The Local Government Association (LGA) contacted the Open Standards Team and asked for our help to increase accessibility of election results.

Why we need a standard for election data

The LGA wants to promote an open and standardised format for displaying election data. Currently, the government publishes election data inconsistently and the LGA wants to increase openness as part of the Government Transformation Strategy.

Some local authorities publish data in an open and accessible format and link to it prominently from their home page. But many authorities upload proprietary file formats, which can be hard to read unless you pay for specific software. We’ve even seen some authorities scan in and upload an image of a photocopied tally - that's poor for accessibility and for open data.

Give us feedback on the new schema

We’ve worked closely with the LGA, Electoral Commission, Association of Electoral Administrators, Democracy Club, and many others to evaluate a new schema for recording and distributing election results. We have recommended using the Election Result Data Standard, which the LGA will trial during 2018.

Please get involved! We're looking for comments from experts and enthusiasts. You can:

Next steps

The Open Standards team will collect your feedback about this standard and pass on the findings to the LGA. The LGA will then determine which election data the standard should apply to and how it should evolve. We’ll keep you posted on any developments.