The Centre for Business and Local Government Data Research is running a series of workshops, exchange programmes, and public lectures to embed its findings into the organisations that run public services and local economies. This matters because the Centre has spent years developing data science and AI tools tailored to the needs of local councils, small businesses, and public-sector bodies—but research that sits on a shelf changes nothing. The gap is not in the science itself, but in the translation: stakeholders often do not know what tools exist, how to apply them, or how to navigate the legal and ethical issues that come with using data to make decisions about services, budgets, and people’s lives. If the programme succeeds, local governments and businesses will routinely use advanced analytics to improve service delivery—for example, predicting demand for social care, optimising transport routes, or targeting business support. The public may never see the algorithms, but they will feel the effects in shorter waiting times, better-targeted services, and more efficient use of tax revenue. The project also builds long-term capacity by training early-career researchers in public engagement and media skills, ensuring the Centre’s expertise outlives the grant itself.
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This proposal seeks funding for the BLG DRC to support and provide a knowledge exchange and outreach programme designed to engage with different types of stakeholders in a variety of ways to (i) facilitate the transference and application of research findings to stakeholders and generation of outcomes; (ii) raise awareness of socio-economic research and advances in Data Science (DS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques that are relevant to stakeholders' needs and how they can benefit from them; (iii) facilitate knowledge exchange for progressing research design, outputs and outcomes. In particular, the proposal includes the following activities to ensure that the work of the Centre gets embedded in organisations such as businesses and the public sector to ensure a lasting legacy and impact of the Centre's work: - Knowledge Exchange Projects (KEPs): these will be small scale feasibility projects where we will be working with a stakeholder to apply and embed the Centre's work and findings. - Focussed Challenge Labs (FCLs): focused interactive sessions with key stakeholders to support the consideration and design of follow up research questions and initial research design for subsequent funding proposals, but also application of existing findings and results. - Research User and Stakeholder Workshops: annual workshops to bring together researchers, policy makers, practitioners and professionals in an interactive set up to explore the challenges that they face and their experiences in the areas of expertise of the Centre providing an opportunity to bring the Centre's work closer to stakeholders, create new relationships and provide a mechanism for encouraging the uptake and application of the Centre's work. - Public Lecture Series: a series of events and activities targeted at engaging with the wider public and raising awareness of both the work of the Centre, but also more wider issues around the use of data and advanced analytics techniques by organisations to deliver better services and improve the quality of life, but also the legal and ethical implications of using DS and AI for decision making in the public sector and industry. - Research User Exchange Fellowship Programme: an exchange programme with research users to enable policy makers, practitioners and professionals to spend time working with a Centre researcher on a specific problem utilising the Centre's work and to enable the translation of research into tangible outcomes. - Participation in research user/stakeholder conferences: the Centre's members will be participating in research users/stakeholders conferences (e.g. Local Government Association Conference) to network and disseminate the work of the Centre and develop new links to increase the uptake of the Centre's work. - Developing Research and Leadership Capacity: we will be supporting the development of early and mid-career researchers through coaching, mentoring, support in submitting research proposals, but also training on public engagement and managing the media among other things provided by the Research Organisation.
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