In this blog post, we explore why data about physical activities matters, the tools and infrastructure needed to support that data, and how data strategy can help ensure that data is useful, usable and in use.

In England, one in four people do fewer than 30 minutes of physical activity a week. Research from Sport England shows that those who do the least activity can benefit the most from small lifestyle changes.

One barrier to getting active people face is difficulty finding information about and booking activities online. OpenActive is a multi-stakeholder open data initiative that aims to change this by making it easy to find, book and discover information on all kinds of physical activities — from tennis courts, to swimming pools, to dance classes. OpenActive is funded by Sport England and hosted by the Open Data Institute.

At Open Data Services, we’ve been involved in OpenActive since 2020 as part of our portfolio of work on Community, Health and Wellbeing that also includes our work on Strengthening Social Care and Open Referral.

Building tools and infrastructure for sustainability

Our experience supporting data initiatives to deliver social impacts shows that sustainability requires much more than just publication of the data itself. People also need tooling and infrastructure to ensure that data can be published easily, is of high quality and can be put into use.

Open Data Services builds, deploys and maintains tools and infrastructure for a number of data initiatives, including OpenActive.

The OpenActive Harvester is a project used internally by OpenActive. The Harvester, built using Node.js, Elasticsearch and Kibana, downloads all known OpenActive data, converts it into a common format and provides an interface for basic analysis.

Open Active Conformance Services (OACS) is a suite of tools to discover, download, normalise, enhance and republish data that uses the OpenActive specification. OACS downloads all known OpenActive data, converts it into consistent, valid OpenActive data, enhances it with basic enrichments (such as location) and allows it to be republished as a single feed.

Creating and implementing a data strategy

OpenActive has proved there is both need and enthusiasm for open data around sports and physical activity. Since 2021, we’ve been working with our partners at Substance to support Sport England and OpenActive with a strategic review.

This work has included:

• Working with the community to identify and articulate OpenActive’s mission

• Exploring the assumptions underpinning this mission, and how they relate to theories of change

• Analysing approaches to governance, funding and technical infrastructure to ensure long-term sustainability

• Building coalitions of stakeholders committed to publishing, using and reusing data

• Aligning OpenActive with Sport England’s Uniting the Movement strategy and broader policy goals

• Supporting Sport England’s approach to open data, and advising on open data strategy

What’s next?

We’re proud to partner with OpenActive and play a part in their work to make data about sports and physical activity more open and accessible.

We’ll be continuing our work to help build a data initiative that’s sustainable, that addresses inequalities of access and opportunity, and that helps people get active in ways that work for them.