I’m on the #uktrain!

In the next 7 days, Neil and I have at least five things to do…

We will be visiting the local authorities that are a part of the Information & Signposting Project- our itinerary being:

• Wednesday 19th May (today!) – Nottingham
• Thursday 20th May – Gateshead
• Monday 24th May – London
• Tuesday 25th May – Doncaster
• Wednesday – 26th May – Blackpool

We look forward to catching up with people.  I’ll be tweeting our whereabouts and also experimenting with Foursquare as and when we get to places…

First June Plings Surgery confirmed…

Activities around the Humber Bridge...

Many thanks also to Hull for offering to host a Plings surgery on the 16th June.  We are starting to see a small cluster of local authorities around the Humber Bridge, which will make an interesting view with regards to data.  If you can make it, then please check out this Doodle to let us know a time that is good.

Don’t forget we are really keen to get out to meet people through June, so please contact us with regards to a possible room – from our proposed schedule:

• North West: 7th June (we will probably use the Substance office in Manchester)
• Humber: 16th June
• North East: 17th June
• Midlands: 23rd June
• London: 24th June
• South West: 28th June

Ok, back to trying to get this dongle working on the #uktrain

April Plings surgeries report card…

Our plings surgeries have an open door policy (credit: http://passionatephoto.com/)

In the last few weeks I’ve been travelling to the far-flung corners of the globe (okay, Norfolk…) to deliver Plings ‘surgeries’ at Local Authorities.

Plings surgeries are where local authorities and voluntary groups can ask for help with any questions or issues they have with Plings.

They’ve been going really well so far.  In Doncaster we were able to get all the neighbourhood leads set-up and using the publishing tool to modify their activity information.  Everybody agreed how useful it will be to be able to manage the data centrally and in real-time.  We also had an interesting discussion around the need to market Plings and Plings applications such as the Boredometer both locally and nationally.

Next up was Norfolk on the 16th.  Having endured a seven-hour train journey to get there I was hoping it would be a worthwhile trip and it didn’t disappoint.  Harry Town, who leads on Plings in Norfolk, has run a website for young people in the past and so was able to offer some really useful suggestions regarding the Plings website and the publishing tool.  One issue that came out was that the Plings site wasn’t always generating the correct Ward information for the activity venues.  It was suggested that perhaps the Royal Mail’s postal information isn’t as accurate for these rural locations and it’s something we plan to look into.

Just recently, I visited Gateshead on April 26th.  We talked about ways of using the Plings logo’s to promote Plings on the Local Authority’s website and again spent time looking at Gateshead’s activity information within the publishing tool.  We also discussed ways of managing the data locally, be it through one central person or by devolving responsibility through the creation of sub-organisation logins on the publishing tool.

So three down and hopefully many more to follow, the surgeries so far have been invaluable in offering one to one support and in gaining first-hand feedback on the project.

If you’d like to host a Plings Surgery at your local authority, contact Andy via email: surgeries[at]plings.net, or call the Substance office: 0161 244 5418

NB: At this point further surgeries are only available to local authorities who are pilots of the Information & Signposting Project

Aiming High for Young People – three years on

Aiming High - three years on

PM Gordon Brown and Secretary of State Ed Balls were at the Salmon Centre in Bermondsey this week to announce the publication of the Aiming High For Young People – three years on document. This was particularly interesting for the Plings team as it helped contextualise the work we have been doing with the 20 local authorities involved in the DCSF Information and Signposting Project over the last eighteen months. Moreover, the report has renewed and refreshed the key themes set out in the original Aiming High 10 year strategy and sets out some of the short and medium term challenges.

The youth entitlement

This report has placed the concept of ‘entitlement’ at its centre, not only for young people, and particularly those living in the most disadvantaged areas, but for parents and the wider community. Through a range of policy commitments over the last three years young people up to the age of sixteen are now entitled to have opportunities to participate in

• five hours a week of sporting activity (three for 16 – 19 year olds)
• five hours a week of artistic or cultural experiences
• a wide range of interesting and challenging leisure time activities
• opportunities to contribute to their communities.

