between now and the next Data Quality Working Group meeting the team will be researching into the various possibilities more.

Integration could be at a national level – with data from PKHD and Plings swapped by the central platforms. This would require the data fields from the two systems to easily map onto one another.

Or integration could take place locally – with authorities adopting a single local system to feed both platforms. This would require thought about where the responsibilities to manage data fell in the local authority.

Keeping the focus

Thinking of integration raises a number of further challenges that the Working Group will be exploring. PKHD is a directory for parents. Plings is focussed on information for young people. Careful thought needs to go into the right places to integrate, and the right places to let each dataset retain it’s own distinctive content and style.

More to come

The Data Quality Working Group will be meeting again in January and we’ll have more on the blog soon after they meet…