To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

There has recently been a small change in the boundary between Fife council area and Perth and Kinross council area (see the official notice for all the details) and that has led to the creation of new official codes for several geographical areas used in statistics.gov.scot.

We have added these codes to the database and updated the status of the old codes for the affected areas to mark them as 'Archived'. The tools on the website for exploring data by area have been updated to make use of the updated codes and boundary definitions.

Because the boundary changes are relatively small and don't involve any dwellings changing from one area to another, all the statistical data about the old definitions of the areas is still valid for the new areas, so to keep continuity of time series, and comparability of new data with old data, we decided to update all affected datasets to replace any reference to the old area codes with the new area codes.

When browsing round the website you won't notice any difference but can be confident that the data in it is up to date with the latest official geography. If you are extracting data for processing in other software you might need to take account of the changes.

(As well as the published datasets, we have also updated any saved data carts that included any of the changed geography codes, so you can keep using those with no changes needed).

Get in touch if you need any detailed advice on the changes. Official boundaries of the updated areas can be found on the Spatial Data Infrastructure Metadata Portal.

The full list of area codes we have updated is:

Council areas

Fife: S12000015 --> S12000047
Perth and Kinross: S12000024 --> S12000048

Health boards

Fife: S08000018 --> S08000029
Tayside: S08000027 --> S08000030

Health Integration Authorities
Fife: S37000014 --> S37000032
Perth and Kinross: S37000023 --> S37000033

Wards

West Fife and Coastal Villages: S13002945 --> S13003131
Cowdenbeath: S13002951 --> S13003128
Lochgelly, Cardenden and Benarty: 13002952 --> S13003130
Glenrothes West and Kinglassie: S13002957 --> S13003129
Kinross-shire: S13003070 --> S13003132

To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

Welcome to the new look statistics.gov.scot. We’ve been working on some changes to the way that our open data portal works, and will be releasing them soon.

Apart from a new colour scheme and home page layout, we’ve developed a new way for you to work with areas – the statistics.gov.scot Atlas.

As before, our data portal contains datasets which are structured by statistical and administrative geographies. The Atlas allows you to browse these using an interactive mapping window. You can see how smaller geographies relate to the larger areas they are nested within. And you can use the map to add geographical units to your data cart, when making bespoke collections of geographies and extracts from datasets.

When you navigate to the Atlas from the homepage (for instance by clicking on the “ATLAS” tab on the top right of the page), the default setting is for Scotland:

Further down the page, you’ll find new look versions of familiar features, such as the lists of areas nested within the geography you’re looking at (if you expand one of them, there is a button at the end of the list to add all those areas to the data cart):

Area profiles are now grouped according to topic:

And there is a list of datasets available for the geography you’re examining, grouped by theme:

Using the drop down menu above the map allows you to change the map view to show a different geographic level. For example, to see the council areas within Scotland, select them from the list of areas within Scotland:

You can select individual geographical units directly in the map window, by either clicking on the name (to navigate to its page) or by clicking on “Add to cart” to add this unit to the data cart:

You can continue to use the drop down menu to show smaller geographies nested within the larger area that you selected. This is particularly useful for selecting a collection of small area geographies such as data zones. Previously, it was necessary to look them up individually, but you can now select them from the map when making a collection of data and geographies in the data cart:

SUMMARY

1. Use the drop down menu above the map to select the type of geographical unit you need
2. Click on individual areas in the map to find out more about them, or add them to the data cart
3. Use the lists below the map to see full lists of geographies, and lists of datasets available
4. Browse the area profiles to find quick summary facts about the places you’re interested in

To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

Our website offers a variety of ways to download data. This guide describes how to:

• Download whole datasets in csv format
• Download a subset of a dataset, in csv format
• Create a bespoke collection of data from one or more datasets, and use the data cart to download it in csv format

One of the most important tasks that our users use statistics.gov.scot for is downloading data for further analysis. There are a few different ways that you can achieve this.

To begin with, when viewing a dataset, you often have the option of downloading the whole dataset. As an example, let’s have a look at some of the data on patients registered with general practices. Hover over the ‘Search’ tab in the toolbar, enter the term ‘gp’ and click go.

In the list of search results, select the dataset ‘General Practice List Size’. Scroll to the bottom of the dataset page, you will see the option to download the whole dataset, either as a csv or as n-triples. A csv will open in standard spreadsheet software, such as Excel. N-triples is a specialist file format for linked data, which is intended for developers.

