Data for Action | Recap and what next?
This is a recap of our work up to July 2024 and a place to write about what we are thinking about doing next. It serves as both a blog and an exploration.
Context
At Data for Action we are coming to the end of a busy, productive and interesting period. We’ve done a lot of work that we are very proud of across different projects with a variety of lovely partners. We are now taking a step back to consider where to go next with the products and ideas we have developed, and how they link up.
What we have done
Over the past 12 months we have been involved in a wide range of different projects. This has included Prototyping Insight Infrastructure for the Charity sector with JRF, building a version 2.0 of the Local Needs Databank with NPC, citizen led mapping of Neighbourhoods with Citizen Network, prototyping a self development tool for Wildlife Trusts network and supporting Client Earth to develop an Impact & Learning tool. As part of our principles we believe in sharing not just the final outputs, but as many of the things we did along the way. We’ve documented all these in Notion catalogues, which you can view below
What we learned
Our Question Bank approach has been incredibly useful for a wide range of projects and organisations. It helps to frame work and prioritise it, particularly when people have to focus on what they might do with an answer. People get it and it has multiple uses across organisations.
Culture change is hard. People bring a range of expectations about what data is, what it’s for and how it should be collected. It takes years. But structured conversations can bring people together.
Tell the story of how something has been arrived at. This helps things to embed (e.g. neighbourhood mapping). It also helps people to reach different conclusions from the same work (potentially JRF), which is fine!
Show the thing. Conceptual thinking doesn’t work for everyone.
Shiny data product does not (necessarily) equal the right thing…we all like building cool things, but sometimes it is more about how you work, how you discuss things that are important.
Words and language matter. How you describe something. How you explain why you are doing something.
Principles help. The shared understanding of what you mean, what you stand for, what matters is one of the most important and powerful things you can do. For many organisations just agreeing Principles of how you will work will revolutionise your work…
But you must live them in practice. Keep checking in on your principles, recognise where you are living them and where you aren’t.
People love complexity because you can hide in it. Or maybe just the appearance of complexity. Our work with JRF and Local Needs work has shown us that you don’t need much to start having interesting conversations about what to do next. Start simple, or just start.
We have a long way to go to be representative and inclusive in our work - and in society as a whole. That doesn’t invalidate the work, but it must be recognised alongside it.
What we are thinking about or what we want to do next
In the broadest sense we are thinking about “how to move the thing(s) on rather than how to move onto the next thing. “
It’s too easy to move from one project to another and keep on producing things. Part of our approach is to think beyond single use projects, but to build for the longer term. So we are thinking about how we can build on the work we’ve done this year and more than that, how do we link and weave the parts together?
Theme 1 - Link and experiment
We see potential in bringing together the infrastructure and approaches from our mapping work, local needs databank, insight infrastructure and question bank in a variety of ways.
How
Civil society organisation led neighbourhood mapping to understand and challenge existing notions of what is being funded, where and for whom. Working title: Foci on Loci
Youth led neighbourhood mapping. What matters to young people, how do they view and explore their neighbourhoods and cities and what would a youth-led reimagining of places look like?
Linking data work (or is it insight…back to the definition again) to the question bank and connecting people around the things people have already done in response, or about their potential to support an answer. Question ->Research -> Answer bank?
Theme 2 - Further develop existing ideas
We want to further develop some products and prototypes into fully established infrastructure
How
Release Question Bank as both product (at the ‘topic’ and organisation level) and open infrastructure
Test and develop Charity Data Works with JRF Insight Infrastructure team and wider movement of charities working to alleviate poverty in the UK
Further develop Human Infrastructure including ways of connecting people around ideas, cause, support
Theme 3 - Codify definitions, approaches and resources
We think there is value in language, the spoken and written word as much as in data tools. We want to invest in open resources and approaches that can help.
How
Expanding the observation led approach. Moving away from traditional funder-led expectations of what is meaningful to collect and moving towards less onerous and more action-focused ways of gathering meaningful ‘stuff’. Infrastructure for tagging, basically.
A Data for Action glossary where we talk about our preferred words for describing some of this stuff, why and what they move away from? E.g. We use the word insight over data because X and it might help you to Y…
Revisit our Data Definitions work
Theme 4 - Funding
Building open infrastructure takes money. We want to explore how to make this happen. Strategic investment, collaborative funding, a new fund? We want to explore all of these in a practical way.
Theme 5 - Open experiments and prototyping
We feel we’ve established some good or at least interesting approaches and rhythms for prototyping ideas in an open way. We’d like to share our approach with others. We’d also like to continue to develop some of our random experiments.
How
An open prototyping playbook
Questions we have
How could we combine our approaches and data infrastructure from Local Needs Databank and Neighbourhood Mapping to explore Local Neighbourhoods (The Loci project)?
What is the relationship between where an organisation is funded to deliver work and where they actually deliver work? Can we map this?
How do we codify the mapping approach and build the infrastructure so that it can be locally led?
Can we create - or facilitate - a fund that really supports the building of infrastructure required for open by default social purpose?
How do we change the language around data for social purpose so that we’re all much more aligned in what it’s about rather than reporting requirements?
How do we move away from such a technical skills focus in terms of what support looks like?
What matters to young people, how do they view and explore their neighbourhoods and cities and what would a youth-led reimagining of places look like?
How do we end single use projects?
Get in touch
So, this is what we have done this year, what we are thinking about, and where we’d like to go next. If any of this strikes a chord with you do get in touch.