Here’s some of the results of my survey of English Local Authorities on Open Data (£500 spending). You can also see it as a pdf Survey of English Local Authorities on Open Data
Conducted: April-October 2013 via online survey (BOS)
Population: 102 (2 x excluded)
1. What type of transparency information is of most interest to users?
2. Which group or groups are the primary users of the data?
3. How would you characterise the level of use of the spending data?
4. What type of transparency will this data create?
5. What type of transparency will this data create?
Pageviews of Spending Data on Selected Local Authority Websites January-December 2012[1]
| Council Type | Page Views per month (average) |
| District | 35 |
| District | 87 |
| District | 99 |
| District | 341 |
| Borough | 355 |
| District | 437 |
| City | 450 |
| District | 528 |
| District | 610 |
| District | 636 |
| City | 2021 |
Comparative Visits for January 2012 on government and non-government Open Data sites
| Site | Visits per month |
| Local Council Average | 200 |
| Police.uk | 540, 609 |
| Data.gov.uk | 161,101 |
| TheyWorkForYou | 200-300,000 |
| WhatDoTheyKnow | 100-200,000 |
(Police.uk: Data.gov.uk: Esche 2011)
For more details
Worthy, Ben, ‘David Cameron’s Transparency Revolution? The Impact of Open Data in the UK’ (November 29, 2013). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2361428
Worthy, Ben ‘Evidence to PASC on the Aims of Open Data’ http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/WrittenEvidence.svc/EvidenceHtml/3924
Worthy, Ben ‘Evidence to PASC on the Impact of Open Data’ http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/WrittenEvidence.svc/EvidenceHtml/1511
[1] Based on FOI requests to English local authorities in 2013 asking for hits/views on spending data pages of their website.
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