Furthermore, where this entitlement is not being met, young people should know how to hold those responsible to account. Parents too should be entitled to know what opportunities exist and that they are of high quality, safe and contributing to their child’s development. For communities there is recognition that the investments being made in the ten year strategy are having real implications for creating safer and stronger communities, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights.

Already local authorities have a legal duty to provide information relating to these entitlements to young people. However, this will be further enshrined in the Pupil and Parent Guarantee in 2011, which will set out the basic entitlement for all year 7 pupils starting secondary school, how they can access this information and what they can do if it is not being met.

Implications for the Plings project

The case study from Knowsley is featured

So, all of this has huge implications for the work we have been doing on the Plings project.

The report acknowledges the challenge that remains for local authorities to make this information comprehensive, accurate and accessible but does point to the Information and Signposting Project’s success in using new technologies to ‘vastly improve the provision of information’ and how the learning can support all LA’s to provide real time information on opportunities in each neighbourhood.

Youth of Today

Influence over services

There is also a renewed commitment to give young people a genuine influence over local services. Alongside a number of established programmes which are showing real impact (Youth Opportunity Fund and Card, Youth of Today, Youth Media Fund, Young Inspectors, Shine Festival, Generations Together) there remains a real challenge for LA’s if they are to achieve the ambition of young people having direct control of 25% of local budgets by 2018. The National Youth Agency (Budget Devolution: survey and seminar report, 2008) have already raised the bar even higher, saying 25% might not be challenging enough and should in any case be extended across all budgets within the responsibility of LA youth support services. This theme is definitely one that will be picked up at the Substance Conference later this year.

The message from the report then is good progress but plenty more to do. A bit like Plings really. We suggest that everyone makes some time to read the report; and then maybe to reread it in case you missed anything! After all, young people are entitled to nothing less.

We’ve got lots of Plings but are they any good?

The DCSF today published the draft of its long awaited overarching quality standards for Positive Activities. Developed with the Commissioning Support Programme following the call for evidence on Youth Sector Support Arrangements, the intention is that these standards will improve the overall quality of positive activity provision by:

• empowering young people to shape the Positive Activities available to them by setting out what they, their parents, and communities should expect in their area
• providing commissioners and providers of Positive Activities with an understanding of best practice against which to benchmark their provision in the future.

The Plings team has already had the opportunity to contribute to the development of the standards alongside a wide range of stakeholders including young people. They will now be ‘road tested’ in a number of areas to help inform the development of guidance materials before a final version is published in October.

As well as helping to establish a common understanding of what positive activities are, six core quality standards have been identified:

• Standard 1: Positive Activities reflect young people’s needs and interests
• Standard 2: Young people are aware of the Positive Activities available to them
• Standard 3: Young people are helped to achieve positive outcomes through Positive Activities
• Standard 4: Positive Activities are planned, commissioned and evaluated collaboratively
• Standard 5: Positive Activities promote equality of opportunity, celebrate diversity and challenge stereotypes
• Standard 6: Positive Activities are safe

DCSF draft document

We are obviously delighted with the importance that Standard 2 places on reviewing the provision of information on Positive Activities and developing local systems for collecting, managing and sharing information. What is most encouraging though is that this point is no longer being considered in isolation. Rather it is being seen as a central element of an integrated set of standards that set out the characteristics of good quality provision which seeks to improve the outcomes achieved by young people through their participation in Positive Activities.

There were moments in the preparation of these standards that the need for them was questioned given the plethora of quality marks and systems already in use. However, when considered alongside the widespread lack of clarity over which activities and providers they might cover and indeed what constitutes a positive activity, the case for an overarching sector specific set of standards seems stronger than ever.

No doubt there will be further revisions as the consultation continues but as these standards become more firmly embedded, as well as publicising activities services such as Plings will be able to more confidently provide the channels through which young people can hold providers and commissioners to account.

