Following the recent Review of CIS by the Defra Rural Development Service, ADAS will be working with Dart Computing to improve the performance and ease of use of the Countryside Information System (CIS). The Review recommended:
- A user/download study to establish the usage of CIS outwith Defra/known user base. Also to identify training requirements of these users. Assess whether a different approach to targeting should be taken for this type of new user.
- Assess whether stand alone developments could take place to make CIS easier to use for non-expert users (hence would open CIS users to non-technical staff)
- Improve on visualisation functionality if this user requirement is deemed to be important.
- A large number of CIS data requirements are met with the MAGIC conversions. The provision of social / economic data from ONS would add another dimension to CIS and its role in providing support for holistic policy making.
- Implement a metadata standard and ensure all data is moving towards this standard.
- Investigate further whether CIS should be web-enabled, taking on board that this would/should involve a complete re-development.
- Further investigate with key expert users whether CIS should be developed into a more developed statistical tool which can be used as a modelling platform.
A new version of the software is planned for release at the end of the year. We are currently scoping the nature of the changes needed both in the medium and longer term. The results of the recent CIS user survey (recommendation 1) are proving very useful in identifying user requirements.
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