ONS Digital

Siwmae/Greetings

After a few days on holiday, I am now playing catch-up with the team to see what was occuring last week.

We kicked off the week with a Wikipedia workshop following a successful presentaion to staff earlier in the year. The aim was to provide ONS staff with the opportunity to learn the basics of editing content, to ensure that the information about ONS and the data we produce is correct. Despite there being interest in doing this training at the presentation, there was an initial struggle to sign-up volunteers. However we did manage to get10 people to particpate in a half day session and the general feedback was very positive and we will follow up how to develop these skills further.  One item discussed was making our infographics available on the relevant Wikipedia pages, which our social media team will take forward.

We also launched an update to the Key Economic Time Series page which will greatly improve the user experience and hopefully proves that we are listening to what our users want. Have a look and tell us what you think.

Other news
It was a demanding week for our editorial team, who work with our statisticans to maxmise the reach and understanding of ONS data through the use of short stories. The biggest bulk came in the form of 12 regional profiles, each containing an infographic and bespoke analysis that highlighted the areas with the lowest crime rate, highest unemployment and other facts. These were well received, gaining coverage on regional broadcasts (BBC Scotland & East Anglia), in local press and lots of chatter on Twitter. The crime release allowed us to pilot a few things, including an an early attempt at chattier, more human articles that focussed less on data and more on the actual work and real life experience of working with the numbers. We also had stories out on UK businesses, and the rise of the ‘staycation’. Video is progressing, albeit at a slower pace than we would like. Our GDP pilot is now finished and another proposal has been put together for the ’40 years of the Labour Force Survey. There is also a ‘7 second economics’ video planned for release on Vine.

Work is almost complete to finalise our publishing metadata standards, consulting with our search analyst to check that the standards for keywords/description will not have a negative impact on external search engines, before launching them next month.

On Social media our regional stories went down very well and meant a manic morning setting all 12 up on flickr with the right description and title, making a set and getting them out the door as soon after 0930 as poss.  We are in the process of getting the stats together to assess the ROI. Our Head of Social Media attended a great conference on Thursday called mesurefest, watch out for his round-up of the event.