The Plings Team will be running a free one day workshop in Birmingham on April 20th for Local Authorities not currently involved in the project, at which we will be demonstrating how it can support the delivery of Standard 2. Places are limited but anyone interested in attending can register at http://allaboutplings.eventbrite.com/

Plings goes from strength to strength in Hull

Plings in Hull recently reached a tremendous milestone – it broke through the 600 plings in the next seven days barrier. And then it kept going and reached the 660 mark. This is amazing considering the figure six months ago was a paltry eight! Even at the beginning of January, the figure stood at the 120 mark. To use a sporting analogy, after months of hovering in mid-table (when compared to the Plings figures for other local authorities) Hull has recently hit its stride and are now heading for a promotion push. Incidentally, we undertook a promotion push in Hull city centre on March 6th (to further spread the word of Plings).
So, what has seen us increase the weekly figure by 400 in a little over two months? There are many reasons but the main ones are hard work by the Content Management Team in the data gathering process, support from senior managers within Hull City Council, and we’ve also found that success breeds success – activity providers are eager to be part of the growing phenomenon that is Plings.
In Hull, Plings is reached via the award-winning Clued Up in Hull website and managed by Hull City Council’s Content Management Team. Accessing Plings through Clued Up in Hull is mutually beneficial to both sites – both Clued Up and Plings have recently experienced a huge increase in the amount of hits they receive.
The team are not getting complacent with breaking the 600 barrier though – we know there’s more to add (700 is in our sights). We also know that having over 600 plings listed every week requires a lot of work to make sure the quality of information is up-to-date and useful to young people. Gary Hass, Web Information Services Manager for Hull City Council, said that reaching the 600 mark “highlights the array of fun things to do and places to go across Hull, but we realise we may still only be scratching the surface of what’s out there”.

Plings hits Knowsley …

Was it worth getting on the 7:07 from Euston on Saturday morning? Damn right it was.

The Plings team discreetly model their Plings hoodies!

Arriving in Huyton (Knowsley), I was greeted by our locally produced (it’s important to use local produce these days!), Plings street marketing team who were bounding around, full of excitement and enthusiasm about promoting Plings and the Boredometer to the young people of Knowsley.

With the Youth Bus positioned in Huyton, and later in Kirkby, our SMT (suitably attired in some pretty flash Plings hooded tops), bounded over to any young person they could see and waxed lyrical to them about all the great places to go and things to do in Knowsley … and as if that sort of Plings promotion wasn’t enough, they then enticed them on board the Youth Bus where we had a couple of laptops set-up so that young people could find out for themselves about Plings and the Boredometer.

Throughout the day, our SMT spoke to around 200 young people which hopefully means that a further 200 of Knowsley’s finest now know where to go to find out what’s going on.

Our Plings team in action

It was a great day with lots of interest from the public, a fantastic team of young people doing all the Plings promotion (peer-peer engagement = essential if you want to successfully get a message out), and not a cloud in the sky (well, maybe a couple!).

Hull also put on a Plings promotion day which was also a huge success and, with Salford and Newcastle being the next two authorities to have a promotional day, the whole world should soon know all about Plings!

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…

Learning from yesterday

Many thanks to all those who made it to Birmingham yesterday, for the stakeholder meeting. We were really pleased to see so many familiar and new faces, and such enthusiasm and engagement with this issues and developments.

We are just unpacking the boxes and compiling the notes, but already we have some stuff gathering together, including:

• Comments and thoughts on Twitter
• Notes and feedback on the wiki for the day
• images on Flickr:

By all means please add to the above channels or just pick up the phone and feedback anything you may have reflected upon on the train home!

Taking Positive Activities information further: Sharing information

This post is taken from the ‘Sharing the Learning Report‘ from year one of the Information and Signposting Project (ISP), which is available in full as a downloadable document.

In the last two ‘Sharing the Learning’ series posts we’ve explored key steps to effectively gathering and managing positive activity information. In this post we turn to look at sharing information and ways to get it to young people.