The option to download the whole dataset as a csv is available for most datasets. However, for the largest datasets this feature is not available. Instead, you can filter the dataset to create a dataset ‘slice’, which can be downloaded.

For example, imagine that we are interested in population, and want to look at the number of people living in different administrative areas. In the search tab, enter ‘population estimates current’ and select the search result: ‘Population Estimates (Current Geographic Boundaries)’.

We need to start locking down the dimensions to obtain actual data - like applying a filter. To get to a "spreadsheet" style view of the data, you must lock down all but one of the dimensions – the dimension that you leave unlocked will form the columns of the table that you generate.

Let's select the "All" value in the Age dimension. A small padlock icon will appear. Then, select "Count" in the Measure Type dimension.

Finally, select ‘All’ for Sex. A table will appear, with years as the column headers, and geographical units as rows. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see that you can download this particular dataset slice as a csv.

Downloading the slice will give you a csv with a table of the selected dimensions (in this case, a count of all ages and all genders) for all of the types of geographical area in the dataset.

But what if we are only interested in one type of geography? If, for example, we only want local authority data, then you can use the data cart to get that specific subset of data. You can also create collections of dataset slices from multiple datasets, and create your own collections of individual geographical units.

At the top right of the table of data, you’ll find a shopping cart icon. Click on the cart icon to add the dataset slice to your cart.

At the bottom of the screen you should see "Your data cart contains 5 slices of data and 0 geographical areas".

We can add in slices from other datasets too: use the search tab to find the ‘General Practice List Size’ dataset again, select ‘Count’ in the Measure Type dimension, and then click on the shopping cart icon above the spreadsheet. At the bottom of the screen you should now see "Your data cart contains 16 slices of data and 0 geographical areas".

To complete the data cart, you’ll need to load in the geographical area or areas that you are interested in. But be aware – some datasets don’t contain information for every geography type (scroll to the bottom of the page on any dataset to see a list of the geography types covered). Go to the Explore option in the toolbar, and select ‘By area’.

In this example, we are interested in local authorities, so select ‘Council Areas’ from the diagram of geographies and click on the shopping cart icon to add these to your cart. Both of the datasets currently in the cart, General Practice Size List and Population Estimates (Current Geographic Boundaries), contain data at Council Area level.

You could, if you wanted, add in other geographical units, such as data zones. We now have data and geographies in our cart, and so we can now download a csv. At the top of the screen, hover over the tools menu and click ‘Your data cart’.

You’ll see a screen showing the items that you’ve added to the cart (in this case, 5 columns of data and 32 geographic areas). Click on ‘Save Cart’ to save the data cart.

On the screen which appears you will be able to download the contents of your cart by clicking the 'CSV' button. The hyperlink created for this cart is a permanent link; so you can save this to access the cart again in future. You can bookmark it, or share it with someone else, allowing them to access the data.

The link for this example use of the data cart is http://statistics.gov.scot/carts/fbc88745-065a-4706-90c2-cf898e247ca0

It’s also possible to use the data cart to extract data for multiple individual areas, such as individual data zones or council areas. You can find guidance on how to do this in the blog post: ‘How-to guide: find and extract data for multiple areas at once using the Data Cart’.

SUMMARY

1. Use the download whole dataset as csv option, where available, to download entire datasets
2. Lock values in a dataset to generate a spreadsheet style table, and use the download this slice option to extract the table as a csv
3. Use the data cart to assemble collections of data and geographies that you are interested in, and extract them as a csv

To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

Our users often tell us that they like to be able to visualise trends in datasets over time. For example, you might want to look at how the proportion of energy from renewable sources has changed through time.

To begin, search for ‘electricity’ in the search tab, and select the Renewable Electricity dataset.

For the Renewable Electricity dataset, the contents are quite simple – ratio data for the reference period 2000 to 2015. When viewing datasets, we need to lock down dimensions to obtain data - like applying a filter. To get to a "spreadsheet" style view of the data, you must lock down all but one of the dimensions – the dimension that you leave unlocked will form the columns of the table.

We are interested in the full time series of data, so select the measure type – ratio, by clicking on it. Doing so will lock down that particular dimension, whilst leaving the reference period free.

This will generate a table with the years as columns, and the reference area (in this case, Scotland) as a row.

Clicking on a specific value in the table will take you to a page for that single observed value. For example, click on the value 12.2 for year 2000.

The final step from here is to select the Charts tab.

This will bring up the time series chart, showing all values for Scotland, from 2000 to 2015. You can interact with the chart by hovering your mouse over points on the graph, revealing it’s precise value. You can see the data in table format, just above the chart. The hyperlink for this single observation and chart is permanent, so you can bookmark it or share it with colleagues.

