At i3 2015

AHRC-funded research student Lynn Killick, who works with me within the Centre for Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University, presented a paper entitled The role of the census in public policy-making: information practices of policy makers at the i3 conference last June.

Subsequently Lynn and I worked with Lynn’s two other supervisors to develop this material into an article entitled ‘The census as an information source in public policy-making’ for the Journal of Information Science. This will appear in a special issue of the journal in June 2016.

The theme of the paper is the value of national population censuses as information sources. It makes specific reference to UK census data and their use in policy-making. On the basis of the research findings discussed in the paper, we conclude that although the general value of the census is recognised, policy-makers are not necessarily closely engaged with it as a tool for directing the development and implementation of policy.

The full text of the accepted paper is available for download. The slides for the earlier conference presentation can also be found on my SlideShare account.