As the statutory consumer watchdog for postal services, it is the responsibility of Consumer Focus to scrutinise this data and help the public hold the Royal Mail to account.

Recently, we’ve been working with our policy team in Consumer Focus Wales to see how we can improve the transparency and visibility of the information we receive from the Royal Mail. Today we are pleased to launch the Wales Mail Report – a tool to make this data available to the public in an easily digestible form.

The Wales Mail Report takes the quality of service and complaints data from numerous large PDF documents and presents it in HTML tables with interactive charts. We’ve broken the data down by postcode area so you can see how well the Royal Mail is performing in your area. We’ll also be updating the data every time new figures are published.

Best of all – we’ve made everything available in open formats. You can download all the information in CSV and JSON formats under the Open Government Licence.

Although the tool only covers the postcode areas in Wales at the moment, we hope to be able to do the same for other parts of the UK over the next few months.

Let us know what you think and if you re-use the data we’d love to see what you’ve been able to do.

Since the first report was published in March 2010, a new rating scheme has been developed by the Food Standards Agency (FSA). This scheme will give all food premises in England and Wales a rating between 5 (very good) and 0 (urgent improvement necessary) dependent on the outcome of hygiene inspections.

The second of these annual reports was launched at the Senedd (the home of the National Assembly for Wales) earlier today. While compiling this report, staff identified more than 60 premises serving food to vulnerable people that achieved a substandard rating (2 or below). These premises included schools, colleges, nurseries, care premises and hospitals.

We were asked if we could plot these premises on a map to show where they were located to accompany the report.

Luckily, the Food Standards Agency publishes all of their content under the Open Government Licence. This meant that we could build a scraper to work through the food hygiene website to pull out the qualifying ratings to use on the map.

We also used open data from mySociety’s MaPit service to pinpoint the location of each premises so we could plot it on a Google Map. The MaPit service uses data published under open licences by Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey.

If you want to know more about this work, take a look at the press release, published report and map. Welsh language versions of the press release, report and map are also available.

Data encryption

When you sign up to StayPrivate.org you provide us with a significant amount of personal data. At a minimum you provide us with your name, email address and postal address. If you are a business, you also provide us with details about your organisation.

You then have to provide varying amounts of data depending on which of the marketing opt-out services you wish to use. This includes things like telephone numbers (for the TPS, CTPS & FPS) and names of other people at your address (for the MPS).

All of this information is encrypted when it is stored in our database. For example, my name ‘Dafydd’ becomes something like ‘A0JQNABiWi5SawY2’ or ‘BEUEYFQ2WCwHPgAw’. Without the encryption key, we can’t decode it to see what it means and neither can anyone else.

Data storage

This is another key element in our service – we don’t store data for any longer than is absolutely necessary and you can ask us to destroy it at any time. The options open to you depend on what you select when you register.

If you don’t sign up for an account, we will destroy the data once we’ve registered you with the opt-out services. This is done automatically & there is nothing for you to do.

If you signed up for an account but didn’t tick the “store data” box, we’ll automatically destroy everything except your name and email address once we’ve registered you with the services. You can ask us to destroy the rest by clicking the “Close Account” button in the dashboard.

If you signed up the account and ticked the “store data” box, we’ll keep it until you ask us to destroy it. We’ll send you a reminder every year and ask you to confirm you still want us to keep it – if you don’t, we’ll destroy it automatically. You don’t need to wait for the reminder however – at any point you can ask us to destroy it by clicking the “Close Account” or “Delete Data” buttons in the dashboard.

Secured Connection

On Monday this week we launched full SSL encryption on StayPrivate.org. If you’ve ever used online banking or shopped online, you might be familiar with the padlock that appears in your web browser to show that the webpage is secure.

This means that your web browser is using a secure connection (HTTPS) to communicate with the website to ensure the data you send and receive remains private.

From this week, StayPrivate.org is only available using a secure connection, so you will see that padlock on every page of the website. Whenever you view data on the site or send data to us, it will be secured and will remain private.

This is an important step forward for StayPrivate and ensures that security and privacy of your data is being taken care of at each step in the process.

The team has been compiling quarterly data on the number of complaints about energy companies received through various sources including Consumer Direct, Consumer Focus’ own Extra Help Unit and the Energy Ombudsman.

We’ve worked closely with the team to design and develop a service for publishing this data in a meaningful format. CF Labs produced a number of prototypes designs which were refined through various stages before eventually reducing to 3 possible options. These options then underwent independent testing by TNS-BMRB in September which helped us to pick the final option.

