Survey: Journalists can now have their say on access to UK Government data

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The Government Statistical Service (GSS) opened a survey yesterday (10 January) to find out how journalists and others are using the data released by different government departments online and how it could improve access to the data.

The survey is one of the first phases of an initiative to make government data more easily discoverable, John Lewis, user researcher on the project, told Journalism.co.uk.

"Most of that data is available on gov.uk or data.gov.uk – there's then also additional information and data that each of the government departments publish maybe on their own websites or their own portal as well. There's lots of data out there but in lots of different places," he said.

After receiving feedback that sometimes it is difficult to find data or even know if a particular dataset exists, the GSS set off to understand how it can improve the access to this information.

The survey is part of the project's discovery phase, which will run until March, when the team working on the project will find out whether permission has been granted to move forward with the development.

Lewis explained the solution will depend on the feedback gathered through the survey, but the team is considering creating a "funnel" for the data.

"The project itself is looking at potentially having some kind of location, an internet portal, that anyone who wants data can go to, and that they can then query.

"They can say, 'right, well I want this from ONS, I want that from HMRC, I want this from DWP' and basically be able to slice and dice it and cut that data and be able to produce a table that gives you all of that data in one go.

"Whereas at the moment, if somebody wanted to do something like that, it would be quite time-consuming."

The survey is looking to find out whether current users of government data would prefer a solution of this type, if they know where they need to go to find datasets, and if they are with using multiple websites.

Journalists can respond to the survey here.