1. and the 2011 Census API Alan Lewis SASPAC Project Officer Greater London Authority ONS Census 2011 Dissemination Event London, 16th May 2011

2. Overview Background 2011 Census Preparations FR3 Experience 2011 API Suggestions

3. Background Software application to interrogate and access Census data Owned by the Local Government Association Managed/developed on behalf of LGA and users by the Greater London Authority (GLA) “Not for Profit” - owned and managed by the Public Sector

4. Background Users include: local, central and regional government, health sector, academia, Census Offices, private sector Historically taken bulk release Census outputs from all three Census Offices, processed these and distributed to our users Experience of the same problems as others: data specifications, formats, QA, updates/re-releases Part of group that approached ONS in 2007 with data feed suggestion

6. Already had experience of NeSS Data Exchange (API) – Web Services Wizard

7. Partner working with ONS, NOMIS and Manchester University to help develop the 2011 Census API

9. Java client within SASPAC that requests/parses data from Censusand NDE API services

10. Integration with SASPAC’s existing tools and an initial exploration into OS APILaunch video

11. API’s RESTful construction via URIs was relatively straight forward to use data delivery format (SDMX) is flexible and good for linking detailed metadata, although verbose and initial learning curve (limited) functionality worked well and responsive need to explore scalability FR3 Experience

12. 2011 API Suggestions Some high level: Data rich (datasets + geography + metadata) Accessible (responsiveness + licensing) Supported (documented, forums, sample clients/code) Timely: ‘API should be just another channel’

13. 2011 API Suggestions Some specific: “dimensional intelligence” e.g. having selected age/sex/ethnic group be able to query the geographical levels available hierarchic support - both geographical and variable rich item-level metadata e.g. variable description, table/cell ids, ref. to glossary and Census original question geographical metadata (lookup files/pop centroids)

14. Thank you Contact: 020 7983 4348 info@saspac.org www.saspac.org