• June 15, 2018
• Civic Data

Each week we will bring you a summary of what happened this week on our site, on Twitter, and in the wider world of civic data. Suggest stories on Twitter with #ThisWeekInData.

The Governance Laboratory at NYU is excited about the potential of data collaboratives—partnerships in which private companies share their data with public-sector groups—but warns that the practice remains “ad hoc and limited.” The GovLab believes that the future success of data collaboratives is dependent upon establishing data stewardship as a well-defined, professionalized function and responsibility within corporations. To this end, the GovLab, with support from the Hewlett Foundation, has begun a project called Datastewards.net, which aims to help corporations share data in a safe and regularized manner by providing tools and guidance for data stewardship.

GovTech reported that Nashville’s experiment with court date text alerts has been a success. Nashville began the experiment with the help of the Bloomberg Foundation in an effort to address Pretrial Services’ failure to appear rate. After their initial test, Diana Brady, the program director of Pretrial Services, confidently reported that those who received the tests are more likely to appear in court than those who did not. “We love it. It’s huge,” said Brady.

On Data-Smart, Nancy Torres outlined current and future opportunities for the implementation of three emerging technologies: artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain. Torres’ article explores examples like a partnership between the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) and IBM Watson aimed at developing better 911 call evaluation, an array of sensors along the Lower Colorado River that measures and models the flow of water to predict floods, and UNICEF’s protype for tracking the status of international grants using blockchain.

CivTech St. Louis published a report on the implementation of YourSTLCourts, an open-source website and texting service designed to reduce the number of St. Louis citizens going to jail for nonviolent traffic offenses. The project involved a number of organizations, including GlobalHack, which ran the initial hackathon in 2015 that resulted in the idea, and HandsUpUnited, a local social-justice organization that recruited youths of color to help design the user interface. The CivTech team is looking to adapt the system for statewide implementation.

Apolitical highlighted BA Obras, an online platform in Buenos Aires where citizens can access data on the location, progress, and cost of local publics works projects. The platform was launched to defend against corruption and bribery from large building firms, making it difficult for such firms to hide suspicious overspending and surreptitious charges. As of this week, the platform features over 850 public works projects. However, there remains the challenge of public engagement. The BA Obras website has received over 75,000 unique views, but the majority come from the month after launching. According to Alvaro Herrero, the Under Secretary for Strategic Engagement and Institutional Quality for the government of Buenos Aires, “The main challenge is not the platform itself, but getting residents to use it. We’re still in the process.”

The City Fix published a piece arguing for the establishment of “emissions inventories” measuring the greenhouse gas emissions of cities as a first step toward creating effective city climate action plans. The authors introduce examples like the GPC, an accounting standard that guides cities in how to measure their emissions and outlines methods for downscaling national statistics to the city level, and the Danish Energy Agency, which provides emissions data for each of its municipalities.

The Civic Analytics Network (CAN) published “A Letter to the Open Data Community” on Data-Smart to reaffirm their commitment to the Eight Guidelines for Open Data, which include recommendations for managing data and publishing revision history in public datasets. The letter also includes examples of recent data accomplishments in CAN cities, including Boston’s new data portal Analyze Boston, and the new, more user-friendly design of the Chicago Data Portal.

The Vera Institute of Justice analyzed the complicated statistical trends that underlie the slow decline in the United States incarceration rate since the beginning of the new millennium after a 400 percent increase from 1970 to 2000. The report proposes that a wider set of metrics is necessary to meaningfully measure incarceration trends, noting the importance of more responsive data like the rate of prison admissions, as well as more fine-grained metrics to better represent the uneven effects of prison reform across states and counties. The Institute believes that this the first step towards quickening the decline in prison populations; following the current trend, it estimates it will take 149 years to reach pre-1970’s incarceration rates.

Laura Schewel, CEO of StreetLight Data, spoke with Route Fifty about the Multimodal Measurement Initiative, a joint effort between her company, the city of Sacramento, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s State Sustainable Transportation Institute. The initiative is beginning its second wave of pilots and hopes to better understand the effect, positive or negative, that the ‘gig economy’ has on transit, and hopes to overcome the challenges resulting from the unwillingness of companies like Uber and Lyft to share data.

According to GovTech, Atlanta is still recovering from a March 22 ransomware cyberattack, but Interim Chief Information Officer Daphne Rackley of the Atlanta Information Management (AIM) department sees it as an opportunity to revisit its network design. In addition to strengthening its network’s security, AIM aims also to increase transparency about its management and hopes to reduce costs by offering “detailed visibility” of its budget.

Jane Wiseman presented a framework on Data-Smart for assessing how data-driven your city is. The framework is a four-stage model, beginning with the publishing of open data and ending with optimization of city practices through a commitment to using data. Each stage includes a number of questions that data leaders can use to assess their city’s preparedness for the next, and the framework as a whole should serve as a jumping-off point for discussions on how to become more data-driven.

Nick Wallace, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation, wrote an op-ed for the EU Observer in which he argues against the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation, which puts restrictions on AI using personal data. Wallace believes that limiting AI development now poses no real benefits, for the risks and problems that AI present are not yet clearly understood, so any regulation drafted now would serve only to stifle AI innovation in Europe.