Data Clinic Unveils Latest Open Source Tool during NYC Open Data Week

Scout helps surface lesser-known datasets on the NYC open data portal

Last Wednesday, as part of NYC Open Data Week, Data Clinic hosted a large gathering of open data aficionados to present our newest open source tool, scout. Designed to augment the NYC open data portal, scout is a stand-alone web app that enhances the discovery of datasets.

Joined by Kelly Jin, Chief Analytics Officer for the City of New York, and Chris Whong, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, we laid out the motivation, design challenges, and broader use cases for the tool.

The presentation ended with a live demo to showcase scout’s functionality, which includes the ability to surface datasets that are thematically similar and have the potential to be joined via common entries in specific columns. In addition, scout allows users to curate persistent and shareable collections of datasets. We’d love to get your feedback on our beta version — so give scout a try, contribute on GitHub, and let us know what you think. We are actively working to improve our ability to recommend datasets, and to identify and build new features with input from the community! To learn more watch a video of the event here.