Data Service Requests

Let us know the actual challenge you are facing, what the gaps in your knowledge are, what information are you trying to get, and how will this help you.

Why this is important:

 Sometimes our tendency is to see a new technology and want to use that, and have technology in search of a problem.  Instead we should start with the problem and look for a solution, not tied to one specific technology.

What this means:

• We will work with your department to best help answer the question that you hope to solve through data. For example - whether to measure the effectiveness of a new city government initiative, or how many households will be impacted by a change in existing operations.
• It is natural that the original question to solve may get more refined over time. Still, it is helpful to have a general direction to start off from.

Let us know the information you are needing that you do not currently have a good understanding of or access to.  Also, we would like to know if this information is only from your department or if there is information from other city services that would be beneficial for this project also.

Why this is important:

This helps our team focus on the information that you need for this project, quickly locate it, and produce the appropriate analysis.

What this means:

• We will work with your and other departments to identify what information will be necessary to conduct the analysis.
• We will also want to know where this data is kept, whether it is Excel files on someone’s desktop computer, a city database, or an outside software system.
• This will enable us to understand if you can have access to the data, or if there are any restrictions to sharing/reuse.

Rather than starting with the tool in mind and trying to make it fit this solution, we like to look at each unique challenge and determine which tool will best meet this need.

Why this is important:

We want to help the users of this data project have the best and most informative experience.  Depending on what the users needs are, this will help determine the software or data tool that is used.

What this means:

• Depending on the purpose of the request, we will help you define the most useful tool for your purposes.
• For example, a one time analysis may just require a report but if you want to track something that needs to be tracked over time it may require a dashboard that updates regularly, or if there is geographic based information it may benefit from being displayed on a map.

When using civic data, it is important to make sure that we are not releasing sensitive and protected individual information (PII) when not required to do so.  This helps protect community members from risk and also protects the city from litigation.

What this means:

• It will be crucial to identify if there is any private or sensitive information in this data and help identify any access protections that should be put in place.

• In instances of private or sensitive information, we will work to ensure we are safely storing this information and that we are limiting who has access.

• Seeking to make ethical decisions with data, meaning that we think through the limitations of both the data and our analysis.  For example, there may be decisions that we would want to make based on data, but we have a dataset where certain community demographics may not be accurately represented.

• If there are risks identified in the project, as per the previous bullet, one way to mitigate it would be including members of the community in the development of the project.

When possible, we prefer to have civic data published openly and accessible to all city departments, researchers, and community members. 

Why this is important:

This allows for the highest level of feedback to ensure that we have accurate data.  This also allows the city to utilize the unique skills and abilities of different academic partners to support our analysis and data project.

What this means:

• When working with administrative data that does not contain private information and has the potential to benefit other departments, community groups, and/or constituents, we suggest that departments consider making these datasets and even the outcomes of these analyses public through our open data portal.
• If your department is in agreement with publishing this data, we would review the datasets through the city’s data governance bodies before making anything fully public.
• We will also seek to increase awareness of information that has been published publicly.

Instead of spending months developing a project that may or may not meet your user's needs, we prefer to start small and build a quick rough prototype to confirm that the project meets the identified needs.

Why this is important:

This saves the city time and money.  If we spend months making a solution that does not meet a need, that is time and resources that are wasted.  By building a small prototype quickly, we can better identify gaps in our knowledge and shortcomings of a proposed solution.

What this means:

• Defining a good understanding of what the user needs from this data analysis project.
• Building a rough prototype to get feedback and shape the next steps of the project.
• Working to improve the project based on the feedback and recommendations provided.
• Getting user feedback and using this information to improve the service or product

We will determine with you what is needed for this project to be successful.  Identify what individual or group will be the main audience of this data service.  What will show that this data project was helpful and should be continued, or that it was not helpful and should be discontinued?

Why this is important:

It is important for us to determine if a data product still meets user needs, or if we need to revise or retire it.

What this means:

• Determining what we would like to see as a result of this data service
• Defining how we will know that this project was successful
  • Are there certain measures or metrics that we can look at?
  • These measures should be a mix of goals that the department wants to achieve (outcomes) as well as actions that contribute to achieving this goal (output)