Scotland’s Improvement Service has begun to add data on polling districts and places to its Spatial Hub.
The Spatial Information Service (SIS) of the country’s support agency for local government has added the latest data to the national datasets section of the hub in advance of next month’s general election, saying it is important to have up-to-date digital information on where people are expected to vote.
It pointed out that many polling locations will be different to those used at previous selections and said the information should be openly available.
Among the users of the data is the Democracy Club – a volunteer organisation that aggregates data and builds apps to promote democratic engagement – which has made it the basis of its online Where Do I Vote? tool.
Important role
The Improvement Service said: “SIS is playing an important role across the local government community in encouraging improved management of location based data like this. The One Scotland Gazetteer is ensuring that standard address (and street) data is being collected for every single local authority and that this data is being used across more and more local authority functions – like electoral systems.
“The Spatial Hub is also collecting much of this data and information to make it more accessible and usable for the rest of the data community – for gaining insight, conducting analysis and innovation purposes.
“We encourage anyone across local government that is responsible for data and information to consider how it can be made more useful and more available to the wider community.”
Image by RachelH, CC BY 2.0 through flickr
