Over recent months you have reported to us a number of issues and feature requests regarding LG Inform (www.lginform.local.gov.uk). We are pleased to announce that we have been working hard on all of these and recently updated the system with a number of fixes and enhancements, for example:
· ‘My library’ now shows you all your reports by default, meaning you no longer need to search for your reports.
· Search terms are remembered when you are building charts, tables and maps making it quicker and easier to build reports.
· Chart templates have been updated to improve labelling and to reflect the way the system is being used by the sector.
· Headline dashboards (both bullet chart and line chart versions) have been updated to allow you to add multiple summary statistics for a chosen comparison group.
· Security has been enhanced meaning no more ‘restricted data error messages’; the system knows who you are and shows you just what you are authorised to see.
· Mapping has been revisited to improve speed and presentation so that maps now dynamically change to reflect polarity, and legends have been updated to be more accessible and printable.
We hope the above will improve your experience of LG Inform and enable you to build increasingly useful and informative reports to support your performance management and benchmarking objectives.
Meanwhile, we will continue to collect the good ideas you provide and use them to inform further improvements on the tool. Go to http://lginform.local.gov.uk/about-lg-inform/feedback to log your feedback. Should you experience any difficulties with the system please contact our support desk: lginform@esd.org.uk
New metrics ideas – if you’ve not voted yet then please visit the LG Inform Knowledge Hub group and cast your vote, the clock is ticking!
With all the work that goes into maintaining and enhancing LG Inform it is easy to forget that in addition to the thousands of published metrics we source from government websites, LG Inform was built to provide the sector with its own free benchmarking tool. The East Midlands region has started the ball rolling by suggesting a basket of voluntary local metrics and now is your opportunity to comment on these indicators or suggest your own, and if there is sufficient interest from the sector we will enable you to load the data directly into LG Inform.
Participating in this local benchmarking exercise is purely voluntary - just select from the basket of metrics those that are important to you locally and then when the time comes we will send you instructions on how to load your data. Once it is in the system you can start benchmarking against other participants straight away!
If you are planning to participate in the benchmarking, please register your interest against each metric type by entering your authority name in the comments box. This will help inform authorities that are considering participating about other authorities that are intending to participate.
To find out more about LG Inform and local benchmarking please read the new metrics ideas forum (https://khub.net/group/lginform/forum/-/message_boards/message/12418126).
If you just want to get on with voting for your favourite metrics then visit the LG Inform Ideas section (
We hope to start collecting quarter 1 (April-June) 2014 data from July onwards but we can only do this if you have voted to, so please vote now!
Kind regards
The LG Inform Team
