Scottish Government: Fair Work Data Explorer - Shiny App

The Challenge

The Fair Work Convention, set up by the Scottish government, acts as an advisory body to Scottish Ministers. The requirement was the creation of an R-Shiny application for public consumption which allows policymakers, ministers and members of the public to explore the current status of key indicators within the Fair Work Measurement Framework. The resultant application would then be handed back to the Scottish Government.

The Project

Jumping Rivers developed an R Shiny dashboard solution for the exploration of data. The menu-driven interface gave an intuitive navigation experience around the various topics and performance indicators. Each indicator could be broken down fully flexibly by a host of characteristics, with visualisation types updated to suit. The dashboard also allowed the download of any of the visualised aggregated data from within the GUI. Custom-built reports can be created via the addition of chosen graphics and data to a selected list, providing a fully flexible printable report generator.

Raw data was processed and entered into a database for long term storage. For the purpose of the dashboard, a separate data cache was built for aggregated data. This allowed efficient retrieval of aggregate data, allowing the dashboard solution to be scalable.

As sensitive data was being manipulated and displayed, there was both a legal and ethical obligation to ensure good data practices. The intermediate data layer removed the direct dependency between the dashboard front end and the individual level database.

Our Results

The ultimate goal of the project was for the Scottish Government to take ownership of the project. This was achieved in two ways. First, the R dashboard was built using a reproducible and transparent packaging system. Second, we prepared general training on the technologies and bespoke training on the actual dashboard.