For more complex datasets, you can use this method to generate time series charts for other geographies, such as individual council areas, or parliamentary constituencies.

Summary

1. Find the dataset that you are interested in using the search tab
2. Lock the dimension values, leaving the reference period free
3. Click on a value in the table, to go to the single observation page
4. Select the Charts tab, and view the time series chart

To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

We’re committed to getting out and engaging with the users of official statistics around Scotland. In that spirit, so far in 2017 our intrepid team has visited locations such as:

• Faifley, to deliver training to researchers from West Dunbartonshire Council and neighbouring local authorities

• Perth, to assist staff from Perth & Kinross council in understanding and accessing our official statistics

• Tiree, to run an open linked data workshop at the 13th Tiree Tech Wave

• Dunoon, to engage with Argyll & Bute research and development workers

Sessions have covered the big ideas behind open linked data, practical guidance in using the website, and workshops on accessing the datasets programmatically using our API. We’ve really enjoyed being out and about, working with enthusiastic people and partners to address local priorities.

So now the big question is – where do we go next?

Our offer of training and support remains very much open. If you think that your organisation could benefit from some coaching in accessing and using our open data, do get in touch. We can tailor sessions to suit your needs.

To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

We get requests from users on data visualisation, particularly wanting to view data on a map. For example, you might want to compare average house prices between council areas at a glance.

Let’s work through this as an example. First of all, search for “House Prices” in the search tab and select the House Prices data set.

From here, lock down the “Mean” measure type and a spreadsheet view will appear. (A more in depth guide to selecting the data you want is available in our data cart guide)

Use the scroll bar at the bottom of the table to scroll as far as possible to the right, which shows the most recent year data is available for. In this case it is 2013.

==Click the column header for 2013,==and a small drop down menu will appear. On the drop down menu, click “visualise this column” and you will be taken to a map of the data.

This will take you to page which resembles the screenshot below.

On this page:

• The data is sorted into coloured groups, with each containing roughly the same number of observations. The key on the right shows the range of values found within each group.

• You can change the map to show a different type of geography using the drop down menu below the map.

• If you hover over an area on the map, the name of the geography, standard geography code and observed value will appear.

If you would like to create your own maps, The Scottish Government publishes shapefiles for statistical and human health and safety geographies, available at the links below:

• Statistical Geographies
• Human Health and Safety Geographies

We are currently working on a map-based selection tool so you can add geographies to the data cart by selecting them from the map, rather than searching for them manually. We hope to release this with the next set of enhancements to the site.

SUMMARY

1. Find the data set you are interested in using the search tab.

2. Select the dimensions of the data you are interested in to obtain a spreadsheet view.

3. Click column header -> visualise this column.

To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

A regular request we get from users is how to find and extract data for multiple areas at once. For example, you might want to compare the proportion of homes in different council tax bands across several areas. You can use the data cart function on site to do this.

In simple terms, the data cart allows you to select which areas and data you are interested in. When you save the data cart it will give you a spreadsheet with the data you have asked for if it exists on the site.

For example, let's compare the number of dwellings in different council tax bands within a few areas in Glasgow. We'll use the postcodes G42 8YY, G42 8BU, and G42 7RX, but as we don’t hold data at postcode level we'll need to use the Data Zone type of geography.

Please refer to our guide on searching for a postcode if you need help finding the 2011 Data Zones for these postcodes.

To begin, search for the first postcode, G42 8YY, using the process in the guide and select the 2011 Data Zone. From the Geography tab of the Data Zone, click the shopping cart icon above the map to add the Data Zone to your cart. You should get a confirmation message as seen below.

Repeat this process for the other two Data Zones. At the bottom of the screen you should see "Your data cart contains 0 slices of data and 3 geographical areas", once you have added all 3.

Now that there are areas (Data Zones in this case) in your cart, you need to add data to the cart. Make sure you are still on the Data Zone page, click on the 'Data' tab, then scroll to the bottom of the page and select the "Dwellings by Council Tax Band" data set – if it is not immediately visible, click on the 'Load more rows' button to expand the list. This list of datasets shows all the data available at your chosen geography level.

You will then be presented with a page about the Dwellings by Council Tax Band dataset, showing the dimensions of the dataset.

The current screen tells us what data is available in the dataset. We need to start locking down the dimensions to obtain actual data - like applying a filter. To get to a "spreadsheet" style view of the data, you must lock down all but one of the dimensions – if you leave the Council Tax Band unlocked then you will get a table showing all council tax bands.

