New government information site opens

The following press release was issued today and now gives us a powerful new tool to keep local government to account for what they do. Press Release reads;

"Are we being served? For the first time all public services to be held to account in Oneplace

The six independent public service inspectorates¹ today (Wednesday 9 December 2009) launch their first joint judgement, on a new website. It will show how places in England are coping with their local priorities, such as the recession, obesity in schoolchildren, crime and care for the elderly.

The Oneplace website goes live at 00.01 on Wednesday 9 December. It provides assessments of performance on the environment, services provided for children and young people, raising school standards and cutting disparities in health.

In a more streamlined approach auditors and inspectors have come together to publish their findings, making them directly available to the public in everyday language.

Oneplace divides the country into 152 areas, measuring how well local services work together to meet both their own priorities and government indicators on, for example, anti-social behaviour and teenage pregnancy.

The website uses green flags to highlight exceptional performance others can learn from. Red flags signal where problems won't be solved without a fresh approach by the local public services working together.

• Blackpool gets a green flag for the way the Council, landlords, Job Centre Plus and the voluntary sector have cooperated to cut homelessness.

• Doctors, nurses and other health professionals worked with the Council and voluntary bodies in the London Borough of Hackney to significantly increase the number of children who live beyond the age of one, recognised by a green flag.

• In Doncaster, which has a red flag, public services have not been doing enough to keep children safe and healthy or to ensure that they achieve good results in schools.

• Oneplace red flagged stark differences in the quality of life of poorer inhabitants of the English Riviera, compared to the rest of the population. Public services in Torbay have not done enough to combat above average poverty and poor housing and health.
• In Kensington and Chelsea, special efforts by teachers, child and mental health professionals, the Council and voluntary bodies closed the gap in school results for children from black and ethnic minority backgrounds. It gets a green flag.

Below is a joint statement from the Chief Executives of all six inspectorates:

'Oneplace is for those who pay for local services, those who provide them, and those who depend on them. This is 21st century accountability, based on expert assessments of what services do for people, not how they are organised.

'It paints a picture of places, their agreed local priorities, challenges and their public service performance. The website offers a way of checking the effectiveness of public spending and helps people hold those who provide publicly funded services to account for their decisions.'

The website also publishes the ratings for councils and fire and rescue authorities. It links to the ratings from Ofsted on children's services, which are published today (9 December), and the Care Quality Commission's assessments of adult social care, released last week.

Building on local government's recent track record of improvement, the Audit Commission is publishing assessments of councils on a revised basis, stripping out much of the detail and reflecting today's challenges such as carbon reduction. The new assessments look at how well councils and fire and rescue authorities manage their performance, and make use of the resources available to them. For relevant councils, they take into account reports from Ofsted and CQC on services for children and vulnerable adults. Councils are graded on a four point scale. 1 denotes poor, 2 adequate, 3 denotes performing well and 4 excellent. Overall, local government has maintained its recent improvement and faces an uncertain financial outlook with a good grip on its performance.

The six inspectorates behind Oneplace are joining forces with one of the most recognisable brands in public service information - Directgov. Oneplace will be available through the Directgov website as well as via each inspectorate's site. This innovative agreement will give Oneplace impressive visibility, as Directgov has up to 18 million visits each month."

I have given it a go already and it appears to be quite extensive and detailed, should be very useful give it a go. Click Here