Women Behind Our Data, HM Land Registry

I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn”.

I find this certainly rings true for me. For many years, my roles at HM Land Registry (HMLR) have involved me being out in the market place and speaking directly to our customers. Visiting them in their offices, learning and seeing first-hand how their business operates and how our data fits with what they do. Involving myself with customers and acting as their voice back at the office is something I am extremely passionate about and that has remained the case as I have moved from a Business Development role into Product Management.

What is fascinating and powerful to me, is seeing how the marketplace can use HMLR data within products and services, or for demographic or analytical purposes. I’ve come across some interesting uses in the past, from lawnmower sales (yes, really) to supermarkets looking to gain competitive advantage, but the main reason I’m so excited about the MeasureCamp is that this is a new audience for us to test out ideas for visualisation.

As one of the Product Managers, I am now responsible and accountable for making sure we develop and deliver the datasets customers want and/or need. An open approach to data is one of the three main strands of HMLR’s Business Strategy and we want to publish a wide range of data to support economic growth and demonstrate transparency. We hold 25 million land and property titles and can play an active role in enabling data transparency and supporting innovation.

I am lucky to work alongside some very clever individuals in our development team who help me to understand the processes of data extraction, analysis and subsequent dataset creation. This is always a real team effort where various areas of the business pull together to ensure we create interesting and useful datasets but also balance this against the important considerations on privacy, fraud and risk for any data release.

It is always interesting to see the completed datasets which have, in essence, been created from entries we hold on our registers. A register is the document we create to record information taken from deeds and documents for that land/property such as the address or property description, owner, price paid and relevant rights and encumbrances. We’re providing millions of rows of information on UK and overseas company ownership for Measurecamp and I can’t wait to see what happens and how we can use the visuals in the future.

By Cara Wiles, Product Manager