We are interested in the most up to date year, so let's select the "2015" value in the Reference Period dimension. A small padlock icon will appear next to each dimension you successfully lock down. Then, select "Ratio" in the Measure Type dimension. A spreadsheet style view will appear.

We are interested in Data Zone level data, so from the filter areas by type drop down menu, select "2011 Data Zones".

In this example we are interested in all council tax bands, so click on the shopping cart icon above the table to add all the columns to your cart.

If you were only interested in specific council tax bands, you could click the column headers and then click 'Add column to cart', as shown below.

At the top of the screen, hover over the tools menu and click data cart.

A screen showing what you have added to your cart (in this case, 11 columns of data and 3 data zones) will then be displayed.

Click "Save Cart" to save the data cart.

On the screen which appears you will be able to download the contents of your cart by clicking the 'CSV' button.

The hyperlink created for this cart is a permanent link; so you can save this and access the cart again in future.

You can add as many geographies and data sets to the cart as you like using the process above. You can save carts and use them as the building block for future analysis. For example, if you regularly use the same 10 Data Zones you could save this as a geography-only cart and then add the relevant data that you are interested in at a later time.

For data to exist in the data cart download it must exist on the website, so if there are blank spots it is possible that the data is missing from the site, or does not exist at the level you have asked for. You can check the availability of data at the bottom of the data set home page, where a list of available geography types is provided.

SUMMARY

1. Find the geographies you are interested in using the search tab.
2. Add them to your data cart.
3. Find datasets, and fix dimension values to get to the spreadsheet view you are interested in.
4. Add columns of data to your cart.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 as many times as necessary.
6. Go to Tools -> Data cart -> Save cart -> CSV to download the output.

To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

We often get requests from users who want to find out statistics about their local area, or small areas they are interested in. For instance, you might want to learn about the characteristics of a local area for a business service you are offering, or to find out about housing or education statistics for a potential house move. You can use the search function on our site to achieve this.

For example, let's find out about the area surrounding 'EH1 3DG', which is where we're based.

You can hover over the "Search" tab in the menu toolbar, enter the post code and then click go.

You will then be given a list of search results, and can click the top result, EH1 3DG.

This will open a page which shows which areas the postcode is in, such as the Council and the Scottish Parliamentary Constituency.

We do not release data at postcode level data on the site; the smallest area which we publish statistics for is the Data Zone, with populations of around 500 to 1000 people. The most up to date version is the 2011 Data Zone, which you can access from the Geography tab, near the bottom. Click the link for "Hillside and Calton Hill - 04".

You will now be shown a map of the area you have selected.

To access summary statistics for the area, click on the 'Data' tab and you will be given data for a range of indicators. At the bottom of the page is a list of datasets that we hold for this Data Zone. You can click on any of the observations in blue to see a richer view of the data with a time series for that area if the data allows.

SUMMARY

1. Enter post code into search bar.
2. Select post code from list of results.
3. Select 2011 data zone.
4. Click "Data" tab.

To continue exploring our datasets, return to statistics.gov.scot

First of all, thank you for your patience while we developed the changes that you’ll see from today. We introduced these changes to you back in May in our blog; these wouldn’t have been possible without all of the feedback we’ve received, and hope to continue receiving, from our users.

So what have we done?

You’ll see that we have a new geography explorer on our homepage. This shows you the areas that we hold on the site at a glance. It also allows you to jump straight into one of the collections that we hold statistics for. We’ve also added some descriptions to help aid your understanding of what the areas are and how they relate to each other. For example, if you start at the top you will see a map of Scotland with information about all the separate areas within Scotland listed below. You can click on the lists of areas that we hold within Scotland below the map, such as all 32 Council Areas, 73 Scottish Parliamentary Constituencies and 6,505 2001 Data Zones . Within any of these pages you’ll also see a further breakdown of areas within that; for example, from East Lothian you can navigate to its seven Electoral Wards or 120 Data Zones. We’ve worked with users to understand the most common geographies within an area to add to these pages.

You can also add any of these areas or collections to your data cart by clicking on the blue cart icon. The data cart lets you build your own area profiles within the system to save and download for reuse. We’ve added data cart icons on all the relevant area and dataset pages to help you add items to your cart.

On each of the map pages there is a ‘Data’ tab that will take you to a summary of the data we hold about that area, and below that a list of all datasets containing that area. This summary lets you see some quick statistics without having to delve into all of the individual datasets. You can also go to a richer view of the data by clicking on any of the observations where you can see visualisations such as simple time series and bar charts.

