I’m sorry that I’ve missed the cut-off, but I would like to make suggestions for next year.
Some governments are looking more to NGOs to provide frontline, non-critical services; e.g. social housing intake and accommodation management, disability services, or early intervention to support families before a child is at risk; e.g. parenting or anger management classes. This is especially the case in the human or social services sector.
Given the significant investment in these funded services, the index should have clarity of datasets for what, where and how these funded services can be accessed, either directly from the government, or via funded services. This should be a key value add for open data: who is do what where, allowing citizens to find what is available near them.
There is also a reduction in the emphasis of measuring and reporting inputs for human / social services (funding, full time equivalent headcounts) to measuring outcomes; e.g. how many children are in out of home care greater than 12 months. In Australia these figures are reported to a central, federal government body, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) by all the regions / states that either directly operate or license service delivery. The reporting is sourced from the regions, but published at the national level, and allows comparison as all the measures are based upon agreed national standards.
What changes should be considered to open data index to support these types of datasets? What approach should be taken to regional government service information which is reported at a federal government level?