Data-Sharing as an Anti-Poverty Tool
Data sharing
can lead to redesign of a whole city Says Ann Brophy of CAFTA
Ann Brophy is a CDP co-ordinator in Ballymun and a resident of Fingal. She chairs the committee that manages the Fingal Data Hub which has been invited by the EU – because of the project’s excellence and good practice – to represent Ireland in a datasharing project this year. In late ‘08, Ann outlined the data-sharing concept to Minister of State, Micháel Kitt, and received his enthusiastic backing. When implemented fully, it can lead to the redesign of a whole city or county. Ann’s involvement is backed by her board of management in Ballymun and she also contributes some extra hours as a volunteer with the Data Hub. Here, Ann talks to ‘Changing Ireland’:
Boston City was re-designed “There’s a brilliant project called the Boston Indicators Project and Charlotte Chan, the head, was in Ballymun and Fingal recently and we met her. Ten years ago, they were where we are now. This is what I would love to see – they gathered their data in Boston, went to all the agencies and community groups in Boston and said ‘This is the data
www.transitiontowns.org
we have collected, so what do you think we should do with it’. They then had focus groups and workshops and divided the work into thematic groups and that’s how the redesigning of Boston city came about.”
An anti-poverty strategy “In 2006, through the Anti-Poverty Network here in Ballymun, we looked at datasharing as an anti-poverty initiative and my work with the Data-Hub enabled us to look at and give a presentation around the fact that data-sharing is an anti-poverty strategy and a very effective one. But it is a long-term strategy and not a short-term one and it needs to be [supported] at a very high level within agencies and departments, it needs to be driven and it needs dedicated member groups.”
Best practice in delivery “The most important outcome when you are doing local area plans, seeking funding or trying to make the best use of resources in an area, is to have very up-to-date data so you can see where there is duplication, you can see where there are gaps.” “Data-sharing results in more effective
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planning of services, training, education… it results in the best practice. If you want to put in a funding application, you can see who your target group is going to be and you can show there is an interest among named agencies in setting up a project.
After ‘geo-coding’, cost is nominal “The most expensive part of data-sharing is geo-coding. Once your data is geo-coded, then the expense is quite nominal. Geo-coding is linking data to District Electoral Divisions, though one of the difficulties is that not all agencies store data in the same format or the geographical boundaries are different,” added Ann.
Target-groups become numerically visible Minister Eamon O’Cuiv spoke last year of his desire to see greater use made of small area statistics in delivering services. The people in Ballymun and Fingal are the ones to watch. To read about Boston’s experience, see page 23.