Best places to get your data
For many beginners getting into data and what are the best places to get your data , the first stumbling block is actually accessing the information you want. Before you’ve started to tell the story, and before you can even get your teeth into the visualisations, you fall at the first hurdle.
Fear not. We’ve collected some of our favourite sources of reliable and informative data, giving you some starters if you’re struggling to figure out where to find your story.
Office of National Statistics
Government releases are always a good source of up-to-date information and the ONS is one of the best places to get your data on population changes, demography or unemployment.
The ONS is also good for getting files on the counties, constituencies and wards, giving you the information on shape and size of the areas – handy when it comes to mapping data.
The USA has a similar model with Data.gov, giving people access to their data. One warning, however: governments may not release information that makes them look bad. If you want to make sure you’re getting the full story about an institution, never just consult one source on it.
Data.police.uk
Data.police.uk is a hub of data on crime and policing in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. You can access CSVs on street-level information and explore the site’s API for data about individual police forces and neighbourhood teams.
This is a very handy site to see how the police are performing on a local basis. You can compare crimes by location and time, enabling you to find any correlations or patterns there are out there.
The Metropolitan Police also publishes their data on each crime in London on police.uk.
Nomis
Nomis is a good source for official labour market statistics – you can get detailed data based on local areas, and can search summary statistics by local authority, ward or constituency.
MyNHS
Want to see the data that the NHS and local councils use to monitor performance and shape the services you use? Well MyNHS gives you this chance, it is one of the best places to get your data on the UK’s health service.
Eurostat
If you’re looking to compare the UK against other countries, or are looking to cover a more internationally-based story, Eurostat contains a variety of publications containing statistics on EU member states. This site has information on economic output, labour markets and demographics – to name just a couple.
World Bank and World Health Organisation
For a more global story, the World Bank and World Health Organisation release data on global finances and public health and safety. Such organisations and institutions have a multitude of datasets ready for you to trawl through in an attempt to find global trends and the effect of certain events.
Freedom of Information
The old faithful. If you can’t find the data anywhere, attempt to access it yourself. Utilise the Freedom of Information Act, which gives you the right to access recorded information held by public sector organisations. Ensure the information’s not already out there, and then send your request off to the relevant institution.
Scrape it yourself
When all else fails, you can always find a site that serves the data you want and then scrape the data. If you don’t know how to use Python, Javascript or other code languages, here’s a short guide we’ve done to help you scrape data without code.
We’re always after new tips for places to find data – can you think of anything else? Tweet us @Interhacktives with your ideas.
Digital Journalist