SASSOT starts the Local Open Data conversation

Using open data to help get people more active is right at the top of our agenda, and with national investment into ‘Open Active’, this presents a fantastic opportunity to make our local physical activity offer relevant, searchable and bookable.

SASSOT have recently partnered with Played and Imin to deliver a local activity finder powered through the use of open data.

We believe this is a critical step in addressing the persistent high levels of physical inactivity across the county.

To kick start this project, last week SASSOT held a stakeholder workshop led by industry experts from Sport England, Imin and Played, all of whom are members of ‘Open Active’.

Funded by Sport England, ‘Open Active’ is a community led initiative, stewarded by the Open Data Institute (ODI) with the ambition to help people in England get active using open data.

A key part of their work is to develop data standards and help organisations to better understand how they can go about opening their data.

The workshop last week introduced stakeholders to the work that is being done nationally to support larger activity providers to open their data, in particular focusing on large leisure management system providers such as Gladstone, Legend, etc.

Open Active regularly updates the list of providers who have either opened their data or are working towards doing so. You can access this list here.

The workshop also started to support stakeholders to understand the practicalities of opening their data and how they could go about supporting smaller activity providers who may not have a website or booking system.

Time was also spent exploring some of the ‘myths’ associated with open data, reassuring stakeholders that opening data only refers to ‘opportunity’ data that has an appropriate license attached to Open Active.

So what does this all mean for us here in Staffordshire & Stoke-on-Trent?

Getting organisations to ‘open’ their activity information is just the first step in this data journey.

The need for a local searchable physical activity finder has been a missing piece of the puzzle for some time and SASSOT has spent a considerable amount of time researching potential solutions.

Through our newly found partnership with Played, we are now pleased to have our very own countywide ‘activity finder’ sourced through open data.

We are currently working on the branding and promotion of this tool, however our focus is to ensure that it is well populated with plenty of local open-sourced data opportunities.

Please Join Us

Our ambition is to work with as many activity providers as possible to support them to open their activity data, allowing the information to appear in our ‘Activity Finder’.

This will increase providers market reach to new audience’s as well as improving the experience of the customer.

So whether you are a sports club, yoga instructor, walk leader, coaching company and so on, we would love to hear from you and discuss how we can support you to share your activity information.

Find out more about open data by watching the video below or watch it by clicking here.

For more information please contact:

Naomi Bird
Data, Insight & Engagement Manager
01785 619585
nbird@staffordbc.gov.uk