Catalogue description Department of National Heritage and Department for Culture, Media and Sport: National Lottery Awards Database

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Details of PF 1
Reference: PF 1
Title: Department of National Heritage and Department for Culture, Media and Sport: National Lottery Awards Database
Description:

There are two datasets derived from the National Lottery Awards database. The first dataset is a snapshot of the system taken in March 2001 which includes details of successful awards made between February 1995 and March 2001. It also contains information on failed applications between January 1995 and March 1997. After this date the Distributing Bodies ceased supplying information on failed applications to Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). A second snapshot of the system was transferred to the National Digital Archive of Datasets (NDAD) in July 2006 containing details of successful awards up to and including 2 September 2006.

The AWAWDS table, covering successful awards contains the majority of the data input to the database. In the first dataset the table contained details of more than 83,000 lottery awards. In the 2006 snapshot the number of awards had increased to more than 250,000. The data in this table includes the following details:

  • Unique identifiers for the award, distributing body and distributing body sector. The distributing body sector is a sub classification of the distributing body (for example, in the case of an award made by Sport England, the particular sport benefiting from the award would be the distributing body sector).
  • Details of the organisation receiving the award, including the name and address and an indication of whether or not it holds charitable status.
  • Information about the project, including a short description, the amount awarded, the total cost of the project, the date of the award, the project completion date and the status of the award (i.e. successful, completed, stopped or withdrawn).
  • Location details used as part of the various reporting functions within the database. These include the electoral ward, local authority, county, UK and European Parliamentary constituencies and UK region.

In addition to the awards data the database also contains data relating to UK Members of Parliament. This is supplied to DCMS by a private company, QAS Ltd on a quarterly basis. Data supplied by QAS is used to validate the postcodes of organisations receiving lottery awards. These are then used to derive values for those fields in the AWAWDS table covering location; for example county, local authority area and region. Changes to the data that are made as a result of data supplied by QAS are recorded separately in the AWREDERIVE table.

The datasets in this series are available to download. Links to individual datasets can be found at piece level.
Date: 1994-2006
Arrangement:

Hardware: When the dataset was transferred to NDAD in 2001, the Lottery Awards Database was available to users in DCMS via networked PCs linked to a Compaq Proliant 2500). When the second dataset was transferred in 2006, the system ran on a Windows 2003 server, accessed from workstations running under the Windows XP operating system.

Operating System: Novell NetWare 5

Application Software: The Lottery Awards Database was developed as a client server application using Borland Delphi. Reports were written using the Quick Report component of Delphi. All of the core data is held in an Oracle database. The original specification for the database indicates that the system was developed using an Oracle 7 database. The system is currently (2006) held in an Oracle 9.2 database. In 2002 when NDAD received the first transfer of this dataset the system was held in Oracle 8.

User Interface: The interface available to users in DCMS is a Windows-type interface (using pull-down menus, dialogue boxes etc).

How data was originally captured and validated: Awards data was supplied to the DCMS for upload to the database by each of the Distributing Bodies in the form of a tab separated extract file. Additional data was received via regular updates from a private company QAS Ltd which were used to validate the address details supplied to the Distributing Bodies by applicants. The contents of the data files containing the Awards were validated by the Oracle database. Awards may be inserted or updated. If an award already existed on the Awards Database, it was assumed by the system that it was to be updated using the information contained in the file; otherwise the award is treated as an insertion.

The Lottery Awards Database is dynamic, in the sense that updated information about the status of a lottery award may be entered on the system via the regular updates received by DCMS from the Distributing Bodies overwriting data previously received.

Validation performed after transfer: Details of the content and transformation validation checks performed by NDAD staff on the Awards dataset are contained in the catalogues of individual datasets.
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Former reference in The National Archives: CRDA/39
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 1997-

Department of National Heritage, 1992-1997

National Lottery Commission, 1999-

Office of the National Lottery, 1993-1999
Physical description: 3 datasets and documentation
Restrictions on use: Data from the National Lottery Awards database datasets and related dataset documentation are subject to Crown Copyright; copies may be made for private study and research purposes only.
Access conditions: Open
Immediate source of acquisition:

In 2010 the United Kingdom National Digital Archive of Datasets
Custodial history: The National Lottery Awards Database datasets were originally transferred from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in 2001. The United Kingdom National Digital Archive for Datasets (NDAD) then held the datasets until 2010 when they were transferred to The National Archives (TNA).
Selection and destruction information: Acquisition policy, section 2.2.2.1: Interaction of the state with its citizens and its impact on the physical environment: the economic, social and demographic condition of the UK, as documented by the state's dealings with individuals, communities and organisations outside its own formal boundaries.
Accruals: Further accruals at five year intervals are expected.
Unpublished finding aids:

Extent of documentation: 12 documents, Dates of creation of documentation: 1996-2006

Administrative / biographical background:

The Lottery Awards Database is a system that provides information about awards to good causes made with money raised by the National Lottery. It captures information about grants awarded by the various lottery Distributing Bodies from data supplied to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) by the Distributing Bodies. The awards database was designed to compile reports for both houses of Parliament on lottery grants awarded, and also to generate letters to MPs informing them about lottery awards made in their constituencies, although this function of the database is not widely used. The database is maintained as a central source of information that can be interrogated in response to ad-hoc queries about lottery awards. The facility for visitors to the DCMS web site to carry out remote searches of the database was also part of the functionality of the system.

The UK's National Lottery is among the largest of its kind in the world. From its launch on 14 November 1994 to the end of June 2006 it had achieved nearly £57 billion in ticket sales. By September 2006, £19 billion had been raised by the Lottery for good causes and over 240,000 grants had been made.

For every pound spent on lottery tickets approximately 28 pence goes directly to the good causes via the National Lottery Distribution Fund (NLDF). Camelot (the company that operates the Lottery on behalf of the National Lottery Commission) also pays the value of all unclaimed prizes for which the claim period has expired to the NLDF. The good causes are: the arts, charities and voluntary groups, heritage, health, education, the environment and sports. The responsibility for distributing proceeds from the Lottery rests with the lottery funding bodies each of which provides data from its own systems to update the DCMS lottery database. They make their funding decisions independently of government but within a framework of Government policy directions. In 2006 there were 14 lottery funders: the four national Arts Councils, the four national Sports Councils, UK Sport, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the UK Film Council, Scottish Screen, Awards for All, the Big Lottery Fund and NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts). These last three funding bodies have been established since the transfer of the 2001 snapshot of the DCMS lottery dataset. In 2001 funds were also distributed by the Community Fund (also known as the National Lottery Charities Board), the Millennium Commission and the New Opportunities Fund. National Lottery funding will also contribute up to £1.5 billion towards the costs of staging the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London.

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