Use of categories / tags for public bodies to better group bodies by function

[RichardTaylor]

Better categorisation of public bodies would be generally useful, but in particular would assist pro batch requesters select appropriate groups of bodies to send requests to.

Getting local councils categorised/tagged by tier (which corresponds to their functions) would be particularly useful and help prevent misdirected requests. There's more internal discussion on the WhatDoTheyKnow wiki todo list.

We could for example tag those NHS bodies which have A&E departments so requests about A&E can easily be made to appropriate bodies.

We can probably do a lot with the current system, but we might eventually want some more powerful features eg. to tag aliases, or ways of defining groups of public bodies using other tags. We can create and link separate ticket for any such feature requests.

Related: Once a pro user has selected a group of bodies for a batch they should be able to save and share that group; that group of bodies should be tagged/categorised to describe what they are. Pro ticket for that: https://github.com/mysociety/alaveteli-professional/issues/591

[mdeuk]

Getting local councils categorised/tagged by tier (which corresponds to their functions) would be particularly useful and help prevent misdirected requests. There's more internal discussion on the WhatDoTheyKnow wiki todo list.

This would be particularly useful - we regularly see instances of users making requests to District and Parish Councils on topics out of their purview. Having the ability to more tightly define a group of related bodies with relative ease will improve user experience, and, ultimately, the quality of our dataset.

We can probably do a lot with the current system, but we might eventually want some more powerful features eg. to tag aliases, or ways of defining groups of public bodies using other tags. We can create and link separate ticket for any such feature requests.

Can you expand on what you envision an alias function would do?

Related: Once a pro user has selected a group of bodies for a batch they should be able to save and share that group; that group of bodies should be tagged/categorised to describe what they are. Pro ticket for that: mysociety/alaveteli-professional#591

I would agree with the gist of this (I can't see the ticket) - it would likely be helpful if the user could save the grouping for their own future use; but, optionally, to also save it for use by others as part of a crowdsourcing arrangement.

[mdeuk]

On a related note, work being done in #416 could be replicated here - for example - do we want to have a listing of public bodies in large metropolitan areas, such as those where Mayors are being elected (think Liverpool, Manchester, West Midlands etc).

This could, potentially, be further broken down into groups of bodies within the area, e.g. in Liverpool you could then have a tag for general practitioners within said area, to allow for targeting of requests geographically.

[RichardTaylor]

Can you expand on what you envision an alias function would do?

Say we have a group of bodies with a function tag such as [collects_council_tax] which we display as "Collects Council Tax" we might find that the same set of bodies is also responsible for domestic rubbish collection. We wouldn't want to maintain both lists, we'd want the same lists to be accessible via two different names.

In this case we might want to define the list of bodies that do domestic rubbish collection as eg. London borough councils, plus unitary councils, plus district councils and we might want to give a series of alias labels to that set.

Also to note #387 "Show note(s) based on a public body's tag(s)" is related.

[MattK1234]

We could for example tag those NHS bodies which have A&E departments so requests about A&E can easily be made to appropriate bodies.

Raised on a separate ticket (#646)

[RichardTaylor]

We recently had someone wanting to make requests to local highways authorities. We could usefully tag those. That's a group made up of perhaps: County Councils, Unitary Authorities, Metropolitan Borough Councils, London Boroughs. You might want to include TfL in such a set. Consideration would need to be given to any differences in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

[mdeuk]

I've added a PR #718, which adds some short URLs for /ni, /scotland, and /wales - similar to the London URL used elsewhere.

My thinking is that ultimately we'd want this to resolve to something more useful than a list of all bodies that are tagged at geographic level, but it is a start.

Refers to: #715, #716, #717

[MikeThacker1]

Can I draw your attention to the electronic service delivery lists (aka taxonomies) maintained by the LGA since approx 2003? See https://standards.esd.org.uk/?

These include:

• Organisation types http://id.esd.org.uk/list/organisationTypes
• Functions http://id.esd.org.uk/list/functions (Just for local government)

They're properly maintained taxonomies which are human and machine readable in various formats.

[RichardTaylor]

WhatDoTheyKnow now has all Upper-Tier Local Authorities tagged UTLA

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body?tag=UTLA

each of these also has a "gss" Government Statistical Service code which will potentially enable links to eg. mapit.mysociety.org

[RichardTaylor]

We now have

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/list/highways

[RichardTaylor]

mySociety has published a research review noting "understanding of local government is relatively low. The public makes little distinction between different tiers of government".

Many people are not even aware of the different tiers of local government in their areas. Knowledge of even seemingly high-profile local leaders can be surprisingly low: for instance in 2018 almost half of Londoners said they were unaware that they have a Mayor with powers that affect their lives.

https://research.mysociety.org/html/joining-up/#what-do-people-know-about-local-government

While "local government" generally refers to local councils, I think we should also consider organisations such as local NHS bodies to be local government.

This research shows why we need to do more to tag, and describe the role of, public bodies on WhatDoTheyKnow, to make our service accessible to more people.

[RichardTaylor]

We have considered a principal_council tag as a counterpart to the UTLA (upper tier local authority) tag.

The term principal council is used in law. The Local Government Act 1992 states:

“principal area” means any of the following as for the time being constituted, that is to say, a non-metropolitan county in England, a district in England or a London borough; “principal council” means a council elected for a principal area; https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/19/section/28

The Local Government Act 1972 states

Constitution of principal councils in England. (1)For every [F1non-metropolitan] county there shall be a council consisting of a chairman and councillors and the council shall have all such functions as are vested in them by this Act or otherwise. and Constitution of principal councils in Wales. For every principal area in Wales there shall be a council consisting of a chairman and councillors.

While "principal council" is a useful classification, it applies to both county and district councils.

The tag we need I propose is ltla (Lower Tier Local Authority); this could also be called a "district council" in England. As of 19 October 2021 Government says [for England]: "In 2-tier areas, each county council area is subdivided into districts, for which there is an independent district council. There are 181 district councils." https://www.gov.uk/guidance/local-government-structure-and-elections#council-map Lower tier, is clearer than "district" given the existence of Metropolitan districts and the fact many district councils don't have "district council" in their name.

A district_council tag might be OK though, if used as we use parish_council to denote a parish_council level body irrespective of the name of the body.

[FOIMonkey]

We now have all english councils tagged by region, type, parent county council, parent combined authority, ecode, BS-6879, and tier.

[mdeuk]

We now have all english councils tagged by region, type, parent county council, parent combined authority, ecode, BS-6879, and tier.

This is fabulous, thank you!

[HelenWDTK]

Closing as complete, as we seem to have covered all of the suggestions here