Code The City #3 ran on 7th – 8th February 2015. It sought to identify and meet some of the challenges which face those who provide community information, and those who need to use it.
Update posts from the weekend are available here.
There is a Youtube playlist of final presentations available here.
Background
The City Council, the local Health Service, and multiple organisations in the public and 3rd sectors all store and present information on local groups, associations, clubs and societies, in various ways.
This poses challenges for the organisations, for those supplying the data, and for the public who need access to it.
All of these data stores are managed independently. The information – which held in a variety of systems – can be significantly different, the frequency of updates not synchronised, and the means by which it is collected non-standard.
For local groups the burden of providing the information to multiple data custodians, and sign-posting services, can be considerable.
And for service users? Well, the challenge of finding trusted, accurate, up-to-date information that meets their needs can be daunting. You Google a query and it returns four listings for the same organisation, with different email addresses, phone numbers, address or contacts ….. You get the picture!
Code The City 