Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency sponsors Open Data Camp

The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency are pleased to be sponsoring the Open Data Camp NI promoting the use and re-use of government statistical data.

The Northern Ireland Neighbourhood Information Service (NINIS) is one function of the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), an Agency of the Department of Finance.

The aim of NINIS is to make small area information held within Central Government and Non-Departmental Public Bodies available to as wide an audience as possible. The NINIS website contains over 2,600 datasets on a range of socio-economic themes at small-area statistical geographies; area profiles that provide statistical snapshots of an area and interactive maps that enable statistics to be interpreted readily in a spatial context. All datasets are accompanied by standardised metadata with contact details for the data supplier.

The NINIS data portal (www.nisra.gov.uk/ninis), which has been around since 2003, is one part of NINIS. We also provide advice on understanding small area statistics on an ad-hoc basis through the NISRA customer line and email, and through NINIS monthly seminars.

NISRA is committed to increasing the amount of data released in open and re-usable formats in the production of its statistical outputs and NINIS is key to progressing this Open Data Agenda with data being free to download in Open Document Spreadsheet (ODS) format.

The NINIS website has had on average over 10,000 visits each month.

Users can keep up to date with NINIS by subscribing to the NINIS E-zine or by following NISRA on twitter (@NISRA).