Step 1: Publish information

Although there is no prescription for how local authorities publicise information, the Government does hold a set of core expectations about what information should be provided and how it should be presented and maintained. Crucially, it is expected that the information be comprehensive, accurate and accessible.

In emphasising the need to involve young people in the production and design of this information provision, authorities are also encouraged to take into account the importance of creating media which young people perceive as attractive and engaging. This may include providing access to information from other sources than the local authority, such as other (commercial) websites, radio stations or simply through friends. Authorities are further encouraged to consider the benefits of using such channels to pursue with young people and external partners any innovative approaches to publicising activities and facilities; particularly where these are seen as being likely to attract the most marginalised young people.

In practice many authorities have tended towards representing their offer in whatever online spaces they can get easy access to, even if this is limited to the main local authority website or its sub directories. Some authorities have developed external partnership sites to present their main ‘youth offer’ but when the ISP commenced, none of the pilot authorities were actively promoting their information via independent third party channels. This is largely due to a lack of appropriate resources and an associated tendency to focus on in-house publication.

However, finding all the in-house information about positive activities from the full range of local authority service providers can be challenging. The widespread reliance on static directory listings means that information can rarely be searched in a dynamic way, despite this being the most effective way of sourcing information. Furthermore, this format also reduces its capacity for being re-presented in other media such as a social network site or text messaging service.

The ISP has worked with the pilot authorities to establish common data standards which have enabled the information to be brought together and presented in a single searchable website.

Step 2: Syndicate

With positive activity information held in a standard format it becomes possible to make it more accessible to young people via syndication. Through the Plings platform positive activity data gathered by the pilot local authorities can now be fed into a range of social media, which means that rather than young people having to look for information, they are more likely to come across it in the spaces where they already go.

Rather than simply expecting this information to start appearing in a variety of new spaces the ISP is now meeting, discussing and planning with the local authorities, taking account of internal risks, to help develop guidance and formulate the most appropriate local marketing strategies. Inevitably this involves aligning our activity with existing approaches and methods, facilitating the application of different tools in different contexts and then further refining approaches on the basis of feedback, research and analysis.

Step 3: Share data

Guidance makes it clear that involving young people in the production and design of the information provision will help identify appropriate content and ensure the relevance, appeal and accessibility of the information provided. However, in responding to these duties, much of the consultation conducted by local authorities with young people to date has focused on the presentation of information and the look and feel of branded youth offers. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which young people currently access information or the effectiveness of the channels of communication being used.

The involvement of young people has also tended to make use of traditional consultative techniques including youth councils, forums and committees rather than the role that new media can itself play in revealing young people’s information search preferences and wider views on service provision.

Through use of a broad range of research and consultation techniques including online surveys, activity diaries, activity search games, online feedback channels and user centred design workshops, the ISP has gathered critical learning around the search behaviours of young people. The key message is that trusted information needs to be presented in the spaces where young people will come across it rather than expecting them to come and find it.

So rather than simply dumping positive activity information in social networking sites, where the information may be swamped by the sheer volume of alternative content marketed by commercial campaigns, the ISP has worked to build attractive applications which allow young people to engage with and share information. This approach has the potential to become much more social, with young people suggesting places to go and things to do, inviting others to join them and highlighting their frustrations at periods of boredom.

The boredometer is a social networking application developed to relieve young people of their boredom by asking friends to suggest ways to fill up their time when they put out a ‘shout’ that they have nothing to do. It is currently available on the Bebo social network platform and will be available on Facebook in 2010.

Share your learning

If you’ve been involved in sharing positive activity information for the Information and Signposting Project, or for any other projects, what learning can you add? Post a short comment below to share your learning…

The content in this post is Crown Copyright, originally from document DCSF-01077-2009.

Taking Positive Activities information further: Managing information

This post is taken from the ‘Sharing the Learning Report‘ from year one of the Information and Signposting Project (ISP), which is available in full as a downloadable document.

