Update to Community Insight geographies and maintenance period

This November we are updating the geographic areas in Community Insight England and Wales. In order to ensure this update goes smoothly, we will be limiting access to admin features on Community Insight for a short period of time. This upgrade to our geographic database will cause data for a small number of your stock groups to change. These changes will overall be very minor. The information in this blog details how, why and when these updates are happening.

Site Maintenance Period

This update is planned to commence on Thursday 15th November at 3pm and will finish on Monday 19th November at 2pm. During this period, you will still be able to access Community Insight, however, you will be limited to View Reports access. This means you will be able to view everything on the tool but will not be able to access any of the admin features which allow you to; create stock groups, request reports, upload stock, upload data or manage your indicators. We will keep you updated throughout this process and make you aware when all is back to normal. Please do get in touch if you have any concerns or questions.

What will change?

Community Insight is built on the Census geographies: Middle Layer Super Output Areas (MSOA), Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOA) and Output Areas (OA). These are statistical geographies which were created for the Census in 2001 and then updated in 2011. On Community Insight we have historically used the 2001 Census geographies. This means that when you create stock groups and when you view data on the maps, you are viewing the 2001 boundaries. During this update, we will be upgrading to use the 2011 boundaries.

Not all boundaries changed during the 2011 update, in fact, only about 5% of areas nationally had any changes.

For more information on the background of Super Output Areas and the ways in which they changed; please see guidance from ONS and download their explanations.

Why are we doing this update now?

We didn’t move to the 2011 codes straight away as until very recently data from a number of our key sources such as the Department of Work and Pensions (which update data very regularly) still published data at the 2001 area level.

During this time our data processes used weighted lookups from the old to new geographies in order to account for the 5% of areas that had changed. Take a look at our Knowledge Base for more information on our methodology.

What does this mean for my stock groups and data?

Stock Groups

Will data change for my stock groups?

Those stock groups which contain OAs, LSOAs or MSOAs that changed in 2011 will be updated to reflect these changes. What this means is that you may see some very slight changes to the data for some of your stock groups.

How will I know which stock groups have been affected?

We are going to email the Community Insight lead of every organisation with a list of all the stock groups which have been updated.  If you are unsure who the project lead for your organisation is, or would like to be included in this email, please get in touch on support@ocsi.co.uk.

Will my stock groups look different?

Some of your stock groups may look visually different after this update. This will depend on how your stock groups were created:

  • All stock groups which were created by; drawing on a map or based on postcodes will not change visually.
  • Stock groups created by selecting standard areas may change visually if they contain any OAs, LSOAs or MSOAs which were updated in 2011.

 

Custom Data

Custom datasets which you have uploaded yourselves may display differently and therefore may require re-uploading. We will send every Group Admin a breakdown of the custom datasets affected and guidance for how to re-upload successfully.  

More information

If you have any questions on how this will affect your stock groups and data, please do get in touch on support@ocsi.co.uk or give us a call on 01273 810270.