ONS Local Workshop: How to use the Nomis API

ONS Local has been established by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to promote evidence-based decision-making at the local level. We aim to host insightful workshops which will provide practical, technical support to help users make the most of ONS and cross government data. Sinclair Sutherland is the head of NOMIS, a website which publishes statistics related to population, society and the labour market at national, regional and local levels. These include data from current and previous censuses.

ONS Local Presents is delighted to host Sinclair Sutherland from Durham University, who, together with his team, manages Nomis. Nomis is a service provided by ONS that contains and delivers a comprehensive range of government statistical information on the UK population and labour market, including the Census, the Annual Population Survey, employment surveys, earnings, population estimates and projections, and life events (births, marriages, deaths).

Following on from the introductory session the previous week, Sinclair will explain the basics of how the Nomis API works, including demonstrating how to build API data delivery calls and discussing how to use discovery calls to retrieve concepts and codelists. To get the most out of this workshop, attendees should have a working knowledge of basic API concepts and be familiar with data formats such as JSON and XML. This session is open to everyone, but those who need to regularly update dashboards will find the workshop particularly useful.

The workshop fits well with the session scheduled for the following week, on using APIs with PowerBI. Attending both sessions will enable you to get the best out of your learning.

If you have any questions, please contact ons.local@ons.gov.uk.

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