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OldhamInfo

www.oldhaminfo.org

Manchester Geomatics won the tender to build a community statistics and information system for Oldham Partnership in 2003. The system’s primary aim was to assist local organisations and partnerships to share information more easily.


Manchester Geomatics developed, hosted and maintains OldhamInfo, which has been on-line from early 2004. It is a geographical information system-based website with statistics and details of services with open access to all, which brings together a wide range of information in a user-friendly format.


Data is held at various geographic levels, including the Office for National Statistics’ detailed Output Areas and users can view (or download) data sets and reports for predefined geographical areas or use the application to define their own specific area.


Susan Kirkham, Research Manager at Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council says, "OldhamInfo provides Oldham’s partnership organisations with ready access to research and information to inform policy and strategy development and support funding bids."


The system uses the core GEDI system architecture, but extensively customised to meet Oldham’s needs. This includes:

  • a flexible area profiler - the Report Wizard which enables users to chose one or more pre-defined geographical areas, or to create a user-defined geographical area, and generate statistical reports and list facilities falling within them
  • secure login, with usernames and passwords
  • time series functionality. Where a time series is available for any variable, users can view map animations showing changes over time, or choose to see the data displayed as comparative charts.
  • a searchable report archive
  • a range of administrative tools, giving control over user permissions

It is used widely by managers, front-line workers and policy and research officers from Oldham MBC and the LSP partner organisations, community and voluntary groups and the general public and can be viewed at www.oldhaminfo.org Key workers at Oldham MBC, the LSP and other partner organisations have identified the major benefits of OldhamInfo as:

  • The user-friendly GIS functionality
  • Time-series, reporting and data (map, table or chart) downloads to facilitate in the accurate reporting and monitoring of the effectiveness of various Local Strategic Partnership initiatives, both at a local and regional scale.
  • The up-to-date information in the system as provided by Manchester Geomatics’ regular and quality assured data cleaning, loading and maintenance services
  • The provision of regular monitoring/administrative information to the LSP (number of current/new users etc) so that resources can be targeted on the specific data or functionality within the system that are most visited.

Susan Kirkham added, "OldhamInfo has developed into a really powerful tool for research and now contains a substantial volume of up-to-date information as well as historical data so we can analyse how our neighbourhoods are changing over time."