Cambridgeshire County Council is conducting a field trial of a Policy Compass tool to help four Community Learning and Skills Partnerships make better funding decisions using open data and evidence of outcomes. The CALF funding panels and new Learner Panels will test the tool to establish a baseline of contextualized data, collect outcome data, evaluate proposed funding, and identify areas of need. Next steps include testing the tool with management, running workshops with the panels, identifying additional open data, and uploading data sets to the tool.

1. CCC UPDATE
Rebecca Morgan – Business Development Manager
Dan Horrex – Corporate Information Manager
Cambridgeshire County Council
October 2014 3rd Plenary meeting - Madrid

2. Clarifying the field trial
• Field trial will be focussed on Community Learning & Skills
Partnerships (CLAS) who are managed by the Adult Learning & Skills
team (ALS)
• 4 CLAS partnerships in Cambridgeshire
• City & South Cambs, Fenland, East Cambs and Huntingdonshire
• Each partnership allocates the Cambridge Adult Learning Fund
(CALF) for its area
• Demand for better understanding of context in which funding is
awarded – better use of existing and new sources of open data
• Demand for better evidence of outcomes – requires new ways of
accessing data
• Making the data work for us!

3. The user groups
• The CALF programme is run in 4 locations and decisions are made
by a funding panel
• This panel will be the expert users in the field trail and will use the
Policy Compass tool to:
• Establish a baseline of contextualised data for the district
• Start collecting data on outcomes and adding them into the tool
• Evaluate the proposed funding in terms of the difference it could make and
testing those assumptions with data modelling
• Lack of learner voice identified as a key issue so we are in the
process of establishing Learner Panels. These panels will be our
community users in the field trial to:
• Challenge funding decisions
• Use the tool to model the outcomes of different funding decisions
• Identify areas of need

4. Open Data – CCC – Policy Compass
• Cambridgeshire County Council & Open data
• Certificates and Licences to enable the use of Open data
• Schemas and publishing data
• Council wide strategy which sets out the future direction of Open data
• Locating data to be used
• Preparing datasets to become open data, these include:
• Wider Impact Spreadsheets
• Learner measurement spreadsheets
• GCSE Performance data & National Attainment data
• CALF data
• Customer Personas (what different types of customers does
Cambridgeshire County Council deal with)
• Census data –from Cambridgeshire Insight website
• Other open datasets – from Cambridgeshire Insight and Cambridgeshire
Open data page
November 18, 2014 4

5. Next steps
• To test first version of Policy Compass tool
• Adult Learning & Skills management team will be involved in this
• To run workshops with CALF panel and Learner Advisory panels, who
are already aware of the project
• Dissemination of the project objectives has been carried out but training will be
needed
• To continue to identify potential open data and carry out impact
assessments
• Data from new outcome measures needs to be included to support policy
planning process
• To complete open data process and upload onto Policy Compass tool
• Data sets are being identified and will be uploaded

6. Next steps
• To test first version of Policy Compass tool
• Adult Learning & Skills management team will be involved in this
• To run workshops with CALF panel and Learner Advisory panels, who
are already aware of the project
• Dissemination of the project objectives has been carried out but training will be
needed
• To continue to identify potential open data and carry out impact
assessments
• Data from new outcome measures needs to be included to support policy
planning process
• To complete open data process and upload onto Policy Compass tool
• Data sets are being identified and will be uploaded