In August, we brought together Stream’s Advisory Group 2 (Technical) which comprises subject matter experts from 16 water companies and other industry stakeholders. Co-chaired by Icebreaker One and Pennon Group, this group advises and supports the project partners as they commence work on Stream’s Implementation Phase.
Meeting Aims
- What’s the next best step to take within the analytics space?
- Understanding the challenges and pain points within the Stream platform
Summary:
- Outcomes:
- It was noted that:
- The session focused on analytics, with the aim of identifying next steps and user needs.
- Operations and technology workstreams are progressing, though minor blockers remain (e.g., Teams accounts for IB1).
- No immediate support is required, but risks were raised for awareness.
- It was noted that:
- Definition of analytics
- It was discussed that:
- Analytics should support understanding of user engagement, platform usability, and dataset value.
- Analytics requirements differ by user group (e.g., Product Team vs water company members and their Boards), necessitating tailored approaches.
- Developing analytics as a product backlog using user stories would aid iteration.
- It was noted that:
- Two core categories exist: platform experience analytics and data consumption analytics.
- It was discussed that:
- Sector examples:
- It was noted that:
- Members seek better tools to assess data usage trends and engagement over time.
- User account systems could improve attribution but may conflict with open access principles.
- Reservoir dataset engagement provided a strong narrative, aligning with public search trends.
- A member company’s NSOH API received over 5 million queries, with estimates suggesting polling activity by 50–100 organisations at 5–15 minute intervals. While precise use cases are unknown, this indicates sustained external interest and engagement with the data.
- Tracking the impact of social media activity, such as LinkedIn posts promoting datasets, could help assess whether such communications drive greater user engagement with data.
- It was discussed that:
- Current analytics are insufficiently granular and fragmented across sources.
- Tools like Google Analytics provide partial solutions without requiring logins.
- Incorporating prompts during the user journey, asking users to indicate the purpose of their data download or map use, could improve understanding of dataset value and inform analytics.
- Real usage insight helps validate our platform’s impact and guide future dataset priorities.
- It was noted that: