DIUS itself has not made any direct recent use of either MOSAIC or ACORN. The following is a summary of known examples of use and general extent of use in agencies and their contractors. There may be some use where MOSAIC or ACORN are used indirectly by external contractors which we have not been able to identify in collating the information for this reply.
Some regional Learning and Skills Councils (LSC) use MOSAIC to a limited extent. Contractors working on behalf of LSC may recommend it for projects where the aim is to analyse the population in certain areas, or understand which particular groups are accessing/not accessing learning. For example the LSC South East project uses MOSAIC neighbourhood types to identify and map NEET (Not in Education Training or Employment) hotspots in the South East.
The Student Loans Company hires a modelling tool from Experian which relies on some MOSAIC data and which predicts the likelihood to repay of student loans mortgage style accounts.
ACORN is to be used for the LSC Free Childcare for Training and Learning for Work project (activity to be undertaken November/December 2008)—profiling the population of England against the target audience (struggling families) to help plan where door drop activity should take place. It is also used to target media activity for the Skills for Life campaign.
Ufi (University for Industry) uses ACORN data in its marketing campaigns to promote learndirect learning.
No other use of MOSAIC or ACORN has been reported by DIUS or any of its agencies.