Stats Tool update

During February we made a few enhancements to the Plings statistics tool.

We’ve

• added ‘County views’ for local authorities such as Leicester and Norfolk (we’ll be doing the rest soon!)
• enabled CSV exports on the Things to do, Places to go, and Activity Providers pages (and the pages you get to as you drill down) – thanks for the suggestion (see http://ideas.plings.net/ideatorrent/idea/24/ )
• made some tables sortable – i.e. on the above pages, when drilled down into a particular activity, venue or provider, the tables are looking better, and columns are now sortable if you have javascript on
• added some links to plings.net e.g. for venues and providers, so you can jump out of the tool to see the latest data on something of interest.
• made a few changes in line with our new brand
• altered the ‘to’ and ‘from’ labels on the date search to make them a bit more user friendly
• added a filter by Plings/DCSF category option
• enabled users to hide the ward filter if they are not interested in using it

Hope you like the changes. We’re to hear any feedback on this.

New in the Stats Tool

Today we released the latest work we’ve been doing on the stats tool, that local authorities can use to inspect their Youth Offer.

What’s new?

• Instances – We’ve altered the headline stats (top right) to feature ‘instances’ more prominently, as after all, that’s what Plings is all about!
• Charts – we have 2 new charts, a pie chart of activities that have been classified against the DCSF 8 categories of positive activities, and  an Instances over time profile, that shows how activies peak and trough over a time period.
• Reports Tab – We’ve added a new ‘Reports’ section – for now this shows the weekly breakdown of figures into morning, afternoon, and evening sessions, as required once again by the DCSF, but rather than just focus on one reporting period, we show this over any time period you care to put in.
• Maps – If you take a look at the ‘places to go’ tab, you can now see venues on a Google Map, or in a list.
• Latest News – tucked in down out of the way is our ‘Latest News’ block, that links back to articles we post here on the blog, that have something to do with the tool. Seems like a good way of keeping in touch!

The chart could help spot trends

We’ll be publishing our ‘roadmap’ ( a grand term, for what we hope to do next!) soon, as we’ve already got a list of new features we’d like to see in there. If you have suggestions for things you’d like to see and/or any improvements you think we could make, then please let us know.

One-Click Statistics…?

The DCSF want to know how local authorities are doing when it comes to providing positive activities to young people. In November Antony Hughes wrote to all Local Authority Directors of Children’s Services to announce a data collection exercise designed to “capture summary information on the pattern of provision of the youth offer over the week, including number of sessions provided on Friday and Saturday nights [and] including a breakdown of youth offer by activity and provider type”.

Of course, this is exactly the sort of information that exists within the Plings Platform, so for the 22 authorities currently involved in the Plings pilot, where the data is up-to-date we’ll be able to present the information needed to complete the DCSF monitoring spreadsheet with the touch of a button. Well, almost…

The categories being used by DCSF to describe activity types do not match 100% with those in Plings, but using the Tag-It tool we’re able to offer a quick interface for authorities to recategorise any activities as required – and then from an updated version of the Stats tool soon to be available, we’ll be able to present the information needed by DCSF.

With continued work to integrate the Parent Know How Directory and Plings (PKHD includes data on activity provision, but not ‘instances’ of activities for all local authorities) we hope that in the future we may even be able to generate these summary statistics for anywhere in the country.

The Plings Stats tool

The main contact for Plings in each Local Authority taking part in the pilot will shortly be receiving a log-in to the Plings Stats tool.

The statistics tool is our way of helping Local Authorities to review what their local offer really looks like – by navigating the activity offer contained within the Plings database.

As you can see from the screen-shot below, the tool will allow authorities to pick any date-range and explore what activities were on offer then, of what sort, and by run by which providers.

The Plings Statistics Tool

Knowing more about the activities currently on offer can help local authorities to identify gaps in provision.

This is the first public release of the statistics tool, but we will continue to develop it over the coming year – exploring ways that the statistical information on what is on when, can be complemented with feedback and comments from young people about local activity provision.

If you’ve got ideas for developing the stats tool, then of course, do let us know.