We’re still working on making area selection possible from an interactive map and we hope to share some of this work with you over the coming months.

We’ve also given the site a fresher look. We’ve simplified the layout and made it easier to find different datasets and use the search bar; all you need to do is hover your mouse over the menu at the top for it to pop up. You can also hover over some of the dotted-underlined descriptions for more detail about what these mean. We’ve tried to add descriptions like these to some of the more technical terms we use on the site. We’ll continue to simplify these as the site develops. Some features work slightly different in mobile browsers, such as on phones and small tablets, and we recommend using the site in landscape mode to get the best experience.

As well as providing better descriptions and help text, we’ve also simplified some of the technical language on the site. We know there’s more for us to do on this and we’d be really grateful for your views if anything should be clearer.

The dataset menus and table views have also been given a new look. We hope these changes will make it easier for you to access the data you need and to view columns of data in maps. On most tables we’ve made it clearer you can click on the header to ‘visualise this column’; for example, here’s a map of median house prices in Scotland.

We’re continuing to update our existing datasets and add new ones. Please let us know if there are any priority areas that you think we should focus on and we’ll get in touch with the data providers to do this. We’re also working with the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) to make sure SIMD16 is available on the site when it is published.

We are working on ‘how to’ guides to help you get the most out of the data. The new geography explorer has made it easier to add single areas and area collections to the data cart but we appreciate that some further guidance is needed to help users quickly find the data that they need. We’re working on this as a priority and will make these guides available as blog posts.

You should notice some performance improvements when using the site too. While most of the performance improvements we’ve made are ‘under the hood’ you should still notice quicker response times when accessing some of the larger datasets on the site, or when saving large data carts. Again, this is something that we’re always reviewing as the site develops and we hope to upgrade the database before the end of the year.

Also, please keep giving us feedback and let us know if you need any help using the site. You can get in touch with the team in the usual ways:

• statistics.enquiries@gov.scot
• 0300 244 0 442
• Comment below

We've been quieter than usual due to the Scottish Parliament's election period. However, the development team have been working hard in the background and we hope to share some changes with you in a couple of weeks.

So what have we been working on?

We will launch an improved Geography Explorer alongside an improved ability to see hierarchical relationships, such as which Data Zones are within a particular Council Areas. Soon you'll also be able to 'bulk add' these smaller geographies to the data cart with one click.

We've taken a lot of feedback on the Geography Explorer since we launched in February, which tended to cover issues like 'not being able to find the right Data Zone', and 'being unable to select more than one area with ease'.

We realised that a fair chunk of work was needed to fix this and the majority of our first development window is dedicated to making this work better. While we've made some initial improvements - that you'll see soon - we have a couple of bigger changes in the pipeline. These will include a new interactive map to select individual areas, which many of you have asked for.

We have also made a few performance tunings under the hood. We've worked out a few kinks to improve data retrieval and the search engine. You won't really 'see' many of these changes but we hope the journey through the site will be much smoother.

We'll continue to develop and test our functionality in a range of browsers from Internet Explorer to Google Chrome and Firefox but we can't guarantee that all functionality will work in older versions. Supporting old browsers is a lot of work and this would come at the expense of developing new features. And that's not something we want to do. Our site is designed to work well with mobile and tablet browsing too.

We suggest installing the latest version when prompted by your browser as this will ensure the best experience for you. We know that's not always possible in many organisations who operate a central IT policy. Please get in touch with us if you need any support or guidance with this.

We still want to review the content of the homepage and the help text that we provide. We'll start by putting together a few 'how to' blogs after we've launched the changes; we have a decent idea about what the common tasks are on the site, but let us know what yours are.

Also, please keep giving us feedback and let us know if you need any help using the site.

The data cart on statistics.gov.scot is a great way to select the data you need. You can browse around the site to find the geographic areas and columns of data that you require, and click the shopping trolley button to add them to your cart. Once you're finished you can save the cart and download the data as a csv. The data cart has a permanent link (permalink) so if you save the url you can share it with others or come back to it later.

Below we have saved some data carts that might be useful to help you to get started. If you click the shopping trolley button at the top of the list of Data Zones it'll add all of them to a new data cart. From there you can start to add columns of datasets from one or more datasets.