Yesterday we launched the Energy Supplier Performance ranking system on the Consumer Focus website. The system ranks each of the ‘Big Six’ energy suppliers using stars – 0 for the worst performing companies, 5 for the best. You can read the methodology behind the rankings on the website and in the accompanying press release. The energy team will be publishing updated rankings on a quarterly basis.

As well as providing a ‘snapshot’ of the current rankings, we wanted to display the data in a bit more detail so we’ve included a second page to do this. This page contains a table and interactive graph showing the performance changes over time using a three month rolling average.

We’ve also published this data in JSON and CSV format so it can be easily reused. You can access these formats from the ‘Historical Data’ page. As usual, we’re publishing this information using the Open Government Licence for public sector information.

At the moment, the ranking system only covers the ‘Big Six’ – Scottish and Southern Energy (Atlantic, Scottish Hydro Electric, Southern Electric & Swalec), British Gas (and Scottish Gas), E.ON, Scottish Power, EDF Energy and npower – as these cover 99% of the domestic energy market. Consumer Focus is looking at publishing similar information for smaller suppliers next year.

We appreciate any feedback you may have on the system.

CF Labs was asked to find a way of presenting some of this information and making it available as an online resource. On Sunday we launched Community Post Offices, a simple directory to publish this data.

The website allows you to search for community post offices in your area, find out where they are located and see what services they provide. If the post office has a website, we’ve provided a link so you can find out more details. We’ve also built a form to allow other community post offices to register to be listed on the website.

We’ve also used the data to produce a few pages showing statistics such as the core activities, legal structures and services provided.

You can read more about the Community Post Offices project from the Consumer Focus press release.

Third Party Tools

We’ve made extensive use of MaPit from mySociety and UK Postcodes from Pezholio to provide location information from the organisation’s postcodes. This has allowed us to power the postcode search and pinpoint the location of each post office on the embedded Google Maps.

We’ve also used Google’s Javascript Charts API to produce the graphs on the statistics pages and Scribd to embed the accompanying report.

Data Licence

All the non-commercial data on the website is being released using the Open Government Licence for public sector information. This means that you are free to re-use the information as long as you acknowledge us as the source. More information about the licence is available on the National Archives website.

To make it easier to reuse the information, we’ve published most of it using machine readable formats. Initially we’ve done this using the JSON format and CSV for the statistics. We’ve published instructions on how to access these formats on the website.

Feedback

As always, we appreciate any feedback you have. Either leave a comment here, or email communitypostoffices [at] consumerfocus.org.uk.

Browser Share Headlines

• Internet Explorer has gained a 0.5% share of visits over the last month, but is down 10% on the same period last year
• Firefox dropped nearly 1.5% over the last month, almost all to the 4 other big browsers
• Chrome, Safari and Opera have all gained share this month

Top Browsers

• March 2009: IE7 (53.83%), IE6 (26.55%), Firefox 3 (12.42%)
• March 2010: IE8 (30.51%), IE7 (26.16%), IE6 (14.44%), Firefox 3.6 (7.91%), Firefox 3.5 (6.93%)

Full Details

Below is the updated Google Spreadsheet showing the percentages for each browser. We’re releasing this data under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 license.

Google Spreadsheet: Browser Stats

Sites Monitored

The sites monitored change month by month as new sites are launched and old ones closed down. The sites used in this period are as follows:
March 2009

• Consumer Focus (www.consumerfocus.org.uk)
• Consumer Focus Labs (www.consumerfocuslabs.org.uk)

March 2010

• Consumer Focus (www.consumerfocus.org.uk)
• Consumer Focus Labs (www.consumerfocuslabs.org.uk)
• Recalled Products (www.recalledproducts.org)
• Digital Switchover Wales Survey Results (dso-wales.consumerfocuslabs.org)
• “Does Directgov Deliver?” Report (directgov.consumerfocuslabs.org)
• Fuel Poverty Charter Wales (www.fuelpovertycharterwales.org.uk)
• Energy Price Comparison Service (energyapps.consumerfocus.org.uk)

So where does the market currently stand? Over the past few months I’ve been looking at the statistics for the Consumer Focus & Consumer Focus Labs websites and thought I’d share some of the results.

Browser Share Headlines

• Internet Explorer has lost about 9% of its share since January 2009, but still holds onto 70.56% total
• Firefox has gained 3.7% since January 2009, now holding 18.96%
• Chrome has jumped from less than 1% to 4.7% overtaking both Opera and Safari
• Safari has steadily risen from around 3% to 4.3%
• Opera has dropped from around 1% to 0.7%

Top Browsers

• January 2009: IE7 (51.48%), IE6 (27.68%), Firefox 3 (12.96%)
• February 2009: IE7 (51.99%), IE6 (27.98%), Firefox 3 (12.54%)
• January 2010: IE7 (28.40%), IE8 (28.00%), IE6 (16.75%), Firefox 3.5 (12.13%)
• February 2010: IE8 (28.80%), IE7 (26.50%), IE6 (15.24%), Firefox 3.5 (12.45%)

Full Details

Below I’ve published a Google Spreadsheet showing the percentages for each browser. We’re releasing this data under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 license. I’ll try and update it on a monthly basis.

