Open Data Insights

Working draft of assumptions and insights about this project from an open data perspective.

Key quotes

“No one is getting full data sets into the public in a good way.”

“Data sets don’t have value in themselves. They are problematic. The value is to start a conversation.”

“Explaining what people are looking at is important. You need to provide sufficient context, without telling people how they should interpret the data.”

“People want easy mapping, but more experienced users are capable of extracting what they want and can build visualizations on top of that; on the other hand, less sophisticated users tend to prefer simple charts and visualizations as part of the core experience to help them interpret the data.”

Needs

• Allow people to export the data
• Don’t bury the data behind several clicks
• Include download links for the data behind any chart, graph, or visualization
• Include caveats from the website in a separate downloadable file

Expectations

Follow open data standards:

• Make the data available for bulk download
• Provide raw data
• Allow users to customize downloads
• Provide multiple machine readable formats for download (such as XLS, JSON, CSV, or XML)
• Make visualizations embeddable
• Provide metadata and data dictionaries
• Explain issues with the data
• Tell users how current data is
• Tell users how big the files are
• Don’t remove data download features after launch

Potential outcomes

• Engage members of the public in issues that affect their lives
• Create awareness
• Show people how government works
• Make it easy for people to build things with UCR data