The Four County Labour Market Planning Board is leading a new data consortium covering southwestern Ontario.
Board Executive Director Dana Soucie says the consortium includes the City of London, the Workforce Collective in Niagara, Workforce Windsor-Essex, Sarnia Lambton Workforce Development Board, and the Municipality of Chatham-Kent.
This new service will provide access to raw data from the Community Data Program on statistics including demographics, housing, income, work, education, and health, which the planning board says will increase support for economic and workforce research efforts.
“In conversations around data collection and the need for local data, the Community Data Program came up in conversation and we realized that there were five boards in Ontario that were not represented on the map under a data consortium and so we were missing out on data that other boards and other organizations in other regions have that we didn’t. We looked at forming a data consortium and we spoke to London who was an existing consortium and we blended into what is now called the Southwest Ontario Data Consortium,” says Soucie.
She says the participating regions in the new data consortium can have members who will be able to access the data.
“Members can only access the community data program, if there is a data consortium covering their area,” says Soucie. “With this partnership and as the lead, we will be working with the Community Data Program staff to look at what are the new data sets they are looking at, accessing and just talking.”
Anyone interested in becoming a member can reach out to the Four County Labour Market Planning Board by emailing info@planningboard.ca or calling 519-881-2725, as well as visit the Community Data Program website here.
