Solving the Data Dilemma: 3 Things Cities are Discovering

As the ability to capture data is increasing exponentially, the excitement swirling around smart cities and open civic data sources has grown to gold-rush levels. But in the push to capitalize on big data’s promise, there hides a problem: Turning all that great information into actionable insights takes time and resources you don’t always have.

Below, you’ll find 3 things cities are discovering as they address this nation’s great “data dilemma”:

**The struggle to acquire and make sense of civic data is real (for everyone).**

Over the past 4.5 years helping cities build better communities, we have learned that the majority of city leaders and local experts struggle with many of the same things, including:

Knowing where to start
Acquiring and accessing data (inside and outside of their departments)
Understanding data they have
Allotting time and resources to work with data
Working “against” what’s been done historically (i.e. changing organizational behaviors)
Using dashboards or metrics to evaluate and communicate performance
Measuring improved outcomes

Noteworthy: At a recent mySidewalk event, 71% of attendees from Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri reported that competing priorities take precedence over making the most of their organization’s data and 56% of attendees said, even if they had the time, they don’t have the tools they need to do so.

We all want to make better decisions and data can help us do that.

Making better decisions means shifting organizational behavior and approach — and eliminating any and all biases that exist.To discover bias within your organization, make two lists that address the following:

What are the things you assume and what are the things you are interested in finding out?

This is a quick, effective exercise any organization can use to uncover biases that may be hindering them from understanding their community. Bias carries through on the way an organization develops and plans. Integrating a fresh approach will shift the focus from “what we know” to “what we have discovered”. Breaking away from the legacy of how processes have worked historically can lead to more metrics-driven decisions vs. assumptions.

City experts who see things differently are building better communities.

Through the right kind of data analysis (and setting aside all bias), city leaders are now leaning on data to make better decisions that will impact their communities 5, 10 and 20+ years from now. The tough part, admitted by most local leaders and city experts, is getting started. The first step? Change the way the data is visualized and, most importantly, thought about. By adjusting the “lens”, relationships, trends, and outliers become easier to notice.

For example:

Shifting from random points on a map like the sample below…

This is a crime map from Riverside, CA. Every point on this map has an attribute that tells us something. The points are actually color-coded, but hard to interpret outside of “that area doesn’t have a lot of points”.

to a heat map that is not spatial…

Here is the same set of crime data viewed differently and illustrating statistical relationships. It is very easy to see that ward 1 has a crime problem — which is probably not new news to local officials. However, we can see that in ward 7, there is an outlier. These outliers provide insight to possibly low-hanging issues that may be solvable, making a huge impact on that section of the community.

…to a visualized map that allows you to normalize and make sense of your data in one place, ultimately leads to better decision-making.

This is a map of total crime in Kansas City, MO by zip code. It’s easy to spot the darker zip codes where there are more crimes.

However, when normalized per capita, an outlier becomes noticeable. This says that the ratio of crime per citizen is extremely high in this particular zip code which drastically changes the conversations this city may have while making decisions about crime in this area.

By shifting the lens, organizations can build a better haystack using their data — meaning, they can turn all of their information into actual actionable insight. Associating geographies with specific visualized sets of data all the way down to a zip code or even a city block group will dramatically impact the way decisions are made — eliminating barriers, bias and simplifying overwhelming amounts of information.

“So often data baffles rather than supports,” said a recent attendee at a mySidewalk event.

It doesn’t have to. Changing the way you think, approach, and visualize your data is crucial to making better long-term decisions for your community.

If you need help solving your organization’s data dilemma, click here.

Note that The Data Dilemma is a mySidewalk sponsored event focused on helping city leaders build better communities through data.

About the Author: Lauren Nguyen is the Marketing and Events Manager at mySidewalk.