The Opportunity Project
A chance to do more with data.
Written by Stephen Hardy, chief operations officer at mySidewalk.
On October 6, 2016 we announced our participation in The Opportunity Project, a White House initiative which Hardy spearheaded at mySidewalk. Below Hardy discusses the project, challenges our team faced, and how we can move forward together to make data more accessible for everyone.
Last week, we visited the White House to announce our participation in The Opportunity Project, an initiative intended to expand access to opportunity for all Americans by putting data and digital tools into the hands of families, communities, and local leaders. It was an honor to be asked to participate, and we are proud to have worked alongside many of the country’s leading technologists.
dj patil, chief data scientist for the U.S., explained the project well:
“The Opportunity Project is about unleashing the power of data to solve some of the toughest challenges our communities face, things like helping Americans build skills and find jobs, increasing transit options in low-income neighborhoods, and helping families navigate information on the quality of schools. The 29 tools being released today . . . are the newest additions to the growing ecosystem of digital tools using open data and modern technologies to try and tackle big problems head-on.”
Over an 8-week period, the team here at mySidewalk worked alongside several federal agencies, a cohort of technology companies, and research institutions.
I want to jump right to sharing the results, but it’s worth noting that there are still significant hurdles in the path to make human-centered, data-driven decisions common practice — but more on that later.
Our work for The Opportunity Project focused on two separate challenges put forward by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and Office of the Surgeon General (OSG).
U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)
Mobility is central to both opportunity access and autonomy. There are several factors that impact personal mobility: cost, availability of transit, density, disabilities, and location. Many of these factors have spatial manifestations, meaning that they vary depending on where you are and where you are trying to go. Our collection of analyses with the DOT attempts to provide answers about traffic fatalities, the cost of commuting, mobility for those in poverty, and access to employment. Each of these analyses overlays data from diverse sources in an attempt to reveal how distinct community variables individually impact mobility. Taken together, we believe they can be used to provide a more accurate depiction of the mobility challenges citizens face, and provide some insight into which policy levers could be most helpful.
The map below shows motor vehicle crash fatalities in Washington D.C. (This map is interactive. Be sure to click on the toolbar and use your mouse to explore all of the information.)
U.S. Office of the Surgeon General (OSG)
Emotional well-being is the focus for the challenge put forward by the OSG. We chose to examine the impact of food access, housing overcrowding, and economic security on the emotional well-being of citizens. Like the work with the U.S. DOT, our analyses are meant to reveal unforeseen conditions and to help direct resources where they would be most impactful.
The map below shows how access to food impacts emotional well-being in Chattanooga, Tennessee. (This map is interactive. Be sure to click on the toolbar and use your mouse to explore all of the information.)
Clearing a Path
Our mission at mySidewalk is to make spatial data useful — to provide answers to common community questions. This may be an easy thing to say, but it’s a herculean challenge in practice: though worthwhile, community scale problems are incredibly complicated. The Opportunity Project puts a spotlight on these complicated issues, and it provided mySidewalk with some great partners to work with in addressing those issues. We realized that there are two primary hurdles that need to be overcome in order for communities to consistently take full advantage of available data:
- Local governments are a critical part of the journey. Data can be used to improve our lives, but there is often a chasm between the availability of federal data and the ability of local communities to make sense of that information. There aren’t nearly enough resources or tools that help interpret data, or to even communicate which data sets are useful and for what purposes. We often hear local government employees talk about their genuine interest in using data to make decisions, but also about their inability to know how to get started.
- The answers need to be easier to find. We combined about 30 different datasets from 6 different federal agencies to come up with the analyses we conducted for The Opportunity Project. Unfortunately, those raw datasets required a technical background in order to decipher how the data could be used to guide infrastructure and policy investments. To truly “unleash” the power of data and technology as DJ Patil says, we have to simplify the technique, crafting and utilizing data analysis tools (like mySidewalk) that are nimble and straightforward so that the average citizen — without a technical background — can utilize data to make more informed decisions.
The good news is that there has been tremendous progress made on both fronts over the last couple of years. The impetus on making data available and transparent was the first step, and with the support of efforts like The Opportunity Project, collectively we are starting to see the potential benefits of data-driven and human-centered community decision-making.
For local governments:
- Don’t be afraid to start at the start. You may think you are behind, but you are not.
- Think of your own data as an asset. The most interesting things we see combine local data with nationally available data.
- Reach out. Share your stories and inquire about what others are doing. There are new stories every day about how data is informing decision-making. I would personally also welcome the chance to hear your questions (reach me at hello@mySidewalk.com).
- Stick with it. You will find that as soon as you make a little progress, there will be lots of others who want to help and learn from you.
In the days and months and years ahead, we couldn’t be more excited to be on this journey with the agencies, local government, research institutions, and private enterprises that are attempting to put useable data into the hands of the people that need it.
We are thrilled for the work ahead and we hope to hear from you along the way.
Learn more about the work mySidewalk is doing for The Opportunity Project via the link below.
mySidewalk is a data tool for people who want to understand places. With the ability to instantly answer thousands of community questions, mySidewalk makes it easy for anyone to use data to make better, more confident decisions.
About the Author: Stephen Hardy is the chief operating officer at mySidewalk and is responsible for providing the strategic vision for mySidewalk’s team of designers and developers. Before joining mySidewalk, Stephen used mySidewalk as the director of planning with BNIM Architects. Stephen is certified by the American Institute of Certified Planners and holds a LEED AP credential.
