Christian has been busy working on both our LSIP project for West & North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, and he and Giles presented the work so far to our clients. They seemed really happy with the progress we demonstrated, but there's still quite a lot to do before the end of the project in just over a month. We've got our work cut out for us, especially given the other deadlines in other projects. This sparked a thread of discussion between Christian, Michelle, Taz and Giles which resulted in Giles roughing out a cross-project sprint plan encapsulating all of our delivery work. This should help make sure that nothing slips through the cracks. It is particularly important to get this sorted out now, as next week we will be joined by our new starter, Luke. Having a good grasp of our project delivery commitments will make sure that we can involve him in productive work as soon as possible!
Christian has also been finishing the Council Tax model for our Tax Devolution project with Northern Powerhouse Partnership, and been preparing for a big internal workshop day next week where we're setting our ambitions high for our Economic Data workstream for the rest of 2023, including an exciting partnership which we'll be announcing shortly! More news next week!
Giles has been thinking about accessibility. Our work on the Leeds 2023 data microsite was recently subject of an accessibility audit conducted by Nexer Digital, and this week saw the presentation of the final report. Thankfully we only had a small number of problems to fix, but more importantly we were able to discuss some of the more complex issues of making a data-intensive website inherently accessible. It's really exciting to be thinking about fundamental challenges to the way that we work, and can only be a good thing when considering the number of data visualisations we create on projects and elsewhere.
Louis has been progressing the Open Justice project by interviewing some of those researching the area. He spoke with Judith Townend from the University of Sussex on Tuesday, learning more about the problems and considerations we need to be aware of when pushing for justice data reform. He's also working on a case study with Pablo Hillaire, Prosecutor at the No 10 Criminal Court in Buenos Aires and LSE researcher. They're working together to demonstrate some of the digital tools that have been employed by the court Buenos Aires to improve public engagement and develop the principle of open justice.
We had a great #OpenDataSavesLives session on Health Inequalities this Wednesday! We are consistently reaching 100+ sign ups for our events series with over 70 attendees, it is great to see so many people joining us and staying engaged as the programme evolves. Blog post to follow, keep an eye out on the website. Our next event will be on the theme of RAP for Health Inequalities on the 10th May. Sign up for the session here, and we'll see you there!
Paul has been working with our sponsors that are due to renew during Q1, making sure we're still in tune with their needs. He's also been working on a potential partnership to publish use and share data relating to poverty across North England, which feels like a brilliant fit for some of the other work we've been doing. He also attended the Digital & Cultural Dinner with LEEDS 2023 & Leeds City Council on Wednesday evening.
Finally, we were delighted to receive the news that the LEEDS 2023 data microsite has been shortlisted in the Using Data category of the Digital Culture Awards. You can read more about our entry in the awards.