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Help us improve it with your feedbackCombine local data to create new regional and national services
Consolidate data from multiple local sources into a single, reusable dataset.
About
Manually collecting and maintaining service data for an entire region or country is a huge and often duplicated effort.
This approach uses an aggregator to combine data from multiple publishers (such as local authorities and councils) into one central, reusable dataset.
This means each service is recorded once, making it easier to maintain and keep consistency across platforms. By combining this data, you get a clearer, more complete overview of the service landscape. This helps you identify service gaps so you can make informed decisions about where new services are most needed.
For example, a national directory for Family Services could pull relevant information from different counties and councils into one single feed for wider use. The same method works for regions, such as councils within a combined authority, or organisations within an Integrated Care Board (ICB) area.
Benefits
- Creates a single, high-quality record for each service, maintained in one place
- Reduces the number of service records each publisher needs to manage
- Highlights services that might otherwise be overlooked by professionals and clients
- Allows users to discover services beyond their immediate local area
Outcomes
- Less duplicated effort to maintain data
- Better use of data gathered, leading to better quality checking
- A more complete view of services, and where service gaps exist
- Improved visibility for local services
- Enables new services to be designed and built using data that was previously a burden to collect and update
Examples
DfE and Family Hubs
The Department for Education (DfE) can use existing data from local authorities to improve and expand its national Family Hubs services (.pdf)
Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB
They are merging services data from multiple councils, health providers and community organisations (.pdf) to create a single, reliable dataset for the entire region. This enables data reuse across different organisations and provides an overview of service availability, helping them identify and address service gaps.
Get started
If this use case is relevant to your organisation, see
a quick step by step guide to adopt ORUK.