12 Sep 2025 - Matt Lucht
This week we had our Digital Screening show and tell with the theme of “AI”. In one of the talks Duncan Brown (our new CTO) referenced how the Ministry of Housing, Community and Local Government (MHCLG) planning data standards work was an enabling factor to the ai.gov.uk Extract project.
Duncan and I happened to both be in the NHS England office and after the show and tell we had a quick chat about some of the planning data work. And this helped me to reflect on some of the things I learnt from that project, and I thought they might be worth writing down!
The Extract work happened after I’d left the planning data team but it was lovely to hear about how the work we’d done was helping to solve problems.
In the early days of planning.data.gov.uk we were often asked about the value of open data and what open planning data might enable.
We could talk about how open planning data could be used to support initiatives being driven by the department, for example, projects like the PlanX service. We also had a strong story about how data helps to shape and measure the future policy intent. But the exciting part was always around enabling possibilities we hadn’t imagined within an emerging marketplace. Extract is a good example of this, as is Blocktype.
As interest began to grow around the work that we were doing, two questions kept coming up:
To answer the 1st question, but more importantly to start conversations around the 2nd, we created a public backlog. An early version is still online, although it has long been retired. It simply showed:
As we moved into beta and our data standard design process evolved, so did the backlog. The current version has become much richer with more ways to search, filter, and feedback.
Having something online, in public, that we could easily point to helped us in a number of ways.
Perhaps the most valuable benefit was that it helped us reach out to a variety of different users across MHCLG, local planning authorities, PropTech, and other interested parties. Each of the items on the backlog linked to a specific discussion thread. For example, Tree Preservation Orders. This allowed us to ask questions, highlight the things we weren’t sure about, and get early feedback on emerging data standards.
The backlog was always positioned as an evolving thing. It explicitly wasn’t a plan or a committed roadmap. We could track the items on the backlog that were generating interest and conversation, this helped us to shape upcoming priorities. And sometimes work that’s in progress gets paused, the backlog item explains the reason why but although the team’s focus changed, it was still open for people to continue the conversation.
Designing a data standard that not only meets the needs of the users of the data, but also is realistic for the people making the data, is often quite a complex process. Progress could be slowed down or blocked for a number of different reasons. Being able to indicate whether it was due to licensing constraints, waiting for others to review and provide feedback, or issues with the underlying data helped to highlight what needed to happen next.
planning.data.gov.uk and the standards work is a part of a larger programme within MHCLG. And with that came quite a bit of reporting around the work we were doing and the direction we’re taking. Having so much of the work in the open meant that many of the reporting needs could be self-served with a reassurance that the information they were getting was the most up-to-date and not something from a presentation deck created months ago. It didn’t of course negate the need for all the PowerPoint slides, but certainly helped!
I’m now at Digital Prevention Services Portfolio (DPSP) and have been reflecting on how some of the benefits of working in the open could apply here.
Openness is one of the core team values within DPSP, and there are great things happening such as publishing design histories, open code repositories, and notes.
The work that we’re doing on the Invite team is very much focused around improving the participant experience of breast screening. For people who are going through screening it can be an extremely stressful and sensitive time for them. Anything that we can do to improve that experience is so important, and being able to work openly and hear people’s feedback will undoubtedly help us get it right.
We’ve been thinking this week about the outcomes we hope to achieve. And from this, defining some hypotheses of things that might contribute to achieving those outcomes.
Mairi, our product manager, and I have been discussing how turning this work into a public backlog could be a useful way to share our upcoming priorities and hopefully generate some interesting conversations that’ll help us learn and improve what we’re working on.
Thanks to Sarah Fisher and Colm Britton for reviewing the draft post.