Photo: Luke Tanis on Unsplash

State of London dashboard builds on pandemic data advances

15 August 2022

by Sarah Wray

A new dashboard in London’s Datastore expands on reporting tools developed during the pandemic and aims to provide timely information on social and economic trends in the capital.

The State of London dashboard, which is currently in beta form, includes over 120 charts on topics such as the economy and labour market, housing, crime and safety, broadband availability and affordability, poverty, young people and education, and transport.

An analysis report was also published alongside it by the Greater London Authority’s City Intelligence Unit.

The tools were originally developed to provide updates to the Mayor and the London Assembly, with the primary objective of helping to frame the GLA’s corporate reporting process.

“However, it soon became apparent that the report would have a wider appeal and use to stakeholders interested in these topics and that we should make it public,” said Matthew Daley, Supervisory Economist at Greater London Authority, in a blog post.

“Bringing together data on such a diverse range of subject matters into a single document is hopefully useful for those needing a high-level overview of London’s performance without the need to delve into several documents and data sources.”

Other interested parties could include researchers, think tanks, journalists and the wider public.

The State of London dashboard is described as an evolution of London’s Covid-19 Resilience Dashboard which was created during the pandemic to track economic recovery and continues to be updated. The State of London tool is built using the same software which enables some sections to be updated automatically, and focuses beyond the impacts of Covid-19 to include indicators related to longer-term structural challenges.

Data innovation

“The outbreak of Covid-19 saw a clamour for more timely data on the impact of the pandemic on people, society and the wider economy, with a call for more regional and local levels of granularity,” Daley said. “Out of the crisis there was considerable innovation in the way data was collected, processed, analysed and published in order to meet demand and this promises to help analysts and policymakers alike in their work into the future.”

The report suggests “many positive signs of recovery from Covid,” such as in London’s economic output, labour market, and a pick-up in levels of economic activity seen in expenditure patterns and public transport usage, although the latter is still below pre-pandemic levels.

However, challenges remain. Footfall in some high streets is still less than 80 percent of pre-Covid figures and consumer confidence is low. Unemployment remains higher than the rest of the UK.

Daley said: “While the State of London does not go into detail on this, the effects of inflation and the rising cost of living are also major economic headwinds.

“Given London’s high poverty rates and inequality, the same low-income groups that were most affected by the pandemic are also likely to bear the brunt of the cost-of-living crisis.”

London’s Chief Digital Officer Theo Blackwell recently outlined how the city is revamping its Datastore to become a ‘central library catalogue’ for data held by both the public and private sector.

“The Datastore outgrew its original functionality,” he told Cities Today, noting that there were an increasing number of requests from people to develop services that would also include the sharing of non-open data.

Image: Luke Tanis on Unsplash

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