Down to the minute: how our data reveals the nation’s concerns in real-time

As the coronavirus outbreak continues and the government announces new measures, there are very few ways to instantly understand how the nation is reacting. But Citizens Advice is one of the unique organisations that can provide that insight down to the minute.

After government announcements, people come to our website for advice

Over the last 2 months, we’ve noticed an interesting pattern in our website data. After major government announcements on coronavirus, visits to our website spike.

Our advice page on being furloughed saw several peaks last week, as the Prime Minister announced measures for easing lockdown and the Chancellor gave updates on the Job Retention Scheme.

We use our data to understand what people are worried about

Since the coronavirus outbreak, we’ve been monitoring the top 25 most viewed advice pages on our website every day.

This busy graph tells a story of rapidly changing worries at the beginning of the outbreak, followed by continued concerns about work.

At first, people were worrying about cancelling holidays and their entitlement to sick pay. But as time went on and the government made more announcements, the top pages became more constant. Our advice on if your employer has told you not to work because of coronavirus has been the number 1 most viewed advice page since 31st March.

We’ve even used our data to estimate numbers of Universal Credit claims

When the government started publishing fortnightly data on the number of Universal Credit claims, we noticed that the daily views of our Universal Credit advice pages followed a very similar pattern.

Having access to our data in real-time meant we were able to use it to estimate how many universal credit claims there would be in DWP’s next data release. We estimated that between 12th and 28th April there would be 512,328 claims. When DWP released their data it showed there were in fact 511,940.

Our website is only one of our many data sources

Our website data is incredibly powerful in highlighting the nation’s concerns, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Every day we gather information on the problems people are facing from the 272 local Citizens Advice offices across England and Wales. This hasn’t stopped because of coronavirus. Since the lockdown, our advisers have helped over 260,000 people by phone, email and webchat. This is where we get a richer understanding of people’s experiences.

Here’s just one of the thousands of stories we’ve heard since the coronavirus outbreak began.

During this crisis, decisions must be made quickly, but that doesn’t have to mean without evidence. The real-time nature of our data makes it incredibly valuable at times like these. That’s why, as well as using it to make decisions about our own service, we’ve been openly sharing our insights with the government and the public.