Analytical Workbench overview

The Analytical Workbench platform allows access to a broad range of tools and software, tailored to the needs of public sector analysts, with a focus on open-source solutions, collaboration, and security assurance.

It provides access to a world-class data centre, high performance compute and the ability to collaborate across organisational boundaries; providing the ability to share resources, code, and ideas.

It is a private cloud platform with virtual machines (VMs), web publishing and dashboards, you can:

• analyse data on a Windows or Linux VM
• publish interactive websites on data.gov.scot
• develop and publish R Shiny dashboards

Background

The Workbench was originally developed by SPACe, the Scottish Public Sector Analytical Collaborative, with the following strategic objective:

To collaborate wherever possible to help people better produce, find and use data and statistics about Scotland, to make our services more efficient, and increase our impact. Our approach to this work will be open, flexible, and forward thinking, acknowledging that compromise may sometimes be necessary on all sides. Wherever possible, we will seek to build shared infrastructure to support all producers of Official Statistics in Scotland.

SPACe no longer exists as a group, but the development of the workbench continues.

Contact Details

If the Workbench is something you or your organisation could use, please contact the SPACe helpdesk and we will be able to provide you with a demonstration and discuss how you could use it. If you decide to start using the Workbench we will work with you to onboard your organisation.