Tina McLelland talks about TellMeScotland, an open data initiative supported by the Scottish government that for the first time is releasing Scotland’s public information notices in a single online location.

TellMeScotland is Scotland’s national public information notices (PINs) portal, allowing public notices across Scotland to be published in a single online location for the first time. Public information notices are announcements that local authorities are legally required to publish. There are two types of PIN: Statutory Notices give required notice of an intended action, such as road closures, construction, licensing and planning/property developments, while Public Notices inform people of changes to services, such as refuse collection.

TellmMeScotland was developed by the Scottish Government in partnership with Scotland’s local authorities to provide the following national benefits:

• An integrated national picture of statutory and public service developments
• More accessible public notices with enhanced information across Scotland
• Greater interactivity between service users and suppliers locally and nationally, including consumers, businesses, councils and other public service providers

Visitors can click on a virtual map of Scotland to see listings of public notices in any area, satellite imagery of their location and information on the issues involved. The aim is to provide improved accessibility to enhanced statutory information. By making public information notices (and the data underpinning them) available on an open data portal, TellMeScotland allows them to be re-used and fashioned by members of the public and other organisations for their own purposes. The portal is scalable for use by the wider public sector and is part of a major national shared services collaboration. The underlying data is also available in Linked Open Data format at http://opendata.tellmescotland.gov.uk, together with a SPARQL endpoint.

Tina McLelland works for The Improvement Service, a partnership dedicated to improving the efficiency, quality and accountability of public services in Scotland through learning, sharing knowledge and delivering improvement solutions.

For more information about TellmMeScotland and its use of open data, contact Tina McLelland  at tina.mclelland@improvementservice.org.uk.