All 2001 Data Zones within:

• Aberdeen City
• Aberdeenshire
• Angus
• Argyll and Bute
• City of Edinburgh
• Clackmannanshire
• Comhairle nan Eilean Siar
• Dumfries and Galloway
• Dundee City
• East Ayrshire
• East Dunbartonshire
• East Lothian
• East Renfrewshire
• Falkirk
• Fife
• Glasgow City
• Highland
• Inverclyde
• Midlothian
• Moray
• North Ayrshire
• North Lanarkshire
• Orkney Islands
• Perth and Kinross
• Renfrewshire
• Scottish Borders
• Shetland
• South Ayrshire
• South Lanarkshire
• Stirling
• West Dunbartonshire
• West Lothian

We're planning to improve the site to make it easier to select geographic areas that you are interested in. Please keep giving us feedback on how we can make the site better. You can comment in the blog below or email us directly.

We’re delighted to launch statistics.gov.scot today.

statistics.gov.scot is a new site for publishing the data behind our official statistics in Scotland. You can access data by theme, organisation or geography. You can also search for datasets, places or enter your postcode to find data about your local area. The data can be viewed as tables, maps and charts or downloaded in various formats.

There are help pages to get you started. As always, you can contact us if you need more support.

We'll continue to make changes to the site to improve user experience and add new functionality. We’ll use this blog to let you know about changes and demonstrate what the site can do.

The site is managed by The Scottish Government on behalf of all producers of official statistics in Scotland. It provides statistics from a variety of organisations such as The Scottish Government, National Records of Scotland, NHS Information Services Division and Transport Scotland. We’ll be working with other producers of official statistics to bring you more of our data in one place.

We’re keen to receive feedback on the site; please leave comments below, send us an email, or call us on 0131 244 0442.

Since our last blog post in November, we've been working hard on that list of new features, as well as improvements and fixes to all aspects of the system.

That has now been deployed to http://statisticsbeta.com together with an updated collection of data, ready for a final round of intensive testing.

By 'release candidate' we mean that this is the basis of what we plan to 'go live' with in February - no significant additional features are planned before then. However, we know that there are a few bugs that still need fixed and a few rough edges that need smoothed off. Also, work is in progress to prepare more detailed metadata and documentation of every dataset.

So there is still plenty of work to be done but we're getting closer to the first operational release.

We’re still very keen to receive feedback; please leave comments below, send us an email, or call us on 0131 244 0442.

We’re continuing to seek feedback and make improvements to the site. We plan to launch at the beginning of February 2016. Over the next six weeks we'll be making regular updates to improve user experience and add new functionality. Following these updates there will be a testing period to ensure that everything is working as expected.

We received feedback that it was difficult to find the data you wanted because often the breakdowns didn’t exist, and you ended up with an empty table. We’ve taken this feedback on board and we’re working on a new way of getting to the breakdown you want. We’re also acting on feedback to ‘de-nerdify’ the site as users told us they weren’t keen on seeing a lot of technical detail like links and large tables of metadata. However nerds needn’t worry because URIs, APIs and SPARQL queries are all still there, but will just be less prominent. Early testing is going well, but we’re really keen to get your views when these changes go live. We’ll update these blog pages to help explain the new features as they are launched.

Other planned developments include:

• Adding postcode, place name and geography searching to let you find data about a particular area
• Improving dataset descriptions and metadata to improve understanding and reuse
• Improving the area profiles to bring you more up to date information, alongside the most relevant areas for comparison
• Reviewing the structure of large datasets on the platform to make them easier to navigate
• Adding a 'data shopping cart' feature allowing you to select data from various datasets and combine them into a table for download
• Adding some simple data visualisations.

The development is taking longer than we hoped, but we believe it’s important to get things right before going live. We’re really keen to receive feedback; please leave comments below, send us an email, or call us on 0131 244 0442.

As explained in our beta launch announcement, the Scottish Statistics site is currently in a test phase, where we are seeking feedback, while continuing to check and improve the quality of the data and enhancing the user interface and data access features.

During June, we plan to have regular releases of the software, introducing improvements and new features. The development plan for the coming few weeks includes:

• add 2001 intermediate zones and data zones to hierarchy on geography resource pages
• enable selection of geographical areas by text search and by postcode
• allow download of full data-cube datasets in CSV format
• review user interface text for clarity of wording
• improve presentation of area reports on geography pages
• improve presentation of data grid on dataset and SPARQL result pages
• improve data publishing process, including validation and aggregation of uploaded data

Scottish Statistics makes use of Swirrl's PublishMyData product and new features and improvements will be deployed as they become available. Coming soon: a 'data shopping cart' feature allowing you to select data from various datasets and combine them into a table for download.