Fluent Technology

LASOS is the result of a partnership between the 4 South Yorkshire Local Authorities; Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield. It is a local information and data observatory powered by Origin.

Requirements
LASOS was required to provide local communities; elected Councillors and people working in public services easy online access to quality assured data about their Council area, ward and neighbourhoods.

With initial funding from the Capacity Building Programme the partnership set out to create a ‘small area information system’, to facilitate evidence based policy making. LASOS was launched in January 2009. It works as a fully managed ‘shared service’ hosted by Fluent. A subsequent bid by Sheffield City Council to the funding programme board within YoHR, the Regional Improvement and Humberside led to LASOS Phase 2. This was launched in January 2010 and set out to provide a LASOS Help Desk based at Barnsley Council, launched in April 2010,and a LASOS ‘Community Profiling tool which went live in March 2011.

Solution
The solution includes population, community safety, fire, health, education and economic data. This information actively helps with performance assessments, planning service improvements and measuring the efficiency and impact of public service delivery. There are now over 130 registered users on the system representing all key stakeholders and third party policy influencers.

LASOS is a repository of data from national sources, via ORIGIN’s NESS module which enables LASOS to link directly with ONS Neighbourhood statistics, sub regional sources and local sources. Partners have a very good understanding of the type of data that is available from different Council service areas, data supplied by the Primary Care Trusts, and both South Yorkshire Police and South Yorkshire Fire& Rescue. Much of the data is available at neighbourhood and ward level.

LASOS has installed an additional ORIGIN module called Partner Portals which keeps a single instance of ORIGIN but enables each partner to have its own autonomous space within the hosted environment. Each can be branded differently and it is very easy to switch between portals or clear the filters and view all the partnership areas together. A localised approach helps with management so while there is an overall System Manager, there are local managers too, who can look after everyday tasks develop their own interface and branding and take on local projects. If one partner is further along in one area than the others they too can benefit from the leader’s experience.

As easy as it is to use making the most its power,becoming familiar with the data available and learning how to use the analysis, charting and mapping features requires a steep learning curve.Fluent Technology working closely with the LASOS partners and South Tyneside Council developed an ORIGIN module called ‘Profiler’ in order to make it easier for public user and partners to use Origin to find data on their area. Profiler enables users to create area based statistics profiles from within ORIGIN.

These include health profiles, crime profiles,deprivation profiles, educational attainment profiles etc. all of which can be linked to the actual data within LASOS. For users it is simply a matter of selecting a location, such as a postcode or a ward to get key facts and indicators about the area. Profiles will be an invaluable resource for local groups,charities and politicians looking for insight and a fuller understanding of local issues and problems as the Big Society’s localism agenda takes hold.

Value
LASOS has become an invaluable resource to the South Yorkshire Partnership. One of the main benefits of LASOS is the ability to store live data and produce annual or quaterly reports such as the annual JSNA report. A JSNA is the comprehensive assessment of the health and wellbeing needs of a local population. It leads to more effective service provision by informing the Sustainable Community Strategy, Local Area Agreement, and other relevant commissioning strategies. In the past compiling the data and creating all the charts into one printed report was a mammoth task but in 2010, the Barnsley JNSA was put together using LASOS. All the data was collected together in LASOS and wherever possible the charts and maps were created in LASOS too and went into the report. Subsequently the JSNA was split into chapters and made available in PDF format on LASOS. All the links from the Barnsley website and the PCT (Primary Care Trust) websites all point to the documents held on LASOS. Within the documents on LASOS people readingthem will be able to explore links to the raw data, drill down into that data and produce different charts if need be.

James Leach, The LASOS System manager stated:

“The fact that the JSNA is in one central managed location with all its related data makes it much more of a living resource. The other huge bonus is the ability for the public health intelligence team to put data directly into LASOS. Any charts, maps or other resources produced either within or outside the system ended up in LASOS, which allowed the process to be much more ‘joined up’ and comprehensive. With the new charting tools we will be able to do almost everything within LASOS and estimate a 50% time saving over the previous JSNA process.”,

It is estimated that key analysts are now saving an estimated 6 hours per week on routine data collection and reporting activities. This translates to a significant efficiency improvement across all stakeholders. LASOS has other unique benefits including:

• Radically improved and streamlined data collection and reporting processes
• Increased consistency of data definitions across all partners and stakeholders
• Increased volume of ‘self service’ for information requests by the public
• More timely publishing of information to the public
• Tailored interfaces for stakeholders (e.g. my region, my data, my reports, my resources)
• Access widened to include policy influencers outside of the key stakeholders

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