The Promise Data Map

The Data Map will show the types of data organisations working to keep the promise collect and hold— on children, young people, and their families.

Currently under development, the Data Map aims to enable anyone to understand the types of data held by different organisations across Scotland. In turn, this can:

help people to identify where there are gaps in their own data,
help show where there are data sources in other places or organisations that should be linked or shared,
fill gaps based on the data around what matters to children, young people and their families.

The Data Map: Populated by organisations

The Data Map will be created by organisations filling out a questionnaire about the quantitative and qualitative data they hold, and how they organise that. This information will be added to the Data Map website.

Organisations they can see where others have input, get ideas on what they could do differently, and see whether there is linkage or sharing potential.

The Data Map: Anchored by What Matters Questions

To ensure this information stays linked to what matters to children and families, we have developed the What Matters Questions. These were created from what children and families told the Independent Care Review about what was important to them.

Organisations can use these to ask themselves if the data they currently hold is what matters to children and families, and make improvements to data collection from there. Improving data in this way can help organisations to better understand the lives of children, young people and families, and plan better supports and services.

For example, one What Matters question is:

“Do people who support me spend time getting to know me and respond to my specific strengths, likes, relationships and needs?”

Organisations can ask themselves if the data they hold is helpful to answering this question. Is there other data they need to collect in order to do so?

Information about data— not the data itself

The Data Map will contain information about the data Scotland holds— it won’t contain that data in itself.

For example, it won’t tell you how many children are living in kinship care in a local authority area.

But it could tell you if that local authority holds data on the numbers of children living in kinship care. And it could contain information about this data, such as:

How often it is collected
What age range it covers
Whether it contains common identifiers, such as National Insurance numbers
What system it is stored on

By knowing what types of data one local authority holds and how they store it, another local authority can see if they can use it to improve their own data collection. An organisation working in the area can see whether data sharing is possible, to minimise the number of times a care experienced person has to repeat their story.

Eventually, when enough organisations have submitted their data, the Data Map will also show where different types of data are linked— and where data isn’t linked, but should be. Crucially, it will also highlight gaps in the data Scotland has.

In this way, the Data Map aims to be a useable, interactive, improvement tool.

What stage of development is the Data Map at?

The current phase of the Data Map project is focused on improving the Data Map’s useability and features. It aims to develop the 'front end' of the tool, which will enable organisations to search and visualise the information held within the Data Map.

We will share updates when the Data Map is ready for Scotland to use.