Source · Select Committees · Culture, Media and Sport Committee
Recommendation 4
4
Paragraph: 17
We recognise the importance of ‘horizon-scanning’ work to ensuring people maintain and increase their activity...
Recommendation
We recognise the importance of ‘horizon-scanning’ work to ensuring people maintain and increase their activity levels, which in turn will boost their resilience to the virus. However, smaller organisations are unlikely to have the resources 56 Impact of COVID-19 on DCMS sectors: First Report available to collect data, analyse it and then act on that insight. We believe that Sport England is in the best position to continue this work. We call on DCMS to provide Sport England with the necessary resources for it to prioritise data collection, so that long-term indicators can be developed to help the sports sector better understand the needs of its audiences.
Paragraph Reference:
17
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
Sporting Future identified the huge opportunity that the digital agenda presents for sport and physical activity. Using data to make people more aware of activity opportunities available to them has continued to be a key focus. has been steadily increasing. This has been encouraged by the OpenActive programme, which has been run by Sport England and the Open Data Institute since 2016, to support providers in releasing their ‘opportunity data’ describing when and where physical activity opportunities take place. Over 230,000 opportunities are now being openly published each month from 48 different data providers. The programme has continued to focus on increased data literacy, creating a new set of data standards and tools, and supporting activity providers to release their ‘opportunity data’ describing when and where physical activity opportunities take place. The objective is to make it easier for people to find these activities online and to book and pay, making it as simple to take part in physical activity as it is to order a takeaway. sector, as people increasingly expect to be able to discover and select opportunities to be active in a user-friendly way. While there remains strong support and engagement for the initiative, Covid-19 and the challenges it brings operationally for many activity providers means that technical resources to support the work have been furloughed, therefore, progress has slowed since lockdown. As an OpenActive initiative, we adapted by creating a data standard to allow virtual classes to be opened up which has since powered the Join the Movement activity finder and will soon underpin the Great British Week of Sport campaign being led by ukactive.