Data Challenge
The Industry Data for Society Partnership and the Open Data Institute Launches the Data for Local Environments Challenge
February 8, 2023
Today, the IDSP and the Open Data Institute announced that the registration and submission phase is now open for the Data for Local Environments Challenge. The challenge aims to highlight the role publicly available data can play in helping local governments to improve local environments, such as reaching their net zero goals.
Our local environment impacts the way we live, our health, the quality of the air that we breathe, and the local biodiversity around us. The decisions of local governments have a significant impact on these local environmental issues and the world around us. From managing local services to meeting net zero goals, local governments are making decisions that impact our lives and help address climate change.
If local governments are to address these issues effectively, they will require having access to data, including data made available by the private sector. Access to data, and the ability to draw insights from it, will be critical to achieving these goals.
Through this data challenge, teams will evaluate the current state of local government plans, identify where progress can be made to improve the local environment, and suggest innovative solutions using publicly available data. A key outcome will be for teams to identify gaps in the way our local governments use data to develop current plans. Once these gaps have been discovered, they will be tasked to come up with innovative, realistic, and replicable solutions using the available datasets to address inefficiencies and improve government progress on environmental goals.
The Open Data Institute hosted three webinars during the month of January to introduce the IDSP challenge and the platform on which the challenge is hosted, highlight some of the datasets made available for use during and beyond the challenge, and cover some of the essentials of using open data. You can find links below to each of the recorded webinars.
Webinar: Introduction to the IDSP Challenge and platform
Webinar: Overview of the IDSP Data Portals
Learn more about the data challenge here: Industry Data for Society Partnership data challenge. The registration and initial submission phase will be open until 15th March 2023.