In our last post in the Sharing the Learning series, we explored key learning on how to gather positive activity information. As more information is collected, finding ways to manage it effectively become more pressing. In this post, we explore key steps to effective management of positive activity information…

Step 1: Standardise and aggregate data

The variable range and consistency of positive activity information held by local authorities has made it difficult for them to present good quality information on all positive activity ‘instances’. Most authorities have been able to produce leaflets and brochures in PDF and hard copy formats which provide relatively comprehensive information for ‘fixed’ time periods such as school holidays. However, it is a far greater challenge in relation to the population and maintenance of ‘live’ media channels such as ‘one stop shop’ branded youth offer websites.

The technical demands of such resources require a level of data consistency, which can be challenging, but which does fit with non statutory guidance highlighting the core elements of data required to ensure effective publication of high quality positive activity information.

Through the ISP, an aggregation platform has been mobilised to help collate and pool activity ‘instance’ data together. This phase of the project involved intensive work with local authorities and third sector providers and the use of a variety of approaches including data feeds, spreadsheets and direct input tools to ensure the collection of data from organisations at different stages of development.

The action of aggregating data with consistent standards has established the foundations for a new dialogue and set of trials underpinned by a shared confidence in the quality of the information being worked with.

What information to include?

• Name and description of the activity
• Where the activity is delivered
• The date, start and end time of the activity
• The provider and contact details
• Cost of the activity
• How to get to the activity
• The accessibility of the activity and venue for young people with disabilities

You can find out more about the data standards that the Plings platform uses on the technical documentation website.

Step 2: Enhance the data

Beyond the collection of positive activity information in its raw form the ISP has been keen to look at ways in which additional material can be added to these datasets, so that they become more descriptive and ready for communication. Increasingly, it has become apparent that the communications and marketing teams involved in promoting positive activities have an interest in, and increasingly prominent role to play, in improving the quality and form of the data.

Through its first year the ISP has been generating a series of tools and resources to help the pilot authorities:

• Tag — providing simple exercises and tools that enable people to quickly and easily tag activities with keywords and categories in a ‘fun’ way which will help people to find activities.
• Search — producing games and tools focused on optimizing the search terms that young people use when trying to locate information
• Describe — providing materials and guidance on the presentation of text with which to describe activities in generic and locally appropriate ways
• Illustrate — presenting graphics and pictures for people to use when promoting activities

These resources are increasingly being adopted to enhance the quality of the raw data being submitted, with the end result that the information will become more relevant and appealing to its target audience

Step 3: Use analysis to plan & commission

The Government has put in place arrangements to capture the impact of the statutory duties included in Section 507B and related policy initiatives. Local level data is currently being compiled through the TellUs survey 5. This data provides valuable information to help us understand young people’s opinions on matters affecting their participation in positive activities and will also help local authorities to meet the requirement to ascertain the views of young people.

In accordance with the Government’s new commitments to ensure the provision of positive activities on Friday and Saturday evenings there is growing pressure on local authorities to monitor this provision. Following a recent review by the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit it has now been agreed that data on local authorities ‘youth offer’ is to be collected in early 2010 6.

Through the ISP efforts have been made to synchronise the easy analysis and reporting of positive activity data with the data aggregation process which resulted in the production of the first dedicated positive activity information analytics tool. This tool provides the functionality to interrogate activity instances and to filter them by authority, ward, location, type of activity, provider, day and time, both retrospectively and in relation to upcoming activities.

Important as the activity data is, authorities’ analytical and reporting needs extend beyond the counting of activity instances in particular wards. It is vital that they are also able to present information accessibly as it relates to the channels of communication being used to promote activities and, critically, the engagement with those channels. A series of tools to assess people’s engagement with activity data have now been identified which will be mobilised through the next phase of the project so that each of the 20 pilot authorities will be able to seamlessly monitor and report on their published youth offer. Furthermore, this functionality will enable real time local analysis which can be used to inform a wider commissioning strategy for positive activities.

Share your learning

If you’ve been involved in managing positive activity information for the Information and Signposting Project, or for any other projects, what learning can you add? Post a short comment below to share your learning…

The content in this post is Crown Copyright, originally from document DCSF-01077-2009.