Google Spreadsheet: Browser Stats

Sites Monitored

The sites monitored change month by month as new sites are launched and old ones closed down. The sites used in this period are as follows:
January / February 2009

• Consumer Focus (www.consumerfocus.org.uk)

January / February 2010

• Consumer Focus (www.consumerfocus.org.uk)
• Consumer Focus Labs (www.consumerfocuslabs.org.uk)
• Recalled Products (www.recalledproducts.org)
• Digital Switchover Wales Survey Results (dso-wales.consumerfocuslabs.org)
• “Does Directgov Deliver?” Report (directgov.consumerfocuslabs.org)
• Fuel Poverty Charter Wales (www.fuelpovertycharterwales.org.uk)

Our work on the Stay Private project has continued amongst our other duties. We now have a framework in place and are starting to build the part that submits information to the Telephone Preference Service. As you might imagine, this is one of the most complicated parts of the system as there are multiple forms that need to be submitted for the process to work. We are hoping to have a very early stage test site available in the next few weeks.

We’ve continued to chase Tesco with our data protection request. They have finally responded and sent some of our data to us – although it isn’t quite what we were expecting. I’ll be posting some more details about this on our data blog shortly. (Update: You can read the response from Tesco here).

Some people may have noticed that we’ve moved our websites to a new server. Up until now, we’d been using Slicehost as our hosting provider. While they did a good job and served us well, we weren’t that comfortable with using a server based in the USA. This would have been of particular concern when we got around to launching the Stay Private website. As a result, we’ve moved everything to a new UK based server.

CF Labs has also recently taken over responsibility for the Consumer Focus corporate website. We felt that we were best placed to manage new developments and overall strategy including introducing a social media programme. One of our first priorities is to move it away from the current ASP.NET system to the open source WordPress CMS. This work is currently on going and is due to be completed in a few weeks time. While the website will not look any different (aside from a few small layout changes), moving it to WordPress means it’ll be more flexible and easier to maintain. We’re also looking at how we can make Consumer Focus reports and publications more open by using the Commentariat theme developed by the people over at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).

As you can see, there are quite a few bits and pieces going on. We’ll keep you updated as work progresses.

Interestingly, while they do seem to have a fair amount of information about me – including my lifestyle profile (“Commonplace Brands” / “Mainstream”) and my lifestyle affluence (“Mid-Market”), they have not provided me with anything really detailed.

I was hoping that I would be sent a list of the products I’d purchased, or at the very least a list of my favourites. Tesco should hold this data as it is referenced in the event of a product return and is used to build up my favourites profile when shopping online at Tesco.com. Unfortunately, all I’ve received is my basic marketing profile, a list of how much I’ve spent since 30th July 2007 and some printouts from the customer service system that recorded the data protection request.

We’re going to follow all this up with Tesco. We will also be reminding them that they have still lost some of my personal data (a photocopy of my driving licence) while attempting to process the request – which is very concerning.

More broadly, we shall be seeking a public guarantee that future requests will be handled quicker and more simply than mine has been.

In the meantime, you can take a browse through the wonderful Tesco screen shots below. Please note that I’ve blurred out anything that I’ve classed as personal data (both mine and those of Tesco employees).

At the same time as making the original Tesco request, I also sent out a few other requests to some smaller businesses.  Included amongst this group was a business that used to sell tickets and merchandise for music festivals.  I already had a rough idea what data they held about me, but I wanted to test how well they handled a Data Protection Request.

Within a few days of receiving my letter, their Data Officer contacted me to confirm some details.  A few days after that I was contacted again to say that they had found the data I was after and would be sending it on shortly.  Soon after, it was sat in my inbox.

Not only had they sent all the data I was after, but they automatically suppressed my email addresses from any further marketing and asked me if I wanted the data deleted from their database.

I was really impressed by the way this request was handled.  Not only did they communicate with me throughout the entire process, but they took steps that were not necessary to complete the task.  This should be used by all organisations as a good example of how to handle a Data Protection Request.

Was there anything surprising in the data?  Yes – the password I’d used for the website in plain text.  Let this be a reminder to everyone, never use the same password on more than one site, and always expect your password to be visible to anyone looking at the database!